Why have attempts to repeal presidential term limits succeeded in some African countries and failed in others? What measures and pressures were required to demand and enforce presidential term limits compliance? The lack of precise and effective strategy to enforce term limits compliance seems to expose term limits to incipient repeals by incumbent presidents in Africa. My field observation in various African democracies shows that the parliament, the judiciary, democracy movements and the international community, though occasionally influential, have not played a decisive role in enforcing term limits compliance in Africa. Their roles rather appear to be dependent on elite dissidence, resistance, sponsorship and sometimes manipulation. My fieldwork in Zambia, Nigeria and Malawi reveals the critical influence and role of political elites in mobilizing and converging pressures to demand and enforce compliance. These cases further find that a compliance outcome becomes possible if individual political elites choose to resist any incumbent president seeking to repeal term limits. The ability of dissenting elites to provide an alternative platform for the convergence of other pressures raise the cost of repression for presidents and force them to compliance. Since othe pressures achor around elite dissidence, the position of some political elites either for or against the removal of term limits explains why some presidents have succeeded and why others failed in repealing term limits in Africa.

Democratization is a fragile process, easily reversed when and where its advance is most recent. African countries present particular challenges to democratization, given generally low levels of economic and social development, often combined with ethnic and cultural fractionalization. Debates about democratization have not been sufficiently developed with the African context in mind. In particular, assessment of the effects of presidential systems on democratization has not been sensitively applied to African cases where most regimes are Presidential. Moreover, a particular feature of African democracy, the dominant party within a multi-party system, also raises questions that have not been so pertinent elsewhere. Debates about the merits and demerits of electoral system options for democratic consolidation also require more empirical analysis in Africa. This study is based on the assumption that debates about the relationship between political institutions and democratization in Africa can only be advanced by recognition of the interactions that can be identified between the institutions of presidential, parliamentary and party systems, particularly within the dynamics of one-party dominance. Empirical leverage takes advantage of an important case with a parliamentary system and proportional representation: South Africa. The most appropriate comparator from the Presidential and majoritarian camp is Nigeria. These are the two largest and most important states in Africa, sharing a British colonial heritage and a federal system and each dominated by a single party for about two decades. The thesis conceptualizes democratization in terms of legitimation and institutionalization. Legitimation focuses on the micro-level: the quality of elections and the voting process, the presence or absence of government-sponsored violence or coercion, the extent of public confidence in politicians and public support for democratic principles and practices. Institutionalization is focused at the macro-level: elite compliance to constitutional norms, political accountability, and the absence of violent intervention against the state, by the military or other internal forces. The thesis finds that leadership transitions within the parties take place with more accountability in South Africa than Nigeria. While corruption is a problem in both countries, it is more pervasive and there are more incentives to generate it in Nigeria due to a combination of the candidate-centred nature of politics, the country’s great dependence on oil exports, and its lower accountability in leadership transitions. Mechanisms to promote consensus politics differ in both countries and within-party arrangements call into question an assumption that one-party government is necessarily majoritarian. Although the process of legitimation has advanced well in both countries, they share many problems associated with lack of development. The main threat to democracy in Nigeria lies partly in the mutual distrust occasioned by the unsettled issues of ‘power rotation’, ‘resource sharing’ as well as the widening economic disparity between regional blocs of the principally Islamic North and largely Christian South with possible central state responses that might increase rather than reduce the conflicts, while in South Africa the threat lies in the high level of inequality between the white and black communities. Radical political action to address this inequality might increase the already high level of violence in the country. Such tension could ultimately lead to the break-up of the ANC, but an end to dominant-party politics in South Africa could as well destabilise rather than consolidate democracy. Similarly, in Nigeria, a break-up of the PDP, which has been nearly made possible due to a crisis of confidence in an ‘elite consensus’ on power rotation among the regional blocs, could as well constitute a threat to democratic consolidation and national integration.

Après une analyse sémantique de la notion de Bonne Gouvernance, afin d'éclairer le sens de cette notion assez complexe, notion dont les origines remontent à une époque assez lointaine. Ce principe, qui s'est construit à travers les siècles, a d'abord concerné le monde des entreprises, avant d'envahir le champ de la politique, dans la quête de la meilleure gestion des affaires publiques, afin de satisfaire au mieux les affaires de l'Etat. En tant que thérapie, mise en place par les institutions internationales, afin de sortir les Etats africains, souvent corrompus, du tunnel de la misère et du sous-développement, elle s'est révélée inefficace. La bonne gouvernance dans sa mise en place, en Afrique et en Côte d'ivoire, fait face à un monde où le jeu politique est influencé par des liens claniques, familiaux, tribaux… qui mettent l'intérêt des groupes au dessus de l'intérêt général, engendrant une déliquescence de l'Etat, avec une absence d'éthique , de responsabilité , de clarté dans la prise de décision, dans des sociétés où la quête de la démocratie est marquée du sceau de la démagogie, avec une prime accordée à l'opacité dans la gestion des affaires publiques. Cette quête d'efficacité est contrebalancée par le poids des traditions et des pratiques inhérentes au monde du tiers-monde, choses qui rendent la gestion des affaires publiques difficilement efficace. Cependant, le champ politique n'échappe pas à l'emprise du monde extérieur, qui influence les prises de décisions, avec des acteurs publics souvent soumis aux injonctions de ce monde capitaliste, dans un monde marqué du sceau de la globalisation et de la mondialisation. / After a semantic analysis of the notion of Good Governance, to light the sense of this complex notion, notion the origins of which go back up to a rather distant time. This principle, which built itself through centuries, concerned at first the world of companies, before invading the field of the politics, in the quest of the best management of the public affairs, to satisfy at best the affairs of the State. As therapy, organized by the international institutions, to bring out the African states, often corrupted States, of the tunnel of the poverty and the underdevelopment, it showed itself ineffective. The good governance in its implementation, in Africa and in Ivory Coast, faces a world where the political game set, is influenced by clan, family, tribal links, which put the interest of the groups above the general interest, engendering a decay of the State, with an absence of ethics, responsibility of brightness in the decision-making, in the societies where the quest of the democracy is marked with the seal of the demagoguery, with a premium granted to the opacity in the management of the public affairs. This quest of efficiency is counterbalanced by the weight of the traditions and the practices inherent to the world of the Third World, the things which return the with difficulty effective management of the public affairs. However, the political arena does not escape the influence of the outside world, which influences decision-making, with public actors often subjected to the orders of this capitalist world, in a world marked with the seal of the globalization and with the globalization.

The dominant construction of democracy on a global scale is in the liberal tradition. It is evident in the criteria which constitute democratic barometers in organisations like Freedom House, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation. This study seeks to provide a third-order analysis of liberal democratic consolidation theory in order to highlight that its theoretical discourse and underlying structure is not necessarily compatible with the cultural values of the non-Western world using a critical discourse analysis. Democratic consolidation in the non-Western world may not necessarily mirror the theoretical model of liberal democratic consolidation. Given the hegemonic position of liberal democracy‘s criteria and its dominant discourse and role as a barometer of democracy, this study focuses on democratic consolidation in this tradition. It is primarily due to the perceived inability of non-Western states to consolidate their democracies in the liberal democratic tradition and by default, construct thriving liberal democracies. Present theories of liberal democratic consolidation theory deal with governmental, political organisational and societal aspects of liberal democracy. The level of change these theories propagate is all encompassing, and consequently one cannot merely study one aspect of liberal democratic consolidation theory, but needs to analyse the paradigm as a whole in order to explore its metatheoretical structure. It is in this light that the study conducts an appraisal of liberal democratic consolidation theory. The critique developed in this study is aimed at addressing a disparity that currently exists within contemporary consolidation of liberal democracy theory, namely a failure of producers of liberal democratic discourse to understand the philosophical and ideological undertone of liberal democratic consolidation‘s understructure. The study does not seek to conceptualise alternative criteria of democratic consolidation in the non-Western context, but focuses on liberal democratic consolidation theory, to demonstrate that its criteria is not necessarily an appropriate barometer to measure democracy in the non-Western world. / Political Sciences / D.Litt. et Phil. (African Politics)

The dominant construction of democracy on a global scale is in the liberal tradition. It is evident in the criteria which constitute democratic barometers in organisations like Freedom House, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation. This study seeks to provide a third-order analysis of liberal democratic consolidation theory in order to highlight that its theoretical discourse and underlying structure is not necessarily compatible with the cultural values of the non-Western world using a critical discourse analysis. Democratic consolidation in the non-Western world may not necessarily mirror the theoretical model of liberal democratic consolidation. Given the hegemonic position of liberal democracy‘s criteria and its dominant discourse and role as a barometer of democracy, this study focuses on democratic consolidation in this tradition. It is primarily due to the perceived inability of non-Western states to consolidate their democracies in the liberal democratic tradition and by default, construct thriving liberal democracies. Present theories of liberal democratic consolidation theory deal with governmental, political organisational and societal aspects of liberal democracy. The level of change these theories propagate is all encompassing, and consequently one cannot merely study one aspect of liberal democratic consolidation theory, but needs to analyse the paradigm as a whole in order to explore its metatheoretical structure. It is in this light that the study conducts an appraisal of liberal democratic consolidation theory. The critique developed in this study is aimed at addressing a disparity that currently exists within contemporary consolidation of liberal democracy theory, namely a failure of producers of liberal democratic discourse to understand the philosophical and ideological undertone of liberal democratic consolidation‘s understructure. The study does not seek to conceptualise alternative criteria of democratic consolidation in the non-Western context, but focuses on liberal democratic consolidation theory, to demonstrate that its criteria is not necessarily an appropriate barometer to measure democracy in the non-Western world. / Political Sciences / D.Litt. et Phil. (African Politics)