The election of Bassirou Diomaye Faye in March 2024 marked a turning point in Senegal’s political landscape. Yet two years into his mandate, the promise of a reinvigorated citizen power faces the risk of democratic fatigue. While the new president has emphasized the need for collective ownership of constitutional rules, certain institutional safeguards—such as direct citizen access to the Constitutional Court—remain absent, signaling a persistent disconnect between civic aspirations and their formal integration.
This article explores the complex trajectory of citizen power in Senegal, situating it within a broader dialogue between contemporary political philosophy, legal frameworks, and West African customary traditions. Drawing on thinkers like Pierre Rosanvallon, Cynthia Fleury, Achille Mbembe, and Souleymane Bachir Diagne, alongside Senegalese constitutional texts and deliberative practices such as the penc and the ethics of jom, kersa, ngor, and teranga, the reflection unfolds in two parts.
a historical and philosophical journey of citizenship
The first part reconstructs the genealogy of the citizen figure, moving from ancient Greek polis—where citizenship was rooted in active participation—to modern liberal democracy and Rosanvallon’s concept of counter-democracy. This genealogy reveals how citizen power has historically oscillated between inclusivity and elitism, participation and representation, trust and distrust in institutions. It then confronts this Western trajectory with African pre-colonial and post-colonial forms of political belonging, highlighting the vitality of deliberative assemblies like the penc (under the baobab tree) and the ethical grammar of Wolof virtues such as jom (honor), kersa (dignity and restraint), ngor (integrity), and teranga (hospitality). These traditions offer a conceptual reservoir for rethinking democracy not as a purely institutional construct, but as a lived ethical and relational practice.
Central to this analysis is the idea that the citizen is not merely a voter or a protester, but a subject capable of both individuation (Fleury) and collective vigilance (Rosanvallon). The article argues that the resilience of Senegalese democracy depends on the ability to articulate modern legal devices—such as participatory budgets, citizen petitions, and independent oversight bodies—with these ancestral ethical and deliberative grammars. Without this articulation, institutions remain hollow, and civic energy dissipates into disillusionment or populist resentment.
diagnosing the present: crisis and renewal of citizen power
The second part examines the current challenges facing citizen power in Senegal. Despite the historic 2024 election and the inclusive National Dialogues of 2024 and 2025, institutional innovations have fallen short. The most glaring example is the exclusion of direct citizen access to the Constitutional Court in the final draft of the constitutional reform, a measure that was recommended in the National Dialogue’s Recommendation 25 and included in the 2024 Programme Book of the “Diomaye Président” coalition. This omission not only denies citizens a crucial legal remedy but also signals a reluctance to institutionalize the people-as-judge figure that Rosanvallon identifies as essential to counter-democracy.
The article also analyzes the erosion of civic virtues such as jom, kersa, and ngor, which have historically structured public life and provided moral ballast to political institutions. While these virtues are often romanticized, they remain powerful cultural resources for fostering accountability, dialogue, and integrity in public life. The piece further highlights the need to revitalize local democracy through participatory tools—such as participatory budgets and citizen audits—that engage communities in co-managing public resources. Experiments in Senegalese municipalities and similar models from Porto Alegre (Brazil) and Kerala (India) demonstrate the feasibility of such approaches, provided they are adapted to local contexts and supported by strong legal and financial frameworks.
The text concludes with seven proposals for refounding citizen power in Senegal:
- Institutionalize direct citizen access to the Constitutional Court to allow individuals or groups to file constitutional complaints, ensuring that rights violations are not dependent on political mediation.
- Legally recognize traditional deliberative spaces such as the penc, gokh assemblies, and youth or women’s groups (mbootaay), making their input mandatory for certain municipal decisions (urban planning, resource management, social programs).
- Reform civic education to integrate the ethical grammar of Wolof virtues—jom, kersa, ngor, teranga, muñ, masla, sago—as dispositions to cultivate for democratic life, alongside universal philosophical and political traditions.
- Ensure independence and citizen accessibility of oversight bodies such as the Court of Auditors, the National Anti-Corruption Office (OFNAC), and the General Inspectorate of State. These institutions should be granted constitutional autonomy, publish regular reports, and allow direct citizen complaints through a unified digital platform.
- Adopt a charter for national dialogues to formalize procedures: transparent participant selection (including randomly selected citizens), clear rules of deliberation, mandatory public justification for any deviation between recommendations and final texts, and mechanisms for follow-up and accountability.
- Launch a policy of democratic care—inspired by Cynthia Fleury—to address the emotional and symbolic dimensions of citizenship. This includes truth and reconciliation initiatives, recognition of victims of political violence, and acknowledgment of plural memories (slavery, colonization, post-independence traumas).
- Revitalize decentralization through participatory budgets and citizen audits at the municipal level. These tools transform citizens from passive recipients of public services into co-managers of their collective future, fostering a culture of transparency and accountability.
learning from comparative experiences
The article draws lessons from other African and international contexts. South Africa’s 1996 Constitution, which allows direct citizen petitions to the Constitutional Court, and its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, demonstrate how legal and ethical innovations can lay the groundwork for a post-apartheid civic culture. Tunisia’s 2014 Constitution, born of an inclusive constituent assembly, shows the importance of sustained civic vigilance to prevent democratic backsliding. Conversely, the erosion of democratic gains in Benin following its 1990 National Conference underscores the fragility of institutional reforms without robust citizen oversight. In France, the Citizen Climate Convention (2019–2020) illustrated both the potential of deliberative democracy with randomly selected citizens and the challenges of translating its conclusions into policy.
The Senegalese case, the article argues, can benefit from these experiences without copying them. The goal is to build a model that integrates modern institutional devices, customary deliberative traditions, and an ethical grammar rooted in Senegalese culture. This hybrid approach is not naive: it acknowledges power dynamics, bureaucratic inertia, and economic constraints, while offering a normative horizon to guide political action and prevent the slide into cynicism or populism.
beyond formal institutions: the ethics of civic engagement
The article engages critically with potential objections. Some may argue that traditional virtues and deliberative practices are romanticized or exclude certain groups—an objection the authors take seriously. The aim is not to canonize the past but to identify living resources that can be critically appropriated, stripped of their exclusionary dimensions, and adapted to contemporary demands of equality and pluralism. Others may dismiss the relevance of customary ethics, arguing that only formal institutions matter. Yet institutions do not function in a cultural vacuum; they require a shared ethos. The ethical grammar of Wolof virtues—jom, kersa, ngor, teranga—shapes the public imagination of Senegalese citizens and cannot be ignored without weakening democratic life.
The piece also responds to the concern that relying on European thinkers like Rosanvallon and Fleury to analyze an African reality reproduces intellectual dependency. The authors embrace Souleymane Bachir Diagne’s concept of “lateral universality,” where tools from different traditions fertilize one another without hierarchy. Rosanvallon’s analysis of counter-democracy is invaluable for understanding Senegal’s civic mobilizations, but the Senegalese experience, in turn, enriches this theory by adding an ethical and deliberative depth absent in the French context. Finally, realists may dismiss these proposals as utopian. The authors counter that critical thought’s role is not to resign itself to the possible but to expand the field of the conceivable and orient action toward normative horizons. Without such horizons, realism risks becoming cynicism.
toward a plural and rigorous citizen power
The power of citizens in Senegal today is at a crossroads. The 2024 alternation rekindled a rare civic hope, and the National Dialogues signal a political will to refound democracy. Yet this will is being tested by critical decisions: Will direct citizen access to the Constitutional Court be inscribed in law? Will decentralization be endowed with the means to fulfill its ambitions? Will oversight bodies gain real independence? Will civic virtues be reappropriated as democratic resources, or remain confined to folklore? Will the resentment that drove change be channeled into constructive democratic energy, or harden into lasting cynicism?
The answers to these questions depend not only on policymakers but on citizens themselves—on those who, through jom, dare to speak in public despite risk; those who, through kersa, temper their indignation to make it audible; those who, through ngor, honor their commitments even when power tempts them; and those who, through masla, seek conciliation without abandoning justice. It is from this articulation between institutional rigor, deliberative richness, and ethical depth that a citizen power worthy of the challenges of the 21st century can emerge—not only in Senegal, but across the continent and beyond.
