Competitive authoritarianism in Africa revisited

Abstract

Competitive authoritarianism has emerged as a major concept in the study of political regimes. The introduction of this special issue revisits Levitsky and Way's seminal study Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. Although Africa is the world region with the highest absolute number of competitive authoritarian regimes, political scientists working on Africa have rarely engaged with Levitsky and Way's modern classic. In this introduction, we summarize their arguments, outline the empirical findings for Africa, and review the critiques. In doing so we provide the background for the contributions to this special issue.

The Politics of Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa

“…Patronage and clientelism remain the dominant political practices in many parts of SSA . The flaws are evident even in the sample of eight countries examined in the book, which cover the full range of possibilities along the democracy-authoritarian continuum (see Table 1.1) (Levitsky and Way 2010;Bogaards and Elischer 2016).…”

The Negotiated Politics of Social Protection in East and Southern Africa

“…Patronage and clientelism remain the dominant political practices in many parts of SSA (Cheeseman 2016). The flaws are evident even in the sample of eight countries examined in the book, which cover the full range of possibilities along the democracy-authoritarian continuum (see Table 1.1) (Levitsky and Way 2010;Bogaards and Elischer 2016).…”

Madagascar’s Fluid Party System: Authoritarian legacies and an uneven playing field in an enduring competitive authoritarian regime1

“…Angola, Gambia, Gabon, Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea -dominant parties and party systems are more prevalent. Incumbents often rely on multiparty elections, parliaments and coercion to prolong their authoritarian rule (Bogaards & Elischer, 2016). Finally, in the cluster of hybrid regimes 3 -e.g.…”

“…Second, though the Third Republic (1993-2010) marked a transition to more democratic elections, at least formally, in practice the regime remained "competitive authoritarian" (Bogaards & Elischer, 2016, p. 12;Levitsky & Way, 2010a, p. 276), meaning that "electoral manipulation, unfair media access, abuse of state resources, and varying degrees of harassment and violence" often skewed the playing field in favour of incumbents (Levitsky & Way, 2010a). Third, Madagascar is often depicted as an "unstable competitive authoritarian regime" characterised by weak parties, and recurrent political crises (Bogaards & Elischer, 2016;Levitsky & Way, 2010a).…”