Democracy and Elections in Africa

Preface

Preface This book contributes to both the comparative study of democratization and the understanding of African politics in several ways. Since Michael Bratton and Nicholas van de Walle’s (1997) influential Democratic Experiments in Africa there has been no comprehensive study of African elections and democratization. This work attempts to fill that gap. Its relatively positive message about the prospects of democracy in Africa, based on empirical analysis of observable election data on the continent up till June 2003, may surprise some scholars as well as policy makers. This volume focuses on the democratic qualities of elections, the core institution of liberal democracy, in newly democratizing countries. Developing an original data set with 16 variables on a universe of 232 African elections, this study examines the relationship between elections and democracy and provides evidence that elections improve the quality of a democracy. It refutes several established hypotheses in the field and shows that there is no general negative trend in either the frequency or the quality of elections in Africa and that elections are neither the end of a transition process towards democracy nor merely formal procedures. Rather, the analyses show that the inception of multiparty elections in a country instigates liberalization and that repetitive electoral activities create incentives for political actors by fostering the expansion and deepening of democratic qualities in the society. Complete breakdowns of new electoral regimes, when they occur, typically happen shortly after first elections; by the second or third elections, regimes are highly likely to survive. The study also shows that a sequence of elections not only contributes to increasing the democratic quality of a political regime but also broadens and deepens civil liberties in the society. Demonstrating this impact of repetitive elections as an “imported” institution over diverse contexts in Africa makes available a new understanding of the role of elections in democratization, as a set of factors with causal effects , and is an important theoretical contribution of this book. It makes a methodological contribution in its development of a panel-group time series and a new type of lagged time-series analysis as a way of assessing the effects of repetitive elections on the level of democracy in a society. In policy terms, the results support the international community’s current focus on elections as an effective means of positive change, and they refute the pessimism about the export of institutions. The larger theoretical argument made in this book—that repetitive elections, even when flawed, are one of the important causal factors in democratization— speaks to the resurfacing recognition among scholars that Rustow (1970) had an important point when he argued that democratic behavior produces democratic values and not the other way around. Adding another component to this thesis, this book shows how the creation of incentives and disincentives by new institutions such as elections fosters democratic behavior that in turn leads to a more democratic culture . In the preparation of this book, an invaluable source of inspiration, data, insights, and stimulation were the people I met and worked with in the Parliament of Ghana from 1999 to 2001, when I served as a consultant to Parliamentarians for Global Action ’s West African program. I had an office in the heart of the legislative structure and worked closely with staff, honorable members of Parliament, and ministers. Through daily dealings in Parliament, I was afforded an invaluable political anthropologist ’s view into one of Africa’s most successful emerging democracies. Many of the MPs were generous with interviews and explanations of the layers of politics in Ghana. The interaction with everyone from cleaners and drivers to MPs and the Speaker of the Parliament generated more professional and personal returns than any acknowledgment such as this could do justice. I am so grateful to so many, and I hesitate to identify particular individuals in fear of not expressing my equal appreciation of others. Special thanks, though, go to two who have become my Ghanaian parents: the Honorable Alhaji A. Salifu and the Honorable Theresa A. Tagoe. Numerous senior colleagues have also fed this project, especially at conferences where early versions of some parts of this book were presented, for example, African Studies Association annual meetings, International Studies Association annual conferences , European Consortium for Political Research’s workshops in 2000, American Political Science Association meetings, the conferences on democracy and democratization in Chile in 2002 and Uppsala in 2004 (thanks, Axel Hadenius, for inviting me), and the conference on electoral authoritarian regimes in Mexico in...