The Head of State and the Politics of Constitutional Amendment in Francophone Africa: The Case of Senegal

The paper is devoted to the role of the head of state in initiating and implementing constitutional reforms in Senegal. This country can legitimately be regarded as one of the few examples of a successful democratization process in Africa, as evidenced, among other things, by lack of military coup d’états leading to the loss of power by civilian governments, as well as by two alternations of power from 2000-2001 and 2012, after which main opposition parties (led respectively by Abdoulaye Wade and Macky Sall) gained presidency and the majority of parliamentary seats. Both these fundamental political transformations generated important constitutional changes (eg. the adoption of the current constitution of 2001 or constitutional modifications of 2016) that have influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, the position of presidency in the Senegalese semi-presidential system of government. The author analyzes their significance for the functioning of contemporary political institutions in the broader context set by the politics of constitutional amendment, which was also conducted by two previous presidents of this country (Léopold Sédar Senghor, Abdou Diouf). The main goal of the paper is to examine to what extent the constitutional modifications introduced before and after the adoption of the 2001 constitution were to contribute to the beginning or consolidation of pro-democratic trends, and in which they were to strengthen the position of an incumbent president himself and lead to a political imbalance signifying regress in the said democratization process (an example of the latter may be some controversies around presidential term limits, as well as the creation – under Senegalese semi-presidentialism – of the office of the vice-president, which could be associated with a failed – as it finally turned out – attempt to ensure presidential succession by handing over the presidency within the president’s family). The author argues that the constitutional modifications adopted over the years have often gone in two opposite directions influencing the efficiency and durability of Senegalese institutional structures.