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Zimbabwe's Long Agony
- Journal of Democracy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 19, Number 4, October 2008
- pp. 41-55
- 10.1353/jod.0.0024
- Article
- Additional Information
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What mechanisms have ensured ZANU-PF’s enduring rule? This article identifies five: an ideological belief in a right to rule in perpetuity, a party machinery that penetrates the organs of state, a corrupted economy vested in the hands of party loyalists, an institutionalized role in policy making for military commanders, and a heavy reliance on violence, increasingly outsourced to auxiliary forces. Because the ZANU-PF regime—a militarized form of electoral authoritarianism—will outlast the Robert Mugabe’s political career or biological lifespan, it will affect the nature of any political transition and future prospects for democracy in Zimbabwe.