By 2010, it has become clear that in most of Africa, traditional authorities are a resilient lot, just as much a part of the "modern" political landscape as any constitution, legislature or local council. Analysts have proposed a wide array of possible explanations for this phenomenon, focusing variously on sources of legitimacy, issues of performance or function, and leadership qualities. They draw sharply different conclusions, most notably with regard to whether they believe that traditional authorities survive and thrive because of the preferences of the mass public, or only at the behest of the state, and in fact in opposition to the popular will. Data collected in 19 countries during Round 4 (2008-2009) of the Afrobarometer allows us to explore these hypotheses more systematically and on a larger scale than previous analyses. The findings are somewhat startling in the intensity of the support for traditional authority that they reveal, presenting a stark challenge to those who still argue that traditional leadership is an unabashedly negative and decidedly undemocratic force in Africa. While Africans find these leaders to be flawed, they nonetheless believe that traditional authorities have an essential role to play in local governance. They place considerable value on the role traditional authorities play in managing and resolving conflict, and on their leadership qualities and their accessibility to ordinary people. There is also evidence to suggest that traditional leaders play an essential symbolic role as representatives of community identity, unity, continuity and stability. In fact, the evidence suggests that traditional leaders derive their support at least as much from who they are as from what they do.

The long-standing debate about the proper role for Africa's traditional leaders in contemporary politics has intensified in the last two decades, as efforts to foster democratisation and decentralisation have brought competing claims to power and legitimacy to the fore, especially at the local level. Questions persist as to whether traditional authority and democratic governance are ultimately compatible or contradictory. Can the two be blended into viable and effective hybrid systems? Or do the potentially anti-democratic features of traditional systems present insurmountable obstacles to an acceptable model of integration? Survey data collected by the Afrobarometer indicate that Africans who live under these dual systems of authority do not draw as sharp a distinction between hereditary chiefs and elected local government officials as most analysts would expect. In fact, popular evaluations of selected and elected leaders are strongly andpositivelylinked. They appear to be consistently shaped by each individual's ‘leadership affect’, and by an understanding of chiefs and elected officials as common players in a single, integrated political system, rather than as opponents in a sharply bifurcated one. Moreover, there is no evident conflict between supporting traditional leadership and being a committed and active democrat. Rather than finding themselves trapped between two competing spheres of political authority, Africans appear to have adapted to the hybridisation of their political institutions more seamlessly than many have anticipated or assumed.

In February 2011, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni resoundingly won re-election. In the aftermath of the vote, which many had predicted would be competitive, analysts and opposition supporters ascribed Museveni's victory to massive pre-election spending on public goods, creation of new administrative districts, and vote buying. While the opposition could not compete with Museveni and his National Resistance Movement in access to resources, our analyses of survey data, from two pre-election surveys conducted by Afrobarometer in November/December 2010 and January 2011, and a pre- and post-election panel study, find little evidence that Museveni benefited significantly from public goods outlays, district creation, and vote buying. Additionally, we find little evidence that fear and intimidation were responsible for the results. Instead, the data suggest that Museveni's re-election was driven by an uninspiring opposition slate, widespread satisfaction with macro-economic growth, and an improved security situation, particularly in the Northern Region.

Diamond and Morlino (2005) propose a quality of democracy framework that includes eight dimensions, but they restrict use of opinion data to measuring only one of these: 'responsiveness'. However, we argue that citizen experiences and evaluations are essential pieces of data that may also enable us to capture valid 'insider' measures of procedural and substantive dimensions that may be missed by expert judges and macro-level indicators. We develop indicators based on public attitude data for all eight dimensions of democracy. Substantively, this mass perspective on the Quality of Democracy gives us insight into what Africans themselves want out of democracy, and how they prioritise its various components. As we explore the places where citizen and expert evaluations diverge, we conclude that both individual and expert assessments of the quality of democracy deserve to be carefully interrogated. We cannot conclude that either experts or ordinary citizens provide the 'true' or 'correct' assessment, but rather that both perspectives are essential to fully understanding today's democratic experience, and the shape of the democratic future, on the continent.

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