Tanzania’s Autocratic Reform-Washing

Issue Date July 2025
Volume 36
Issue 3
Page Numbers 79–81
file Print
arrow-down-thin Download from Project MUSE
external View Citation

Read the full essay here.

Tanzanian president Samia Suluhu Hassan has been celebrated as a democratic reformer, but her goal increasingly appears to be to deliver not reform but the performance of reform. Sustaining that performance, while forestalling actual reform, is Hassan’s new strategy of regime survival. So far, it has delivered. Hassan has won approbation while dampening criticism and muddling coverage. She has done so by 1) using a strategy of promise, process, and delay to hold her true motivations in suspense, and 2) adopting a “good governance” style which contrasts with that of her predecessor, John Magufuli (1959–2021). However, beneath that performance, electoral manipulation has returned and repression has sharpened. Hassan no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt.

About the Authors

Dan Paget

Dan Paget is assistant professor of politics at the University of Sussex.

View all work by Dan Paget

Aikande Clement Kwayu

Aikande Clement Kwayu is an analyst of Tanzanian politics, with publications in Party Politics and Commonwealth and Comparative Politics.

View all work by Aikande Clement Kwayu

Image Credit: AFP via Getty Images