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3 The Tribulations of a Successful Transition Institutional Dynamics and Elite Rivalry in Mali Leonardo A. Villalón and Abdourahmane Idrissa Of the cases discussed in this book, Mali is among the countries that have most frequently been identified as democratic success stories. In a broad study of politics in Francophone Africa, for example, Victor Le Vine (2004) has included Mali as one of the rare “unqualified examples of successful democratic transitions.” In many ways this qualification is well merited; based on a number of important dimensions , Mali’s decade under President Alpha Oumar Konaré (1992–2002) provides a model of political stability for the region. There are also significant limits, however, to the parameters of Mali’s successes. In September 2002, shortly after the presidential and legislative elections, the Malian daily newspaper Info-Matin published a series of articles under the banner headline , “Political Crisis and Institutional Vacuum: The Republic in Danger!” (Crise Politique et Vide Institutionnel: La République en Danger!). While certainly one can suspect a bit of hyperbole from this source, in fact the articles point to some very real, potential difficulties facing Malian democracy. This chapter both examines the significant successes of Mali’s transition and analyzes the dimensions of the country ’s tribulations. In particular, it examines how the institutional configuration that Mali adopted at the transition and how elite responses to the impact of these institutions created a troubling situation by the mid-1990s, and one which continues to bear the potential for future difficulties. Institutionally, it is useful to compare Mali’s democratic experiment to that of Niger (see chapter 2, this volume), a country with which it shares many common elements. At the time of their respective transitions in the early 1990s, both countries adopted a variant of the French semi-presidential system, including a direct presidential election requiring an absolute majority in two rounds. However, in 49 terms of the legislature, upon which a governmental majority must be based in each case, the countries adopted different electoral systems. In Niger, an electoral system of proportional representation had the effect of fragmenting the party system in the legislature, resulting in no clear majority for the president’s party and leading eventually to the stalemate and breakdown of the Nigerien Third Republic. In Mali, by contrast, the legislature was elected by a majoritarian, winner-takeall system in multimember districts. This system thus had the effect of magnifying the victory of the single largest party, and in the “founding elections” of 1992 it did just that, producing a very solid majority for the Alliance démocratique du Mali (ADEMA) party of President Konaré. Widely recognized as free and fair, these first elections of 1992 thus produced a relatively strong and capable government, confirming for many Mali’s early reputation as a “successful transition.” Taking the lesson from the elections, however, the Malian opposition also quickly realized just how difficult it could prove to dislodge this very dominant party once established, and by the time of the second elections of 1997 Malian opposition parties were loudly denouncing the system as unfair and undemocratic. The elections of 1997 were in fact plagued by enormous difficulties. After the first set of legislative elections was annulled by the Constitutional Court due to organizational complaints, the subsequent elections were all boycotted by the opposition , leaving ADEMA with the presidency and an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats. The Malian situation in 1997 thus could be (and was) compared unfavorably to that of Senegal at the same time, where a nominally “democratic ” system was built on institutional structures that ensured the seemingly perpetual dominance of one party.1 Importantly, and in sharp contrast to Mali’s image of success, it could be argued that in 1997 it did not in fact meet the basic criteria of many procedural definitions of democracy, including that proposed by Bratton and van de Walle, which requires competitive elections in which “all of the contestants accept the validity of election results” (1997, 13). Dark clouds thus loomed on the horizon as Mali approached the third elections of 2002. The constitutional limit on two presidential terms produced a number of aspirants to succeed President Konaré, as well as significant tensions within the ruling party. In the months preceding the elections two scenarios seemed possible: (1) If ADEMA could find a consensus presidential candidate without splintering the party, a continuation of its dominance was...

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