Introduction

Throughout its post-independence history, Sudan has failed to develop any sustainable democratic system. There were three brief episodes in which the country experienced the Westminster type of electoral politics but all these failed to address the country's political instability, and to bring lasting change. It is also highly unlikely that re-adoption of the Westminster type of democratic model would produce different results. This chapter argues that one key factor for the failure of the past democratization experiments relates to the incompatibility between the Westminster model of democracy on one hand and the nature of the Sudanese political structure on the other. The Sudanese state has been dominated by powerful clientele patronage networks that caused a serious diversion of the state's resources to their own interests, contaminated democratic political competition, and converted the democratic political game to their own benefits. As a result, serious deficiency in the state's caring system becomes one of the most important characteristics of the post-independence politics.

Based on a gender-neutral analytical perspective of the feminist caring ethics, this chapter attempts to advance a new democratic approach based on new caring relations and caring patronage networks. The chapter approaches the problem through three major parts. The first part clarifies the nature of the current Sudanese clientele networks and how this pattern is responsible for producing a distorted version of democracy. The failure of the Westminster model of democracy and the current clientele networks and the types of Sudanese clients is discussed in detail in the first part. The second part of the chapter discusses the centrality of the concept of caring ethics to the Sudanese context and demonstrates how the Sudanese clientelistic nature of the state has created a serious state-based caring deficiency that ultimately promote poverty and political unrest. The third part discusses why a paradigm shift is required for the cultivation of a new caring democratic system capable of addressing the state's care deficiency and thereby introducing new social and economic realities.

The Sudanese clientele state: origin and impacts on democracy

Indigenous kingdoms, tribes and decentralized forms of political organizations, rather than a centralized state, characterized the pre-colonial history of Sudan. For several centuries, life was based on traditions, norms and customs.