Andreas Mehler
Director, GIGA Institute of African Affairs
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Andreas Mehler
“Nic Cheeseman has embarked on a big adventure - to describe and analyse progress and setbacks of democratization processes on an entire continent, from Senegal to Kenya, from Mali to Zimbabwe. The result is an extremely rich study that follows some standard pathways, thereby doing justice to a multi-faceted body of research, that also digs deeper into largely neglected aspects meriting more attention, be it the 'democratic dividend' for Africa on the one hand, or the devastating effects on democracy of the widely used 'politics of fear' on the other. This book can serve as a compass in the bewildering complexity of Africa’s political landscape.” (from Amazon)
by Nic Cheeseman·You?
This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic Cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.