Following a military coup in 1999 and flawed and violence-ridden elections in 2000, democracy in Côte d’Ivoire faces an uphill battle against the forces of xenophobia and ethnic chauvinism.
About the Author
Jeanne Maddox Toungara is professor of history at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she teaches courses on Africa and the African diaspora. Her research interests include political culture, gender, and state formation in modern Africa. She lived in Côte d’Ivoire for 15 years and is completing a book-length manuscript about a nineteenth-century kingdom founded in its northwestern region.
Data from Africa show that repeated elections, regardless of their relative freeness or fairness,appear to have a positive impact on the growth of civil liberties and democratic values.
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.
