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.
There is a troubling tension around “people power” in Africa today: African social movements are among the most successful at ousting autocrats. But the continent’s entrenched antidemocratic institutions leave these…
