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.
The early 1990s saw a wave of competitive multiparty elections in Africa. These contests can be described as "founding" elections in the sense that they marked for various countries a…