I often look to Rwanda and think that is what most African countries need, a benevolent dictator. I know, I know we shouldn't be glorifying dictators. I have heard of abuses of power in Rwanda but I have also heard so many good things. In my home country it is mostly bad things. Rwandan streets are clean, they started manufacturing/assembling cell phones and a whole raft of other good things. So in short I think you are right, for some reason it seems difficult for the "good" politicians to get elected. When they do get elected they often don't last long.

That's what rational choice theorems like Arrow's show: dictatorship. Benevolent one is better. Game theory also shows the same: cooperation is better than the non-cooperative Nash equilibrium. In fact, both Arrow's theorem and Nash's equilibrium are proved to equivalent.

Once the independence movement is over, once the generation that got the independent dies out, don't expect any cooperation, devolving into "vote for me because the opposition party sucks".

Counterexample: Switzerland. "Independence" in 1291, so that generation has certainly died out. We still get "vote for me because all the opposition parties all suck" but at least we have more political parties (positioned over more than one dimension) than just, say, Aromat vs. Maggi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Charter_of_1291#/media...

(Note the seals, like for a papal bull, dangling from the document to make it official. When I first heard about "truck nuts", I was reminded of these documents.)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticized representative democracy because the latter is a form of slavery. People obey to the laws enacted by representatives without knowing the content. It isa voluntary servitude. Just because people voluntarily agree to slavery, such a voluntary slavery won't become democratic. That's how I look at Switzerland: directive democracy as against representative democracy that Rousseau criticized.

Switzerland is a small country. An 'anomaly' to Arrow's theorem, if one insists on it. So, one has to study Switzerland's democracy.