The United Nations did superb work in helping Mozambique to end its long-festering civil war and start down the path to recovery, but those gains could slip away amid ominous conditions of partisan polarization, excessive political centralization, and a winner-takes-everything electoral system.
About the Author
Jeremy M. Weinstein is associate professor of political science and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. From 2009 to 2011, he served on the staff of the U.S. National Security Council.
After a failed democratic experiment in 1993-96 and two military coups, Niger successfully held free and fair elections in 1999. The next couple of years will be crucial to the…
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…
African politics is often characterized as a realm of “informality,” but formal rules and institutions actually loom large, especially with regard to overweening executive power and the reforms that may…
