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.”
Across East-Central Europe, the political center ground has long been characterized by the uneasy cohabitation of liberal and illiberal norms, but the latter have been gradually overpowering the former.
Fifteen years after the wave of democratization crested in Africa, the region still grapples with an economic malaise that is disappointing popular expectations and undermining the legitimacy of electoral regimes.