Review of Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective, by Michael Bratton and Nicolas Van de Walle.
About the Author
Joel D. Barkan is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Iowa and nonresident senior associate with the Africa program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author of the 2011 CSIS report “Kenya: Assessing Risks to Stability.”
Today, Africa south of the Sahara has a relatively small number of both democracies and full-blown dictatorships,along with a large number of hard-to-define regimes that fit neither category.
Once again, a reformist electoral victory has been followed by political setbacks. The key to understanding this paradoxical pattern lies in the unique theocratic constitutional structure of the Islamic Republic.
