1st Edition

Democratization in Africa: Challenges and Prospects

Edited By Gordon Crawford, Gabrielle Lynch Copyright 2012
    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    It is two decades since the ‘third wave’ of democratization began to roll across sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1990s. This book provides a very timely investigation into the progress and setbacks over that period, the challenges that remain and the prospects for future democratization in Africa.  It commences with an overall assessment of the (lack of) progress made from 1990 to 2010, exploring positive developments with reasons for caution. Based on original research, subsequent contributions examine various themes through country case-studies, inclusive of: the routinisation of elections, accompanied by democratic rollback and the rise of hybrid regimes; the tenacity of presidential powers; the dilemmas of power-sharing; ethnic voting and rise of a violent politics of belonging; the role of ‘donors’ and the ambiguities of ‘democracy promotion’. Overall, the book concludes that steps forward remain greater than reversals and that typically, though not universally, sub-Saharan African countries are more democratic today than in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, the book also calls for more meaningful processes of democratization that aim not only at securing civil and political rights, but also socio-economic rights and the physical security of African citizens.

    This book was originally published as a special issue of Democratization

    Chapter 1. Democratization in Africa 1990–2010: an assessment Gabrielle Lynch and Gordon Crawford, University of Leeds

    Chapter 2. The abrogation of the electorate: an emergent African phenomenon Wale Adebanwi and Ebenezer Obadare

    Chapter 3. The internal dynamics of power-sharing in Africa Nic Cheeseman, Oxford University

    Chapter 4. Taking back our democracy? The trials and travails of Nigerian elections since 1999 Cyril Obi

    Chapter 5. An autocrat’s toolkit: adaptation and manipulation in ‘democratic’ Cameroon Ericka A. Albaugh

    Chapter 6. Can democratization undermine democracy? Economic and political reform in Uganda Michael F. Keating

    Chapter 7. Democracy promotion in Africa: the institutional context Oda van Cranenburgh

    Chapter 8. Ethnicity and party preference in sub-Saharan Africa Matthias Basedau, Gero Erdmann, Jann Lay & Alexander Stroh

    Chapter 9. Democracy, identity and the politics of exclusion in post-genocide Rwanda: the case of the Batwa Danielle Beswick

    Chapter 10. ‘Well, what can you expect?’: donor officials’ apologetics for hybrid regimes in Africa Stephen Brown

    Chapter 11. Democratic crisis or crisis of confidence? What local perceptual lenses
    tell us about Madagascar’s 2009 political crisis Lauren Leigh Hinthorne, University of York

    Biography

    Gordon Crawford is Professor of Development Politics at the School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, UK.

    Gabrielle Lynch is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick.