On paper, the answer in Cameroon appears straightforward. The Constitution describes Cameroon as a democratic and social state and, more importantly, Article 2 declares that national sovereignty belongs to the Cameroonian people. Those who govern, it says, derive their authority from the people through elections.
But constitutions describe principles. Democracy ultimately has to be experienced.
So on 15 September 2026, as the world marks the United Nations’ International Day of Democracy, a more difficult question arises for Cameroon: what does it mean to say that power belongs to the people?
Is democracy fulfilled when a citizen is allowed to put a ballot into a box, or must that citizen also have a realistic possibility of changing who governs? What does democracy mean where elections take place, yet many people feel they have little influence over public decisions for the years that follow? Can a country be democratic because it builds roads, schools and hospitals if political competition and public criticism remain constrained? Conversely, what value does political freedom hold for someone who cannot find work, afford medical treatment or educate a child?
These are not new questions. Philosophers have argued about them for more than two thousand years. But they remain intensely relevant to Cameroon.
This year, the UN is marking the day with a session at its New York headquarters titled “Raising Hands and Voices – Fostering Agency and Ownership through Deliberative Democracy.” At the centre of that discussion is a simple but demanding idea: citizens should have meaningful opportunities to influence the decisions that affect their lives. The emphasis is therefore on participation, dialogue, inclusion and citizens having a voice beyond elections.
That distinction matters because democracy has never been only about voting.
What is democracy?
The word comes from the Greek demos, meaning the people, and kratos, meaning power or rule. At its simplest, democracy therefore means rule by the people. The simplicity disappears almost immediately.
Who exactly are “the people”? How directly should they rule? What prevents a majority from abusing a minority? Should every citizen have an equal political voice regardless of expertise? Can elected leaders legitimately make decisions that most citizens oppose? And what happens when those entrusted with political power no longer appear to serve those from whom that power supposedly comes?
Plato was deeply suspicious of democracy. Writing in The Republic, he worried that a political system built around extensive freedom and equality could allow persuasion and popularity to defeat knowledge and competence. Politicians seeking power, in his account, could become skilled at pleasing the public instead of governing wisely. Democracy could then become vulnerable to demagogues and ultimately deteriorate into tyranny.
Plato’s preferred solution, rule by exceptionally wise philosopher-kings, would itself be profoundly undemocratic by modern standards. Yet the problem he identified remains recognisable: choosing leaders does not automatically guarantee good government. A citizen may have a vote and still be manipulated, misinformed or offered political choices that are more apparent than real.
His student Aristotle approached the problem differently. One of his major concerns was whether those who governed did so for the common benefit or mainly for themselves and the group to which they belonged. He distinguished between political arrangements directed towards the common good and distorted forms in which those holding power used it primarily for their own advantage.
Aristotle’s terminology does not map neatly onto the modern meaning of democracy, but his central question remains useful. A country can have institutions with democratic names, hold elections and operate a parliament while leaving unanswered the deeper issue of whose interests political power actually serves.
Centuries later, European political thought shifted towards another question: why should citizens obey a government at all?
Thomas Hobbes offered one of the most famous answers in Leviathan, published in 1651. Hobbes began with fear of disorder. Without an effective political authority capable of enforcing peace, he argued, people could be trapped in profound insecurity and conflict. Rational individuals would therefore agree to establish a sovereign powerful enough to impose order and protect them.
For Hobbes, security came first. His social contract could justify an extraordinarily powerful sovereign, although people retained basic rights connected to self-preservation. His argument poses a question that remains relevant in states affected by war, terrorism, separatist conflict or political instability: how much liberty should citizens be prepared to surrender in exchange for security?
Cameroon has confronted versions of this dilemma through the conflict in the North-West and South-West regions, insecurity in the Far North and repeated appeals by authorities to national unity, territorial integrity and public order.
But Hobbes is only one side of the social-contract tradition.
John Locke moved the argument in a very different direction. For Locke, human beings were naturally free and equal and possessed rights that government did not create. Political authority existed because people consented to establish a government for the protection of life, liberty and property and for the public good.
Government, in this understanding, was a trust. Its authority did not simply descend upon citizens; it came from them. If a government seriously violated the purposes for which political power had been entrusted to it, Locke argued, the people retained a right of resistance and ultimately of replacement.
The difference between Hobbes and Locke captures one of the oldest tensions in politics. Hobbes asks how a state can become powerful enough to protect society from disorder. Locke asks how society can prevent that powerful state from becoming a danger to the people it is supposed to protect.
Modern democracy is, in many ways, an attempt to answer both questions at once.
A democratic state still needs authority. It requires police, courts, taxation, administration, borders and institutions capable of enforcing lawful decisions. But democracy also requires power itself to be restrained. That is why constitutions, independent courts, legislatures, opposition parties, elections, civil society, journalism and fundamental rights matter. They are mechanisms through which authority is exercised but also questioned, limited and held to account.
The United Nations’ definition of the rule of law follows that logic. Everyone, including the state itself, must be accountable to publicly known laws that are equally enforced and independently adjudicated. Separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty and protection from arbitrary power are part of that idea.
Democracy therefore asks two connected questions: who governs, and what are those who govern allowed to do once they hold power?
Democracy does not end at the ballot box
Modern democratic theory has consequently moved far beyond the idea that elections alone are sufficient. The V-Dem Institute, one of the major international projects studying political systems, examines democracy through electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative and egalitarian dimensions.
The electoral question is whether leaders are chosen through meaningful competition. The liberal dimension examines whether power is constrained by law, rights and independent institutions. Participation concerns whether citizens can organise and become involved in public affairs. Deliberation asks whether political decisions emerge through public reasoning and debate rather than coercion, patronage or command. Equality asks whether citizens possess reasonably equal political standing or whether influence is concentrated among the wealthy, well-connected or powerful.
Seen this way, a state can hold elections and still be deficient in other areas of democracy. The reverse point is equally important: democracy cannot simply mean that whichever side has the most votes is entitled to do whatever it wants. If 51 per cent of citizens could legally remove every fundamental right belonging to the other 49 per cent, modern constitutional democracy would lose much of its meaning.
Rights exist partly because some protections should not depend entirely on whether a person or group is popular. Freedom of expression is one example. Citizens cannot meaningfully govern themselves if they cannot obtain information, criticise leaders or openly argue about how the country should be run.
That is why journalism is not separate from democracy. If citizens are truly sovereign, they need information about what is being done in their name. A public that cannot scrutinise those exercising political power may remain formally sovereign while being practically excluded from many of the decisions made on its behalf.
But what about development?
In Cameroon, arguments about democracy frequently collide with another political word: development.
Governments are often judged through visible outputs. How many kilometres of road have been constructed? How much electricity is being generated? How many schools and hospitals have opened? How many jobs have been created? How much investment has entered the economy?
These questions matter. A democracy in which citizens possess extensive political rights but remain trapped in extreme poverty cannot simply treat material conditions as irrelevant.
Yet the meaning of development has itself changed.
For much of the twentieth century, national progress was commonly discussed through economic production, growth and income. Later approaches challenged the assumption that an increase in national wealth necessarily meant that ordinary people were living better lives.
The human-development approach associated especially with Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen shifted attention towards what people are actually able to be and do. Development, in this understanding, is about expanding human possibilities. Health, education and material living standards matter, but so do freedom, choice and the ability to participate in decisions that shape one’s life.
The United Nations Development Programme’s first Human Development Report in 1990 made this explicit. It argued that human development was concerned with enlarging people’s choices and included political freedom, human rights and self-respect among those choices.
That changes the relationship between democracy and development. Development cannot be reduced to infrastructure, however necessary infrastructure is. A new bridge expands human possibilities. So does a functioning school, reliable electricity or a properly equipped hospital. But the ability to question a minister, publish an investigation, organise politically, challenge misuse of public money and choose between genuine political alternatives also expands what people are able to do.
Political freedom, under this view, is not necessarily a reward that citizens must wait to receive once their country becomes rich. It forms part of development itself.
Cameroon’s own development plans recognise a connection between the two. Its Vision 2035 ambition is for the country to become an “emerging, democratic and united country in its diversity”. Economic progress and democratic governance are therefore presented, at least in principle, as parts of the same national destination.
The country nevertheless faces substantial development pressures. The World Bank has said that roughly four in ten Cameroonians live below the national poverty line and that poverty reduction has stagnated over two decades. It has also reported economic growth significantly below the targets set in the country’s development strategy, while citing infrastructure deficits, governance problems, low investment and internal conflict among the constraints.
Those indicators do not determine whether Cameroon is democratic or undemocratic. They do, however, make the democratic question harder.
If democracy means rule by the people, citizens should be able to question how development priorities are set, how public money is spent, why some projects receive funding while others do not, who benefits from state contracts and whether persistent failure eventually carries political consequences.
Development is partly about what governments deliver. Democracy is also about whether citizens have meaningful influence over what governments choose to deliver, how they deliver it and who is held responsible when they fail.
Cameroon’s constitutional promise
Cameroon does not constitutionally describe itself as authoritarian. The opposite is true. The Constitution calls the country a decentralised unitary state that is “democratic and social”, while Article 2 says national sovereignty belongs to the Cameroonian people and that authorities responsible for managing the state derive their powers from the people through direct or indirect universal suffrage.
These are not insignificant words. They establish the citizen, at least in constitutional theory, as the source of political authority.
But they also create a standard against which political practice can be judged.
Cameroon held its latest presidential election on 12 October 2025. The Constitutional Council declared President Paul Biya the winner with 53.66 per cent of valid votes, against 35.19 per cent for his closest challenger, Issa Tchiroma Bakary. Official figures put turnout at 57.76 per cent. Biya, who has been president since 1982, thereby secured another seven-year term.
The government defended the process. In an official statement after the results, the Ministry of Territorial Administration described the election as generally fair and peaceful and rejected opposition accusations surrounding the outcome.
Tchiroma rejected the official result and maintained that he had won. Protests followed in several parts of the country. The United Nations Secretary-General later expressed concern about post-election violence and reports of excessive force, deplored deaths and injuries involving protesters and security personnel, and called for a thorough and impartial investigation.
The election therefore settled the constitutional and legal question of who was officially declared the winner. It did not settle the wider democratic question of how fully political sovereignty resides with the citizen.
That question becomes more important when placed against the structure of presidential power in Cameroon. Presidential term limits were removed in 2008. The Constitution now provides for a seven-year mandate and allows the president to stand again without the previous two-term restriction.
Paul Biya has governed since November 1982. An entire generation of Cameroonians has therefore gone from childhood into middle age without experiencing a transfer of presidential power.
Longevity in office does not, by itself, prove that democracy is absent. If citizens repeatedly and freely choose the same leader in a genuinely competitive environment, political continuity can itself be democratic. The stronger test is whether change remains realistically possible.
That means examining whether an incumbent can genuinely lose, whether opposition parties can organise freely enough to win, whether electoral institutions administer competition impartially, whether citizens can criticise leaders without fear, whether journalists can investigate powerful officials and whether courts can rule independently in politically sensitive cases. It also means asking whether peaceful protest is protected and whether citizens have enough reliable information to make meaningful choices.
Most importantly, democratic power must continue to exist between elections. If large numbers of citizens reject a policy, can they force political leaders to reconsider? If a local community opposes a decision imposed from the centre, what mechanisms exist for that community to be heard? If parliament, the courts, the media or civil society raise serious questions about executive action, are those questions capable of producing consequences?
These questions take democracy beyond the existence of ballot papers.
International assessments continue to raise concerns about Cameroon on several of these points. Freedom House’s 2026 assessment categorises the country as “Not Free”, citing restrictions affecting political competition, expression, civil society and the rule of law. Reporters Without Borders also describes the environment for journalism in Cameroon as difficult and places the country low in its global press-freedom ranking.
These are external assessments, not judicial determinations, and the Cameroonian government has repeatedly defended its democratic credentials and electoral processes. But such assessments remain relevant because they measure aspects of democracy that extend beyond whether elections formally take place.
So who actually rules?
The argument eventually brings Cameroon back to the oldest definition of democracy: demos and kratos, the people and power.
The central question is therefore not simply whether the state permits citizens to vote. It is whether citizens continue to possess meaningful political power once the election is over.
That power can be tested in ordinary life. A market trader in Bamenda should have some route through which public decisions affecting her livelihood can be challenged. A teacher in Bertoua should be able to demand answers about a failing public service without needing access to political patrons. Residents of Maroua should be able to know how money allocated to their community is being spent. A journalist in Douala should be able to investigate the conduct of a minister without political interference. People in Buea should be able to debate the constitutional future of their country without violence becoming the language through which disagreement is settled.
The same democratic protection must apply regardless of political allegiance. Citizens who support the government should be able to organise freely, and so should those who oppose it. Democracy becomes difficult to defend if political rights exist comfortably for one group but precariously for another.
This is where the UN’s 2026 focus on deliberative democracy becomes particularly relevant to Cameroon. Deliberative democracy argues that citizenship should involve participation before decisions are finalised, rather than limiting public involvement to choosing representatives every few years.
Citizens’ assemblies, public hearings, town halls, participatory local government and other forms of consultation can give ordinary people a voice in the period between elections. In a country whose Constitution already describes it as decentralised, that raises a practical question about how much real political and financial authority exists at local level and how much citizens can influence decisions closest to them.
Voting answers one important question: who should govern? Deliberative democracy raises another: how should those who govern continue listening to the people from whom their authority came?
The philosophers offer different warnings.
Plato reminds democracies that popular opinion can be manipulated and that elections do not automatically produce competent government. Aristotle asks whether those in office govern for the common benefit or largely for themselves. Hobbes reminds societies that a state incapable of providing security and maintaining order can descend into instability. Locke insists that the need for order does not give government unlimited ownership over the governed, because legitimate authority still depends on consent and the protection of rights.
Modern democracy tries to hold those ideas together. It requires a state strong enough to govern but constrained enough to remain accountable. It needs majority rule while protecting rights that majorities cannot casually remove. It needs elections, while recognising that elections lose much of their meaning when competition, information, participation and accountability are weak.
Above all, democracy requires citizens to possess political power in practice rather than simply being told in constitutional language that power belongs to them.
The United Nations General Assembly created the International Day of Democracy in 2007 and described democracy as a universal value based on the freely expressed will of people to determine their political, economic, social and cultural systems and on their full participation in all aspects of life. The same resolution recognised that there is no single model of democracy.
That point matters for Cameroon. The country does not have to reproduce British, American, French or any other democratic system. Its institutions can reflect its own history, languages, cultures, political structure and social realities.
But cultural difference does not remove the central question contained within democracy itself: where does power ultimately reside?
If sovereignty genuinely belongs to the Cameroonian people, as Article 2 of the Constitution states, that sovereignty must amount to more than a legal phrase. It should give ordinary citizens meaningful ways to choose those who govern, scrutinise their decisions, organise around alternatives, criticise failures, participate in public affairs and, when they decide it is necessary, peacefully replace those exercising power in their name.
That is why the most useful question on International Day of Democracy may not be whether Cameroon can simply be labelled democratic or undemocratic. Political systems are more complicated than a single label.
The more revealing question is how much power an ordinary Cameroonian actually possesses over the decisions that shape his or her life, and whether that power continues after the ballot box closes.