ABSTRACT
The wave of democratization that swept through sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1990s brought about substantial political change (Lindberg 2006; Bratton and van de Walle 1997). Within a decade of independence, all but a small handful of African states had evolved into military and police dictatorships. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Botswana and Mauritius were the only countries in the region to hold regular competitive multi-party elections, and incumbent governments lost power only in the latter. The other African states generally either suspended all political party activity, or promoted a single party, closely tied to the state. Elections were neither regularly convened nor competitive. Most allowed only a single party to compete and constituted little more than participatory rituals. This all changed with the wave of democratization in the early 1990s, and by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, most sub-Saharan African countries had held multiple multi-party elections. Most now formally recognize the legitimacy of various political and civil rights, even if the exercise of competitive politics often falls far short of democratic ideals, and even if the same rights constitutions promised on paper are rarely practised with much conviction or consistency. Between 1989 and 2010, some 43 different African countries held 164 multi-party legislative elections and 132 presidential elections. Although incumbents won most of these elections, they did result in a significant number of power alternations, and opposition parties enjoyed ample representation in a range of legislatures.
