Does democracy grow unconsciously? By Zakaria Nimr – Sudan
Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid. February 20/2026
Does democracy grow unconsciously?
By Zakaria Nimr – Sudan
Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid. February 20/2026
Democracy is not a neutral political system or an administrative technique that is imported and applied by a supreme decision. Still, it is rather the fruit of a long intellectual accumulation, inseparable from the history of society or the level of consciousness of its members. Therefore, it grows with thought, retreats with its decline, and remains relative at its best, because it is the daughter of its context and not a replica of the experiences of others. The significant problem in our societies is not the absence of democracy as a text or slogan, but the absence of the intellectual conditions that make it possible. We demand democracy while we have not yet accomplished the question of the free individual, and we have not freed the citizen from fear, nor from the false sanctity of the leader, nor from the power of the tribe, the party, and the closed ideology. In such a reality, democracy transforms from an instrument of liberation to a tool for reproducing the very structures it claimed to have transcended.
Elections, as one of the most critical mechanisms of democracy, are not a guarantee in themselves. It may be an exercise in freedom, and it may be an exercise in submission, depending on the consciousness that precedes and accompanies it. When a citizen enters the ballot box under a domination mentality, fear of the other, or pre-state loyalty, his voice does not express his individual will but rather a social structure that has not yet disintegrated. Elections become a form without content, and a meaningless number. Training citizens to practice democracy does not begin on the day of voting; it begins many years before, in school, in the family, in the media, and in the public sphere. It starts when the child is allowed to ask, the student is allowed to disagree, and the citizen is allowed to criticize without betraying or suppressing. Democracy, in essence, is a culture of asking before it is a culture of choice, which is the ethics of acknowledging the other before it is a competition for power.
Democracy grows intellectually when dissent is transformed from a threat to a value, from a cause of conflict into a condition for progress. But it does not thrive in environments where rational debate is absent, replaced by incitement, and politics is reduced to a clash of identities rather than a competition of programs. In this case, the electoral vote becomes an extension of anger or nervousness, rather than an expression of conscious conviction. Nor does the relativism of democracy mean justifying its failure or indefinitely postponing it, but rather acknowledging that cloning ready-made models is a dangerous illusion. Democracy in a society that has not resolved its relationship with violence, with sacred power, or with the concept of citizenship, will remain fragile and reversible. Building democracy requires intellectual courage to confront traditional structures that feed on ignorance and fear.
What is more dangerous than the absence of democracy is the claim that it exists. Formal democracy gives authoritarianism legitimacy, numbs public consciousness, and creates the illusion of participation while the real decision is made elsewhere. In such a context, citizens are asked to vote, not think, and to choose between different faces of the same authority. Democracy, in its most profound sense, is not only the rule of the majority, but the protection of the minority, the guarantee of rights, and the linking of power to accountability. It cannot be straightened out without a citizen who sees the state as a framework of rights rather than a booty, and in politics, a public service that is not a path to wealth or domination. This type of citizen is not made by laws alone, but by a long education on freedom and responsibility.
The real question is not when to hold elections, but how to rebuild society’s political mind. How do we move from a culture of dependency to a culture of participation, from fear to trust, from nervousness to citizenship? Only then will the elections become the culmination of an intellectual and moral process, not a periodic play that is repeated every few years.
Democracy is not imposed, it is not granted, it is built. It is built slowly, with mistakes, and with sometimes painful but necessary intellectual struggles. Any attempt to overtake or shorten this path will only lead to a fragile democracy, which collapses at the first real test. Democracy, before it is a ballot box, is a free mind. When the mind is freed, the box becomes a tool, not a miracle.
