The Importance of Getting it Right From the Start or Why Electoral Democracies Do Not Last in Africa

The overview of regime trajectories in Africa presented by Bogaards (2013) in the latest issue of the Journal of Democracy not only shows that Lindberg's expectation of democratization through repeated multi-party elections is wrong, it also demonstrates the worrying fragility of electoral democracies in Africa. Of the nine cases that started out as minimal democracies, five regressed into electoral authoritarianism and two broke down because of military coups. In only two cases did democracy survive, in none of the cases did it deepen. The poor record of electoral democracies stands in stark contrast to that of countries that started out as liberal democracies. Of these nine cases, six endured, one eroded into an electoral democracy, and two suffered military coups before bouncing back. Thus, any attempt to understand the causes of democratic regressions in Africa has to start with this startling pattern: Why are liberal democracies in Africa so much more resilient than electoral democracies? The answer is sought in the crucial role of founding elections and their transformative, lasting effect. The paper makes this point through a systematic comparison of the trajectories of electoral and liberal democracies in Africa. The conclusion is that instead of waiting for low quality democracy to improve, democrats should aim to get democracy right from the start.