ABSTRACT
Following the reintroduction of multi-party politics in Africa in the early 1990s it is easy to assume that topics such as the one-party state and military rule are no longer relevant. After all, these were the subjects that Africanists studied in the 1980s when authoritarian rule was ubiquitous and there was little to celebrate. What relevance could such issues have for the era of democratization? In fact, the legacy of authoritarian rule continues to loom large on the continent. The prospects for long-term economic development and democratic consolidation are shaped by whether or not a country was a one-party state or a military regime, was governed by a benign ‘philosopher King’ or a unscrupulous dictator, or experienced relative stability or endemic conflict. Nationalism, one-party states, and military rule thus remain important topics because they help us better to understand both the past and the present.
