Elections in Africa

Nohlen, Dieter; Thibaut, Bernard; Krennerich, Michael

doi:10.1093/0198296452.001.0001

Cited by 217 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Ahmadou Ahidjo became the first President of the newly established Republique du Cameroun . In a 1961 referendum, the inhabitants of Southern Cameroons voted to unify with independent Cameroun (Nohlen et al, 1999: 177). The outcomes of the plebiscite paved the way for the foundation of the bilingual Federal Republic of Cameroon.…”

Section: Transnational Patterns Of Social Policy Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Not home-made: Historical and contemporary social policy dynamics in Cameroon

Hamann

2020

Global Social Policy

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Social policy development trajectories in post-colonial sub-Saharan African states deviate from those in highly industrialized countries. Recent research endeavours established broad patterns of global interdependencies dating back to colonialism. This article contributes to these efforts by presenting a case study of the dynamics animating social policy development in Cameroon. It examines the progressive evolution of global determinants and their impacts on Cameroon’s welfare system over three periods: (1) decolonialization and post-colonial restructuring in the mid-20th century, (2) structural adjustment in response to the 1980s’ debt crisis and (3) the contemporary era of market liberalization driven by accelerated economic globalization. The research draws on a mixed-methods approach involving a document analysis and a survey administered in 400 rural households. Findings indicate that horizontal interdependencies were predominant in the establishment phase of Cameroon’s national social insurance scheme, but eventually gave way to vertical interdependencies in the 1980s. Recent efforts to advance economic liberalization represent a return to horizontal transnational forces, given the growing influence of multinational corporations on the country’s social security landscape. The study reinforces existing research insights in showing that, unlike social protection in the global north, social policy dynamics in Africa tend to actively contribute to the marginalization of underprivileged groups.

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Section: Transnational Patterns Of Social Policy Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Not home-made: Historical and contemporary social policy dynamics in Cameroon

Hamann

2020

Global Social Policy

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“…From a research design point of view, a continuous variable directly measuring the exact number of parties would be ideal and would also enable us to interact it with the ministries variable. Unfortunately, African data on parties are limited: the best available data set has no information prior to 1989 (Lindberg 2006), and our construction of a new variable using Elections in Africa (Nohlen et al 1999) yielded too many gaps and fewer data points than Banks. Until African countries have experienced more electoral democracy, and such sources have been updated, we believe a dummy variable is a reasonable alternative; majoritarian democracies (‘power concentrating’ in Lijphart’s terms) tend to govern through a single party anyway, and our current approach enabled us to include authoritarian governments in the 1970s and 1980s that included parties.…”

Section: Operationalizations and Hypothesis Formulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parties or Portfolio? The Economic Consequences of Africa’s Big Cabinets

LeVan¹,

Assenov²

2015

Gov. & oppos.

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Does cabinet size have an impact on economic policy in Africa? The average number of ministers has increased steadily for four decades, yet we know little about the economic effects of new portfolios, despite popular complaints about costly cabinets. Comparative studies generate conflicting expectations, either blaming coalition governments for patronage or crediting them with economic restraint. Using data on 45 Sub-Saharan African countries between 1971 and 2006, our empirical analysis links parties and portfolios to budgetary policy performance. We show that cabinets with more ministries are associated with budget surpluses, but they are also slightly more likely to engage in patronage spending. Next, we find that cabinets governing through multiparty coalitions have no consistent impact on budget surpluses. However, they are strongly associated with less extractive government and lower rates of patronage spending compared with single-party cabinets. These results hold after controlling for the type of colonial legacy, economic conditions, population size, constraints on executives, level of democracy, oil income, type of party system and ethnic and religious fractionalization. We conclude that parties and portfolios are both important but they have different effects: adding portfolios to the cabinet may improve economic outcomes by enhancing specialization, but governance through multiparty cabinets generates incentives to both limit extraction and restrain patronage spending.

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“…Africa is an interesting region, as it displays several diffusion cases, but also because the developments illustrate the brittleness of the not uncommon belief that endurance is in itself and by necessity a valuable thing. Introducing as editors a comprehensive data handbook on "Elections in Africa", Nohlen, Krennerich and Thibaut (1999) note that most of the African states that attained independence in the 1950s and the 1960s were equipped by the former colonial powers with liberal-democratic constitutions (p. 3). As also noted by the same editors, these imported constitutional regulations hardly ever worked and were soon either withdrawn, fundamentally modified or simply ignored (p. 3).…”

Section: On Regionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Notes on Constitutional Endurance

Anckar¹

2014

BLR

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Among the countries of the world there are great differences in terms of constitutional endurance, i.e. the life span of national constitutions. Exploring these differences the literature in this field has observed associations between democracy and constitutional survival, and this article contributes in the form of a case study to the still somewhat fragmentary evidence for a correlation. Investigating a set of countries composed of former British colonies, the study shows that clearly more than semi-democratic and non-democratic colonies, the democratic colonies have been during independence endurance guardians. However, the good endurance record may follow from the fact that more than other states democracies change their constitutions by means of individual amendments to constitutional texts rather than by constitutional turnover. There is therefore a need for future endurance studies to probe deeper into the amendment institution. Of several other endurance aspects that are brought to the fore in the study, one is about regional differences and particularly about the case of Africa, which stands out as a place for an ongoing vast constitutional muddle and reshuffle. Indeed, of more than 80 constitutions introduced in the world in the 1990s, no less than 38 were adopted by African states. Since several of these transitions have implied a rejection of one-party rule and one-party elections and a growing acceptance of competitive elections, the African endurance gap may in the long run prove beneficial to political development.

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Elections in Africa

Cited by 217 publications

References 0 publications

Not home-made: Historical and contemporary social policy dynamics in Cameroon

Not home-made: Historical and contemporary social policy dynamics in Cameroon

Parties or Portfolio? The Economic Consequences of Africa’s Big Cabinets

Notes on Constitutional Endurance

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