Growing democracy in africa elections, accountable governance, and political economy

Muna Ndulo Series EditorProfessor of Law; Elizabeth and Arthur Reich Director, Leo and Arvilla Berger International Legal Studies Program; Director, Institute for African Development, Co

Growing Democracy

in Africa

Muna Ndulo Series Editor

Professor of Law; Elizabeth and Arthur Reich Director, Leo and Arvilla Berger International Legal Studies Program; Director, Institute for African Development, Cornell University Christopher Barrett Stephen B and Janice G Ashley

Professor of Applied Economics and Management, International Professor

of Agriculture, Charles H Dyson School

of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University Sandra E Greene Professor of History, Cornell

University Margaret Grieco Professor of Transport and Society,

Napier University David R Lee International Professor, Charles H

Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University Alice Pell Professor of Animal Science, Cornell

University Rebecca Stoltzfus Professor of Nutritional Science,

Cornell University Erik Thorbecke H.E Babcock Professor of Economics

and Food Economics, Emeritus; Graduate School Professor, Cornell University

Nicolas van de Walle Maxwell M Upson Professor of

Government, Cornell University

Edited by Muna Ndulo and Mamoudou Gazibo

This book first published 2016

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Muna Ndulo, Mamoudou Gazibo and contributors All rights for this book reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

ISBN (10): 1-4438-8547-9

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8547-8

List of Tables and Figures viii

Acknowledgements ix

Contributors x

Acronyms xv

Introduction 1

Muna Ndulo and Mamoudou Gazibo Part 1: Institutions and Concepts of Governance Chapter One 10

Revisiting the Study of Governance Göran Hyden Chapter Two 28

Democratisation in Africa: Achievements and Agenda Mamoudou Gazibo Chapter Three 47

The Expansion of Judicial Power in Africa and Democratic Consolidation: Opportunities, Challenges and Future Prospects Charles M Fombad Part 2: Constitution-Making, Elections, and Conflict Settlement Chapter Four 86

Constitution-Making in Anglophone Africa: We the People? Coel Kirkby and Christina Murray Chapter Five 114 Measuring the Persuasive Effects of Electoral Campaigns in Africa

Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz

Chapter Six 132 Subnational Elections and Accountability: A Study of Political

Decentralization and Democratic Governance

Rachel Beatty Riedl and J Tyler Dickovick

Part 3: Local Governance and Citizenship

Chapter Seven 162 Slippery Citizenship: Nationalism, Democracy and the State in Africa

Jennifer Riggan

Chapter Eight 184 Federal Developments and Accountable Government Structures

in East Africa

Jan Amilcar Schmidt

Chapter Nine 199 Hereditary Rule in Democratic Africa: Reconciling Citizens and Chiefs

Kate Baldwin

Chapter Ten 219 Critical Reflections on Social Accountability and Local Government

Nicolas van de Walle

Bibliography 313 Index 356

Table 1.1 Shifts in the use of the governance concept 15

Table 1.2 Operationalizing the democratic governance agenda 26

Table 5.1: Aggregated Stated Presidential Preferences 124

Table 5.2: Percentage of Prior Period Supporters Retained 129

Table 6.1: Subnational Elections, Party Systems, and Accountability 142

Table 6.2: Decentralization and Histories of Political Instability 151

Table 9.1 Complaints Against Chiefs by Embeddedness 217

Figure 1.1 The theoretical origins of the governance concept 13

Figure 1.2 Anchoring-points for select key actors in the governance field 14

Figure 1.3 A framework for analysing democratic governance 25

Figure 2.1: Different Models of EMB 32

Figure 9.1 Map of Chiefdoms in Zambia 205

Figure 9.2 “Representativeness” of Chief by Selection Method 211

Figure 9.3 “Representativeness” of Chiefs by “Embeddedness” 215

This book is the result of a symposium titled Elections, Accountability,

and Democratic Governance in Africa held at Cornell University April

20–21, 2012 We are indebted to the organizers and sponsors of the symposium for bringing together the scholars who have contributed to this volume Organizers include the Institute for African Development at Cornell University, with collaboration from the Department of Political Science, University of Montreal; additional sponsorship came from Cornell University units including the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, the Berger International Legal Studies Program, the Department of Government, the Institute for Social Sciences, the Polson Institute for Global Development, and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies

The symposium and this book would not have been possible without the help of several people In particular, we would like to thank the staff from the Institute for African Development: Jackie Sayegh, Program Manager, who did an excellent job in organizing the conference, and Evangeline Ray, Publications Manager, who worked on the compilation of the book Without them this book would not have been possible Evangeline Ray deserves special thanks as she has been instrumental in bringing the book project to fruition She worked tirelessly to liaise with the authors and to painstakingly and diligently edit the manuscript for publication She remained unfailingly committed to the project throughout its preparation for publication In addition, we wish to thank student assistants Mihret Tamrat and Alyssa Findley for their extensive help with technical aspects of editing Thanks also to Cambridge Scholars Publishing/Cornell Institute for African Development Book Series for their assistance and for publishing the work

KATE BALDWIN is Assistant Professor of Political Science and a faculty fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University Her current research projects examine how community-level institutions interact with the national state to affect development, democracy, and conflict, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa Previously she was assistant professor of political science at the University of Florida She has held fellowships at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, Princeton University, and the Alexander Hamilton Center for the Study of Political Economy, New York University

JEFFREY CONROY-KRUTZ is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University He received his PhD in Political Science from Columbia University His research focuses on political decision-making, particularly surrounding elections, in sub-Saharan Africa He is currently working on a book project on mass media, access to political information, and electoral decision-making in Africa, and is also conducting research

on comparative electoral campaign behaviour in Africa He has conducted fieldwork for various research projects in Senegal and Uganda

CYRIL K DADDIEH is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director

of the Black World Studies Program at Miami University of Ohio He holds a PhD from Dalhousie University His teaching and research interests are in contemporary African politics, democratisation and elections in Africa, and international relations and foreign policies of African states He was the winner of the Hampton Grant for International Research in 2008 and a MacArthur Foundation Grant for research on contemporary African international relations in 1990–1991

J TYLERDICKOVICK is an Associate Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University He conducts research on African and Latin American politics, with a focus on decentralization, federalism, and local governance His current research projects include a manuscript on decentralization and local governance in Mali and an edited volume that compares processes of decentralization in ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa He has a PhD in Public Affairs from Princeton University

CHARLES M FOMBADis Professor and Head of the Department of Public Law at the University of Pretoria He holds an LL.B from Yaounde University and an LL.M and PhD from the University of London He has been a Senior Lecturer at the University of Yaounde, a professor at the University of Botswana, and Professor Honorarium, University of South Africa He has been a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Buea and Dschang in Cameroon His research interests include constitutional and international law, comparative law, and legal history He is a member of the South African Association of Legal Historians, the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa, the African Network for Constitutional Lawyers, and the International Association of Constitutional Law He is a member of the editorial boards of several

academic journals.

MAMOUDOU GAZIBO is a Professor of Political Science at the University

of Montreal (Canada) He holds a PhD in comparative politics from the University Montesquieu, Bordeaux, France His research relates to democratisation and institution-building in Africa, China-Africa relations, and theoretical/methodological issues in comparative politics He is the author, co-author, or editor of several books He has been a consultant for international organizations including the African Union and the International Organization of Francophone States He chaired the constitution drafting committee in Niger in 2010 and served as senior adviser to the Nigerien Prime Minister from 2010–11

ANTOINETTE HANDLEY is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto She holds an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Political Science from Princeton Her research interests include policy-making and economic reform in developing countries and the political economies of Africa (especially Southern and South Africa) and Latin America Recently, she has focused on business as a political actor, examining business interactions with the state at a macro-level From 1995–98 she served as Director of Studies at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, South Africa

GÖRAN HYDEN is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department

of Political Science at the University of Florida He holds degrees from Oxford and University of California and a PhD from the University of Lund He was Professor of Political Science at the University of Dar es Salaam, Senior Lecturer in Government at the University of Nairobi, and

Lecturer in Political Science at Makerere University, Uganda He has been President of the African Studies Association, Chairman of the board of the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, and an Associate of the Nordic African Institute In addition, he has been a consultant to international organizations including: UBICEF, UNDP, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, Economic Commission for Africa, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Norwegian Agency for Development (NORAD), and the Danish Development Agency (DANIDA) He has published widely on Africa

COELKIRKBY is a McKenzie Fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School Previously he was an Endeavour Fellow at the University of New South Wales He was awarded his PhD by the Faculty of Law, University

of Cambridge, in 2013 He has co-edited a book and published several articles and chapters in leading journals He has also assisted democratic transitions as a constitutional law advisor in Fiji and the Democratic Republic of Congo

CHRISTINA MURRAYis Professor of Constitutional and Human Rights Law at the University of Capetown, where she was director of UCT’s Law, Race, and Gender Research Unit from 1992 to 2004 In 2009–10 she served on the Kenyan Committee of Experts appointed to draft the new Kenyan Constitution In 1994–96 she served on a panel of seven experts advising the South African Constitutional Assembly in drafting South Africa’s Constitution Since then she has advised a number of South African government departments on the implementation of a new system

of multi-level government She has also done constitution work in Southern Sudan, Nepal, Zimbabwe and Pakistan

MUNANDULOis Professor of Law; Elizabeth and Arthur Reich Director, Leo and Arvilla Berger International Studies Program; and Director of the Institute for African Development at Cornell University He is also Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Cape Town, South Africa; and Extraordinary Professor of Law, Free State University He holds an LLB from the University of Zambia, LLM Harvard University and D Phil, Oxford University He is former Professor of Law and Dean of the Law School at the University of Zambia He served as Legal Officer for the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and as Senior Political Advisor to the Secretary General’s Special Representative to South Africa He was Senior Legal Advisor on UN missions to East Timor, Kosovo, and Afghanistan He has consulted on

constitution-making in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Somalia; he has also been a consultant for international organizations including the African Development Bank, where he helped to establish the African Legal Support Facility; the Economic Commission for Africa; the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance He is founder of the Southern African Institute for Public Policy and Research, and he is a member of the Advisory Committee, Human Rights Watch (Africa)

RACHEL RIEDL is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University She holds a PhD from Princeton University At Northwestern, she is also affiliated with the Program in Comparative-Historical Social Science (CHSS) and the Program of African Studies In addition she is a Faculty Associate at the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies and a Faculty Affiliate at the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

JENNIFER RIGGAN is an Associate Professor of International Studies in the Department of Historical and Political Studies at Arcadia University She

is a political anthropologist whose ethnographic research addresses a variety of issues including nationalism, citizenship, state formation, militarism, development, and education in Africa She has published on the changing relationship between citizenship and nationalism; the de-coupling of the nation and the state; and the relationship between militarization, education, and development Her research has been funded

by a Fulbright research fellowship, a Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship, and a Spencer/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship

JANAMILCAR SCHMIDTis a Research Fellow in the Africa Project at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law

He holds a Masters in European Law from the Universities of Hanover and Strathclyde/Glasgow He is a member of the German bar From 2001–06

he was a student assistant and research fellow at the Institute for Federal Studies at the University of Hannover At the Max Planck Institute, he is involved in capacity-building projects and workshops for Sudanese lawyers and the Independent Federal Constitutional Commission of Somalia He is also a constitutional advisor for the UNDP Somalia/UNPOS Joint Constitution Unit on the National Constitutional Process in Somalia

NICOLAS VAN DE WALLE is the Maxwell M Upson Professor of Government at Cornell University He holds a PhD from Princeton University He has published widely on democratisation issues as well as

on the politics of economic reform and on effectiveness of foreign aid, with special focus on Africa In addition, van de Walle has worked extensively as a consultant for a variety of international and multilateral organizations, including the World Bank, USAID, and UNDP From 2004

to 2008 he was director of Cornell’s Einaudi Center for International Studies and Associate Dean for International Studies, College of Arts and Sciences

AfDB African Development Bank

AMA Accra Metropolitan Authority

B-BBE Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment

B-BBEE Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment

CALPERS California Public Employees Retirement System

CalPERS California Public Employees Retirement System

CDD-Ghana Ghana Center for Democratic Development

CHRAJ Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice CKRC Constitution of Kenya Review Commission

CSO Civil society organizations

CVC Citizens Vetting Committee

CWSA Community Water and Sanitation Agency

DA District assembly

DACF District Assemblies Common Fund

DCEs District Chief Executives

DEC District Election Committee

DPP Director of Public Prosecutions

ECA Excess Crude Account (Nigeria)

ECA Economic Commission for Africa

EPRDF Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front EPWP Expanded Public Works Program

ERISA Employee Retirement and Income Security Act (U.S.) ERISA Employee Retirement and Income Security Act

FGDs focus group discussions

FRELIMO Mozambique Liberation Front

FSDEA Sovereign Fund of Angola (Fundo Soberano de Angola)

GEPF Government Employees Pension Fund (South Africa) GEPF Government Employees Pension Fund

HCR High Council of the Republic

ICAC Independent Commission against Corruption- in Australia ICT information and communications technology

IDEA Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance

IGEPE Institute for the Management of State Holdings

(Mozambique)

IGEPE Institute for the Management of State Holdings

IMF International Monetary Fund

INC Interim National Constitution of 2005

MCEs Municipal Chief Executives

MLGRD Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development

NCP National Congress Party

NDPP National Director of Public Prosecutions

NNPC Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation

NRM National Resistance Movement

NSIA Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority

NSIA Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority

NSSF National Social Security Fund

NSSF National Social Security Fund (Kenya)

NUGS National Union of Ghanaian Students

ODI Overseas Development Institute

OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OPIC Overseas Private Investment Corporation

PETS Public Expenditure Tracking Systems

PFMA Public Finance Management Act

PIC Public Investment Corporation (South Africa)

PIC Public Investment Corporation (South Africa)

PNDC Provisional National Defence Council (Ghana)

PRCC Public Relations and Complaints Committee

RAIDS Resource-based Industrialization and Development

Strategy

RBA Retirement Benefits Authority

SAc Social Accountability

SADC Southern African Development Community

SFO Serious Fraud Office

SITET Special Investigations Team on Economy and Trade SLCAC Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee SMDP single-member district plurality

SONIP Sonangol Imobiliaria e Propriedades

SPLM/A Sudanese People Liberation Movement/

SSNIT Social Security and National Insurance Trust

TCSS Transitional Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan

UNCAC UN Convention against Corruption

UNIP United National Independence Party

M UNA N DULO AND M AMOUDOU G AZIBO

What is the state of governance in sub-Saharan Africa, and is it ble to identify best practices and approaches to establishing political sys-tems that promote accountability, transparency, peace, and civic space to all? These are the questions addressed in this book This focus is not arbi-trary but was chosen for at least three broad reasons First, as of 2015, a quarter-century has passed since the onset of democratisation in Africa and since democratisation was imposed in the nineties by popular mobili-zations demanding better governance; it is now time to critically examine the record thus far in order to understand what has been achieved and what still needs to be done Second, although the concept of governance is now considered central in political science, our understanding of what it en-compasses and how it can be operationalized in the academic study of Africa is still weak Third, the vast majority of studies on governance in Africa consist either of think-tank indicators (e.g the World Governance Index, Ibrahim Index of African Governance); managerial perspectives centred on economic management; or strictly political studies on democra-tisation

possi-This book does not reject the studies mentioned above However, it seeks a new, integrated, focused approach to governance Such an ap-proach requires revisiting the concept of governance itself; emphasizing certain specific and decisive components; and giving an integrated view of the most critical governance issues in Africa

Revisiting Governance: the Need for a New Study

The concept of governance has become one of the most often used in the social sciences (Levi-Faur 2014) Its success is partly due to its trans-versal character, as it is used in a variety of subfields such as public ad-ministration, international relations, and comparative politics (Kjaer 2014) With regard to Africa, the concept is often considered as synony-mous to “good” governance This is not surprising given the context in which its application to Africa has blossomed In fact, even though the

theoretical roots for the concept are profound and the issues it is applied to

in Africa diverse (see chapter 1), the concept of governance became truly

central following the 1989 World Bank publication entitled Sub-Saharan

Africa: from Crisis to Sustainable Growth This publication appeared in a

time when state economic bankruptcy and political deadlock and conflict were prevalent in most African countries Africa was considered to be in a

“crisis of governance”—a concept referring to economic mismanagement and lack of politically responsive institutions capable of guaranteeing lib-erty and sound economic policies Good governance was thus seen as the solution to Africa’s political and economic crisis

We will not discuss the concept of governance further here as the first chapter of the volume (Göran Hyden, “Revisiting the Study of Govern-ance”) is devoted entirely to an in-depth discussion of the complexities and controversies surrounding it Hyden reviews the theoretical origins of the concept and examines how its uses have changed over time, observing that the term “governance” has become a catch-all notion referring to vari-ous reform projects in public administration, macro-economic manage-ment, and policies He specifically considers the challenges of studying governance in the African context, concluding with a proposal for how to study democratic governance—the focus of this book—and an explanation

of why such an approach makes sense in the current context

The contributors to this book share two characteristics On a

conceptu-al level, whether they study democratisation, elections, decentrconceptu-alization, corruption, or economic issues, they all approach their studies from a democratic governance framework, which means they explore either the representative or monitoring aspect of governance in Africa As Hyden notes, “Governance has two dimensions, one representative (voice) and a second monitory (accountability) The issue is how these two dimensions can be further disaggregated and operationalized One possibility is to do this with reference to political functions: articulation, aggregation, and so

on Another is to distinguish between different arenas, e.g civil society, political society, and so forth Data availability becomes a critical factor in determining how to proceed.” The second thing the contributions share is their methodological approach No matter the specific issue they study, they do their best to focus their work on the following objectives:

x To capture the current state of knowledge and discourse and review the lessons learned as well as the problems and challenges;

x To examine the progress made in the past quarter century since democratisation began on the continent;

x To provide, when necessary, policy recommendations that could strengthen democratic institutions and good governance in Africa

It is also worth mentioning that, rather than taking governance as a

unified concept, we have opted for a “disaggregation and prioritization approach.” This means two things First, we accept the fact that govern-ance, if considered in a democratic framework, can be used to understand voice and accountability issues in a variety of arenas Second, because we obviously cannot study all these arenas, we have chosen to prioritize those

we consider, following the most salient and critical literature on

democrat-ic governance Using this approach, we have identified four arenas for consideration here: institutions and the rule of law; constitution-making, elections, and political conflict settlement; distribution of power and citi-

zenship; and political economy and corruption

Governance Arenas and Critical Issues in Africa

Each contribution in the volume offers particular insights in one of the four arenas, which also constitute the four parts of the book Together, the four arenas offer a broad—though yet not complete—view of the chal-lenges to and prospects for good governance in contemporary Africa The contributors all point out the challenges of accountability, participation, and transparency and offer (overtly or not) possible solutions to the prob-lems identified

Institutions and the rule of law

There is consensus that governance is at the heart of Africa’s ment challenges and that the institutional aspects of governance are crucial (World Bank 1989; Ndulo 2006) This is at the heart of all the democracy promotion initiatives that have taken place in Africa since 1989 The past three decades have witnessed considerable flux in systems of governance

develop-at the political level There is clearly a realizdevelop-ation thdevelop-at institutions are tral to the efficiency and effectiveness of public service delivery, poverty reduction, optimum resource exploitation and utilization, public manage-ment, transparency and accountability, peace and security, and respect for the rule of law Thus, consolidating democracy in terms of the building of democratic institutions and the capacity of the state to manage the political and economic processes of society for development remains a major chal-lenge for many African countries Following the democratic wave that swept the continent a quarter-century ago, it had been hoped that greater

cen-political freedoms and strong institutions would be crafted and in turn lead

to more government accountability The question is: has this happened? The first part of the book provides conceptual and macro level assess-ments on the matter Given the richness and multifaceted nature of the concept of governance, Göran Hyden’s chapter provides an invaluable resource as it traces the state of the art and some general and flexible con-ceptual guidelines for the rest of the book Because governance is clear-ly—and perhaps firstly—about institutions and the rule of Law, Part I pro-vides a general overview of what has been achieved in Africa in the first quarter-century since democratisation began, with particular emphasis on specific institutions such as electoral management bodies (Gazibo, chapter 2) and the judiciary (Fombad, chapter 3) As many contributors—including van De Walle in the conclusion—advise, it is useful to make a clear distinction between the open-ended process of democratisation at-tempts and the relatively stable institutions of democratic forms of gov-ernment Many of the contributors, while focusing on different specific issues, share the notion that the state of democracy in Africa is in a grey zone The major question is whether the evidence in the book raises hope for democratic consolidation in Africa The answer is particularly im-portant today as Africa is in the midst of an economic and demographic transformation Democracy and the rule of law remain the most important preconditions for the institutionalization of good governance and sustaina-ble development practices

Constitution-making, elections, and political conflict settlement

As part of part of the effort to consolidate democracy, promote good governance, and improve the state’s delivery of public goods, a number of African countries have been involved in some type of political change in recent years Constitutional change is one aspect of this effort; a good con-stitution, one that takes into account all stakeholders, forms the framework for good governance Many African constitutions have undergone radical changes in recent decades, with every country except Botswana imple-menting some fundamental constitutional change since the 1990s Christi-

na Murray and Coel Kirby (chapter 4) give practical perspectives on the implications of constitution-making procedures, explore emerging norms, and examine the rise of participatory constitution-making in Anglophone Africa over the past two decades

A large majority of African countries now conduct regular elections at national, regional, and local levels, enabling populations to choose their political leaders and ensuring legitimacy of elected government officials

However, in most countries the progress remains fragile and in others there have been setbacks (Lynch and Crawford 2011) In its 2011 Annual State of the Continent report, the African Progress Panel observed—pointing to the crises in Libya and Ivory Coast as example—that nearly two-thirds of African countries have seen some deterioration in political participation, human rights, and the rule of law The report notes a worry-ing trend—that of leaders clinging to power Six of the nine presidential elections held in 2010, for example, were won by incumbents, some of whom have been in power for well over two decades Holding elections is

a massive enterprise anywhere in the world, let alone in a developing country with limited resources Although holding elections is not in and of itself a sign of democratic consolidation, it is a defining characteristic of democracy and thus an integral part of democratisation and the democratic consolidation process In post-conflict societies, elections are supposed to provide a means of jump-starting a new, post-conflict political order for stimulating the development of democratic policies, for choosing repre-sentatives, for forming governments, and for conferring legitimacy upon the new political order But at the same time, one must not ignore the po-tential conflicts provoked by elections in Africa, as the post-electoral vio-lence and civil war in Kenya (2007) and Côte d’Ivoire (2011) remind us The chapters in Part 2 revisit these issues Because elections are about replacing armed struggle for power by electoral struggle for citizens’ votes, reflecting on the possibility to influence citizens’ preferences through electoral campaigns (Conroy-Krutz, chapter 5) appears as im-portant as analysing the peace-enforcing power of elections in post-conflict countries The same could be said about elections at the subna-tional level, because they may create vested interests among large num-bers of households for whom elections become an important mechanism

of governance that citizens can claim (Riedel and Dickovick, chapter 6) There is a need to assess how free and fair electoral processes are in Africa However, it is not just the conduct and outcome of elections that must be assessed, but the extent to which consolidation is grounded in an institutional development that ensures democracy’s viability and sustaina-bility In Africa, questions linger on how best to ensure free and fair elec-tions and on whether elections lead to democratic consolidation—and if they do, in what situations this is likely to occur (for two different perspec-tives, see Adejumobi 2000 and Lindberg 2006a)

Distribution of power and citizenship

Governance, and particularly democratic governance, is clearly related

to citizenship The notion of citizenship refers to something more than being a mere member of a community; it means also the capacity for such

a member to evaluate and take part in the decision-making processes of the polity Historically, in countries formerly ruled by kings and mon-archs, true citizenship has evolved only when these countries have wit-nessed the development of public arenas that transformed the subjects into full citizens This process, which can be said to have begun in England in the early thirteenth century, evolved through two complementary process-es: democratisation and the people’s right to choose and remove their leaders on one hand, and territorial arrangements to accommodate sub-groups sharing the same polity on the other

In Africa, achieving these two processes remains a formidable lenge African countries are, in fact, very young They face all kinds of issues such as nation-building, territorial integration, and coordination between traditional and European-style political structures These issues were generally shadowed by authoritarian regimes during the first three decades following Africa’s wave of independence, but were revived dur-ing the new constitutionalism era of the nineties

chal-Beginning around 1990, the new constitutions established institutional arrangements such as human rights commissions and the office of Public Protector to promote accountability, transparency, and service delivery They also encouraged devolution to bring power and decision-making closer to local communities Most African countries show signs of becom-ing increasingly adept at dealing with potential conflicts through some kind of territorial devolution, whether through nationalism and social cat-egory construction (Riggan, chapter 7), federal arrangements (Schmidt, chapter 8), rethinking the role of traditional rulers (Baldwin, chapter 9), or subnational decentralized units (Daddieh, chapter 10) The chapters in Part

3 analyse progress toward democratic governance by putting the focus on the citizenship issue The effectiveness of institutions and policies in hold-ing governments accountable—and indeed how the accountability institu-tions themselves are to be held accountable—remains a greatly contested issue

Political economy and corruption

There is also agreement that accountable governance is central to all issues relating to the efficiency and effectiveness of governments Good

governance promotes public service delivery and the eradication of erty, thus fostering the capacity of citizens to participate in public affairs

pov-On the contrary, bad governance, particularly corruption, impacts tively on the continent’s economic development This arena is particularly crucial since Africa has been experiencing unprecedented economic de-velopment since 2000 (Handley, chapter 11) thanks to several factors such

nega-as high commodity prices and Africa’s relations with emerging powers such as China With an average economic growth rate since 2000 of about

5 percent, the continent has become the new frontier for investments (AfDB 2013) However, this growth has not necessarily translated into sound policies, as corruption and mismanagement—which undermine the capacity of institutions charged with the promotion of good governance, human rights, and the rule of law—often come with it

Corruption is at the heart of governance issues Yet it is difficult to propose a “one size fits all” definition of corruption As Wedel (2012, 454) has stated, “the meanings of corruption and the practices the word evoke change over time and place, as do the social and political uses of anticorruption campaigns in the hands of leaders, organizations, and polit-ical regimes Scholarly definitions and approaches to the topic are also subject to the influences of time, place, and politics.” Using a micro-level approach, one may equate corruption to acts of bribery, a phenomenon that, according to Hameed et al (2014), exacts a global cost of at least one trillion dollars each year When it is pervasive in society—particularly in the political system—corruption may also be defined at a systemic level These two approaches have been applied particularly to the study of gov-ernance in Africa Perhaps the concept of neopatrimonialism captures best these two intertwined levels of corruption and how the forms they take vary from one context to another (Bach and Gazibo 2012) According to Médard (1991), the main characteristic of neopatrimonialism is the ab-sence of distinction between private and public affairs This refers to a wide range of practices, such as the privatization of public resources by state officials, patronage, bribes taken by customs or police officers, collu-sion between political and economic milieus, and so on (Johnston 2006) The importance of studying (anti) corruption as an essential aspect of any research on good governance (Ndulo, chapter 12) in an era of democ-ratisation is thus obvious Democratisation is supposedly a good antidote

to corruption, while corruption (and bad governance) erode democracy

As we stated above, these arenas are interconnected For example, many of the new constitutions go beyond the traditional concepts of focus-ing on organs of government, separation of powers, and the protection of political and civil rights to include a role in service provision There is a

growing realization that the state has a vital role to play in provision of basic services, either by direct action or by properly regulating the way services are provided via the private sector, especially in the areas of health, education, infrastructure, and basic necessities like water and elec-tricity This realization is reflected in the growing number of national con-stitutions that include provisions for social and economic rights as founda-tional, and provisions for social goods, the realization of social justice, and preservation of the environment as fundamental objectives Also, institu-tional infrastructure is key if the economic growth Africa is experiencing

is to be profitable to all citizens Institutions cannot survive in an ronment of poor governance, especially in a corrupt and conflicted state (Gazibo 2012)

envi-This book will have achieved its purpose if the discussions contained herein and the various challenges, achievements, and lessons outlined con-tribute to research, inform teaching, and lead to a greater understanding of the challenges of democratic consolidation in Africa and the relationship between democratisation and development In addition, our purpose is to share theoretical models and best practices for engaging in the issues around democratisation and economic development in Africa

I NSTITUTIONS AND C ONCEPTS

impli-in an impli-increasimpli-ingly complex and challengimpli-ing policy environment, but as an analytical tool it has fallen short of expectations

Looking back over the past two decades, the problem is that ance has become a catch-all notion referring to all kinds of reform pro-jects—in public administration, macro-economic management, and poli-tics “Governance” has become a programmatic rather than an analytical tool With its ideological tie to liberal democracy, it has mostly been used prescriptively Not surprisingly, the term has been used more by managers and practitioners than by academics

govern-So, should the concept be declared useless for scholarly purposes, or can it be salvaged for future research? This chapter argues the latter: that the time has come to resuscitate interest in the concept of governance for analysing and understanding political processes More specifically, there is reason to link democracy and governance together in ways that broaden the use of the former and narrow the use of the latter For political scien-tists, the concept of democratic governance offers a tool for analysis of politics in a post-transition period and sharpens the focus on what govern-ance is really all about: the politics of rules

We begin with a brief review of the theoretical origins of the ance concept and how its uses have changed over the past twenty years

We then continue with a discussion of the challenges to studying ance in an African context and conclude with a proposal for how demo-cratic governance might be studied and why such an approach makes sense in the current context

govern-Theoretical Origins of the Governance Concept

“Governance” may have been around as a concept for a long time, but

it was essentially dormant until the 1970s, when the term began to be used

in public administration literature and subsequently in the works of national relations and comparative politics students Its sudden rise did not come out of nowhere A convergence of factors helps explain why schol-ars in various fields adopted governance as a term to analyse their respec-tive subjects The growth of inter-jurisdictional policy issues encouraged public administration theorists to look for a concept that allowed them to think beyond conventional terms in their field International relations scholars took on the term as a means of analysing the emergence of global issues such as the environment and human rights following the end of the Cold War Students of comparative politics, finally, began to use “govern-ance” during the wave of democratisation that began in the wake of the fall of Communism Kjaer (2004) and Bevir (2010) have provided a thor-ough overview of the history of the concept, but a little more elaboration may still be justified here, especially to include the experience outside of academe

inter-Beginning with public administration, the first use of the term ernance” is attributed to Harlan Cleveland in the early 1970s (Frederick-son 2005) Writing a guide for future managers, Cleveland (1972) called into question the vertical arrangements of conventional public administra-tion and argued for more attention to horizontal relations between organi-zations He wrote that organizations individually needed to become better

“gov-at using their own, in-house expertise while “gov-at the same time, as a group, becoming more collegial and consultative His assumption was that people wanted less of government and more of governance The concept, there-fore, appears to be the outgrowth of two simultaneous trends in the field of public administration: the blurring of the relationship between what is public and private and a similar tendency to dim the relationship between policy and politics, on the one hand, and implementation and administra-tion, on the other Governance became gradually associated with the New Public Management School and its prescriptions for reforming public ad-

ministration by contracting out responsibilities to non-state actors A view of the uses of governance in the public administration field includes some advocates who hold the radical belief that it is possible to have gov-ernance without government, as discussed by Pierre and Peters (2000) Many scholars, especially in Europe, however, approached the subject of governance in less prescriptive terms and merely acknowledged and de-scribed a new decision-making reality characterized by inter-organizational dependencies and thus also by the need for multi-level and multi-organizational responses to societal problems (Kooiman 1993) Much of that perspective has made its way into the thinking and use of the governance concept in the international development community

re-As Frederickson (2005, 293) notes, the problem with the governance concept in public administration is that it lacks a theory; he suggests that scholars should look to international relations studies, where regime theo-

ry constitutes the basis for understanding the term Regimes are

deliberate-ly constructed orders at the regional or global level aimed at reducing the risk of unilateral action by powerful nations They establish shared expec-tations about desired behaviour Governance, then, is the exercise of estab-lishing and sustaining such regimes An example would be the efforts in the 1990s to institutionalize an international human rights regime drawing

on the work prepared for the 1993 International Human Rights Conference

in Vienna Thus, as some influential scholars in the international relations field have argued, governance involves managing principles, norms, and decision-making procedures that facilitate the maintenance of an interna-tional order (Krasner 1983; Keohane 2001) Much of the literature and practice of global governance incorporates these insights Rosenau (1992, 13) makes the point that global governance applies to any system of rules that has transnational implications

Governance as related to systems of rule is found also in comparative politics literature, but here it is typically confined to individual countries and associated with regime transition issues spurred by democratisation (Hyden and Bratton 1992) Governance has spun off two distinct direc-tions of research in the field The first has been inspired by the work of rational choice theorists like Douglass North (1990) and Elinor Ostrom (1990), for whom the main objective has been to devise institutional solu-tions to issues such as bureaucratic red tape and top-down and centralized problem-solving The second has been driven by the theoretical insights of Joseph Schumpeter (1942) and Robert Dahl (1971) on building democratic regimes

As can be gathered from the overview, albeit compressed, the tual heritage on which governance discourse rests is varied and complex

intellec-It is possible, however, to confine the discourse to two main parameters: 1) effectiveness, and 2) legitimacy Influences from public administration

in particular come closest to the effectiveness dimension, while those from international relations and comparative politics are more closely related to legitimacy The former tend to encourage a managerial, technocratic ap-proach to governance, while the latter give rise to a focus on the political aspects of governance The focus on effectiveness tends to treat govern-ance as an instrument to get things done with better results and is manifest

in the donor interest in making aid delivery more effective The focus on

legitimacy encourages thinking about how things are done and leads to

concerns about respect for the rule of law and how the state interacts with citizens In the international donor community, this distinction is the dif-ference between a results-based and a rights-based approach to develop-ment

The discussion above is graphically summarized in the figure below:

Figure 1.1 The theoretical origins of the governance concept

The continuum between effectiveness and legitimacy defines much of the space within which governance has been put into practice It covers administrative and economic as well as political aspects of the concept The various organizations that work in the governance field have anchored their programs somewhere along this line Thus, as is indicated in the next figure—corporations—the World Bank and other development banks have typically built programs around such concerns as reducing transaction costs, fighting corruption, and enhancing transparency and public account-ability in government agencies At the other end of the spectrum are faith-based and secular organizations, whose objective is to promote social jus-

tice In between these ends, bilateral and multilateral agencies have chored their governance programs at various points

an-Figure 1.2 Anchoring-points for select key actors in the governance field

In developing its more applied approach to governance, the tional development community borrowed insights from its mixed intellec-tual heritage Even though the emphasis has been on creating specific pro-gram interventions and assessing progress toward what is being defined as

interna-“good governance,” practice has not been completely unhinged from

theo-ry The two interact even if this is not always in evidence

Practitioners have accepted that governance is about the use of power

in the management of a country’s public affairs This is evident in the

ear-ly definitions provided, e.g., by the World Bank (1992) and the UNDP (1997) By the end of the 1990s, the donor community had become the most influential stakeholder in the governance field Agencies had had enough time to fine-tune their instruments, and they were not hesitant to use their prescriptive devices as conditions for further aid This donor ap-propriation of the concept was associated with optimism and an emphasis

on quick fixes and results Not surprisingly, given its high expectations, this euphoric period eventually came under criticism in the early 2000s Donor agencies’ application of the governance concept had taken politics out of the picture

The main criticism in recent years has come from citizen activists and social movements, who have argued for a more transformative approach to governance Their approach has focused on empowering people to partici-pate in the political process by teaching citizens how to hold public offi-

cials to account for their words and deeds A new discourse on governance

has emerged centered on human rights and social development issues This discourse tends to be driven by social movements and activist groups around the world It has been especially significant in countries like India, Brazil, and Mexico The various initiatives are gathered under the “social watch” rubric, some of which—like the participatory budget initiative in Porto Alegre, Brazil; the Social Audit in India; and the Citizen Tribunal in Kenya—have attracted world-wide attention

As this introductory review indicates, over the past twenty years the governance field has been occupied by three different constituencies—academics, donors, and activists As it turns out, each of these has had a chance to occupy centre stage Each constituency has been hegemonic at some point in time, but its ability to hold the stage has been challenged by the others with their interest in furthering a different agenda This process

or trend is summarized in the following table

Reforming tutions

insti-Checking power use

Table 1.1 Shifts in the use of the governance concept

The current situation in the governance field may be characterized as one of tension between a rights-based and a results-based approach Do-nors lean toward the latter, even though some, like the Nordics, also have their governance programs anchored on the side of human rights Because institutionalizing universal human rights and building democracy take time in societies where these rest on a weak foundation, the expectation of results within set timelines easily leads to disappointments Donors have

no real control of the political process that enhances human rights At the same time, they can take comfort in the rise of civic activism, since much

of that is aimed at promoting and protecting human rights, not only the civil and political but also the social and economic Even in African coun-tries where civil society is generally quite weak, there has been maturation toward greater strategic intervention on key issues such as land tenure, gender equality, and constitutional reform Much of this activism has been financially supported by donors—and this still continues—but some of the strongest citizen organizations are enhancing their independence by diver-sifying their support base

Challenges to Studying Governance in Africa

While governance has been established as a global concern, it has come a particularly big issue in African countries There are many reasons for this Donor definitions of the concept, with its normative emphasis on

be-“good” governance, have typically been perceptively quite far removed from local legacies of rule Thus, the distance African countries have been asked to travel in order to meet donor expectations has been quite long In many African countries, there has also been a sense that national sover-eignty has been called into question by the intensity with which the inter-national donor community has called for governance reforms Further-more, little attention has been paid to indigenous governance practices and their ability to serve as foundations for improvement Local practices have typically been dismissed as outdated or problematic The result is that the study of governance in Africa is characterized by a series of unresolved issues There is a need to review what might be done to make governance practice better conform not only to international standards but also to local demands and capabilities The following issues are of special interest and relevance: 1) the tension between formal and informal institutions; 2) the weight attached to the role of governance in development; 3) the types of comparison to pursue; and 4) the assessment process for democracy in a governance context

Formal and informal institutions

This is a perennial issue in the study of African politics Because the colonial powers introduced institutions that were initially foreign to Afri-cans, there has always been a suspicion toward “foreign” values and mod-els In some countries that adopted a socialist approach to development after independence, this suspicion served as a rallying call for a transfor-mation based on African values Some nationalists succeeded in managing this issue better than others—Julius Nyerere of Tanzania having been the most creative in his promotion of a modified model of African communal-

ism, ujamaa The story of how this model was implemented is associated

more with pain and sorrow than with reward and happiness The final come was its abandonment and the return to imposition of formal institu-tional models based on the historical experience of already developed countries in the West Ever since structural adjustment in the 1980s, this has been the story of governance in Africa

out-The African response has been understandably sceptical if not outright hostile For a long time Africans perceived governance reforms as being

imposed They were not part of a dialogue but were spoken to in terms of what their governments needed to do to become acceptable to Western donors Governance conditionalities featured prominently in the late 1990s and early 2000s Attitudes on both sides have since mellowed Donors have toned down their rhetoric and have adopted a language referring to recipient governments as “partners” with the right to greater control over the foreign funds pumped into their treasuries African leaders, for their part, with some notable exceptions such as Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, have abandoned much of their scepticism and are now more ready than before to take note of the pros and cons of adhering to global standards A series of high-level meetings under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the past ten years has paved the way for this more collaborative relationship

This change in attitude notwithstanding, there is still some distance, in some cases quite significant, between constitutional and legal rules, on the one hand, and moral and social practice, on the other In some contexts, as Helmke and Levitsky (2006) note in their study of informal institutions and democracy in Latin America, formal and informal institutions can co-habit a particular field without necessarily contradicting each other A case

in point is African elections, where the formal rules for how elections are conducted are generally accepted by the various contenders, but behaviour remains largely informal, e.g in the form of competitive clientelism The latter practice may encourage corrupt and fraudulent behaviour but is typi-cally not deemed to affect the verdict, whether or not the elections were legitimate (Lindberg 2003; Basedau, Erdmann, and Mehler 2007)

What is happening in the field of elections is evidence that political tors are learning and ready to change their behaviour in accordance with formal rules, but the degree of conformity varies from field to field For instance, the independence of the judiciary and other institutions meant to check the behaviour of public officials is still undermined in most coun-tries by executive interventions or client bribery Even here, there is pro-gress to report, e.g from Kenya where the judiciary has actively taken steps to rid itself of corrupt judges and enhance its independence in ac-cordance with the new 2010 constitution

ac-Obtaining compliance with formal rules, especially if they have their origin in a foreign model of governance, however, remains a challenge and is taking time This should be no surprise, but among foreign observ-ers, donors, and analysts there is a tendency to assume that such changes

in behaviour can be institutionalized in a short period of time A relevant example is the pressure that some donors have placed on African govern-ments to adopt international “model” legislation, e.g on gender or child

rights, without first assessing the feasibility of such a move For instance, the rules guiding how the government bureaucracy and the judiciary oper-ate render such “express” legislation of little value and in some instances cause political backlash

Partly as a result of disillusion in some donor circles with the outcome

of reforming governance, and partly because of the new partnership rangements, there has been a greater willingness among the various con-stituents to explore the extent to which reforms can be based on existing indigenous institutions rather than those imported from outside This has been the subject of a major research project based at the Overseas Devel-opment Institute in London—the African Power and Politics Project—in which the objective has been to examine how far neo-patrimonialist and clientelist practices are developmental (Kelsall and Booth 2010) Findings from countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda are that such practices may be effective for development provided that they are centralized This conclu-sion reflects the point that Evans (2004) makes—that “institutional mono-cropping” may limit the options countries face in pursuing development The idea that institutional models imported to Africa from the outside have their own limits when it comes to implementation has also received support in a more unlikely context—the World Bank—where a group of analysts have argued for adoption of a problem-driven approach to gov-ernance (Fritz, Kaiser and Levy 2009)

ar-Role of governance in development

This growing interest in the African context in which governance forms are attempted has also raised the question of how important govern-ance reform is in promoting economic and social development The re-search focus on transition to democracy that has dominated political sci-ence research in Africa for the past two decades has had a distinct institu-tional orientation Researchers have started from the assumption that hu-man agency, policy, and institutional design will make a difference As suggested above, some progress has been made in institutionalizing new behaviour and practice, but much less attention has been paid to how sig-nificant governance reforms are for national development This issue has gained extra attention with the entrance of middle-income countries like China on the African development stage China has achieved an impres-sive economic and social transformation in the past three decades without any notable change toward democratic governance Western observers have not failed to consider the possible effects of the Chinese presence and have expressed fear that the gains made in “good” governance practice in

re-African countries may be lost This fear is not wholly unfounded, but from

an African viewpoint it smacks of condescendence because it assumes that African actors lack autonomy or integrity

It is in this context that the issue has arisen about what to expect of governance Can a set of Western norms that have increasingly become part of an international governance regime be fully introduced and imple-mented in other regions of the world? If not, how good does governance have to be to be acceptable in an international perspective? This set of issues was first raised by Merilee Grindle (2004; 2007) in her analysis of governance reforms in Latin America, where, at least in a U.S perspec-tive, these efforts were not seen to go far enough Grindle’s conclusion from her own studies was that it is unrealistic to expect perfect or full compliance with these international norms, at least within the time frame that Western donors and governments tend to adopt She suggested that as

a result many governments will settle for “good enough” governance—and outsiders should accept this The pursuit of best practice is sometimes misguided because it fails to generate preferred outcomes Instead, there is

a reason to consider “good fit,” i.e measures that are suitable given the existing political and social context

Some analysts with a foot in the Western policy world are wary about this acceptance of what they consider a pragmatic, if not relativist, ap-proach to governance It is difficult, however, to escape the question of whether these analysts have not exaggerated the role that governance can effectively play in social and economic development Governance measures, whether imported or local, have only touched the surface of things As indicated above, elections and other reforms have not had a transformative effect on society African countries are changing, not so much because of governance reforms as because of neo-liberal economic reforms and their effects For instance, one of the more significant changes that has taken place in the past two decades is the rise of a more diversi-fied middle class Its membership is no longer drawn only from the state bureaucracy but also increasingly from the business and professional worlds This raises the question of whether this emerging bourgeoisie, as Moore (1966) found in his comparative study of the path to modern de-mocracy in the West, can champion the cause of democratic governance in Africa—or are the conditions for such a scenario not yet in place?

The idea that Africans might not be ready for democracy is taboo—it was the reason colonialists gave for refusing independence in the 1950s, and the notion has never been repeated since—but it is hard to avoid the question of what the relationship between democracy and development really is The research community is divided on the issue and continues to

argue whether good governance (or democracy) really is a cause or an

effect of development (e.g Lewis-Beck and Burkhart 1994; Przeworski et

al 2000; Bueno de Mesquita and Downs 2005) The argument by Lipset

(1959) that democracy requires a level of modernization before it can be institutionalized is not wholly irrelevant in the contemporary assessment

of what governance can do Good governance is not always a ward causal variable Time has come to reassess the relation between gov-ernance and development in Africa, drawing on aggregate studies like those listed above

straightfor-Types of comparisons

The institutionalist focus that has characterized the study of ance and democratisation in Africa in the past two decades has brought about major changes in the way political scientists go about their business During the 1960s and 1970s no comparativist in political science would have dared to analyse politics without a structural explanation Today, the situation is the opposite Nobody studies anything but institutions

govern-The principal gain from this reorientation has been the rise of country comparisons Elections are one arena where important contribu-tions have been made through cross-country comparisons (Bratton and van

cross-de Walle 1997; Lindberg 2006b) Other places where cross-country parisons have been attempted include party systems (e.g Randall and Svasand 2002; Salih 2003; Kuenzi and Lambright 2005; LeBas 2011) and legislatures (Barkan 2009) Especially important for the emergence of cross-country comparisons in the study of African politics has been the establishment of the Afrobarometer some ten years ago It collects data on politics and related subjects in twenty African countries and has now con-ducted as many as four rounds of surveys in some countries This has al-lowed the growth of a new database on political behaviour that Africa largely lacked earlier The existence of this public opinion poll has al-lowed Africanists to produce quantitative studies that are complementary

com-to similar studies from other regions of the world Africanists now have a stronger base in regional datasets to compete for publication in top-rated journals in the profession There has been somewhat of a euphoria over this, and graduate students have been directed to do their basic research based on the data provided by the Afrobarometer

While the barometer has increasingly become a test laboratory for these students and senior scholars relying on its data for analysis, few questions have been raised about the limits of relying primarily on behav-ioural and institutional data Little scrutiny, if any, has been devoted to the

reliability of the data What is more, few questions are being raised about what kind of conclusions one should draw from such studies Opinion surveys only scratch the surface, and it is not always clear that respondents provide truthful answers There has been a tendency to blindly believe in the “science” associated with such polls at the expense of critical scrutiny

of its findings and how they were arrived at

The lure of cross-country comparisons among Africanists at this point

in time is understandable, but there is also reason to embark on sons that use a historical or longitudinal perspective There is nowadays enough data on various dimensions of governance to allow this to take place using quantitative data Historical comparisons, however, can be done using qualitative methods of analysis There are good reasons for giving more emphasis to studies that capture change over time within a given country This approach can be combined with cross-country com-parisons as, for instance, students of Latin American politics often do (e.g Collier and Collier 1991) This approach, which may be described as a version of historical institutionalism, has the advantage of acknowledging the role of structures and how they create “critical junctures” at which governance and policy change in significant ways It demonstrates pro-gress over time, even if progress may not be linear or non-violent

compari-The study of African politics would benefit from such an approach It would bring together the often scattered research findings that we have from specialized studies—e.g elections, political parties, or civil socie-ty—to capture the essence of what has happened in terms of democratic governance Is there a discernible trend? If so, in which direction? How are changes in governance reflected in state inclusiveness, responsiveness, and capacity? Is there a positive correlation between more democratic governance and better state performance in terms of these three indicators? These are research questions that deserve as much attention as those fo-cusing on individual choice and behaviour Latin Americanists have been able to produce studies that aggregate data analysis into a “big picture” perspective Africanists have yet to produce such studies

Democracy in a governance context

There has been a lot of confusion regarding the relationship between governance and democracy The adoption of the notion of “good govern-ance,” derived from norms of liberal democracy, has led to the assumption that good governance and democracy are the same thing The two con-cepts, however, are different Governance refers to how rules are institu-tionalized, regardless of whether they are democratic or not In this re-