This book focuses on the politics of democratization in Africa,
especially the strategic choices of the political elite, both
incumbent and opposition within the context of transition politics.
The decade 1990- 2000 saw a total of 78 top leadership elections
involving 43 of the 48 sub-Saharan African countries. Of these
elections, only 27% led to regime change. Yet even where regime
change occurred, authoritarianism persisted. The objective of the
book is to analyze and explain this dual paradox of limited change
of regime and persistent authoritarianism in the face of
democratization. Its central thesis is that this eventuality is a
function of the strategic environment of political engagement,
which was not reshaped fundamentally to enable the emergence of a
new mode of politics. Whereas the book focuses on Kenya and Zambia,
it draws examples from a cross-section of African countries and its
conclusions are applicable to most African countries and other
democratizing countries across the world. The significance of the
book is that it eschews country-specific analysis and employs the
comparative approach in examining the social struggles for
democracy in Africa. Its treatment of the rise of authoritarianism
and the democratic counter-forces as well as the juxtaposition of
"demo-pessimists" and "demoptimists" in Africanist scholarship is
particularly innovative and cogently illuminating.
General
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