Abstract:Besides elections, the sub-Saharan wave of political reforms of the 1990s led several countries to introduce limits to the number of terms that a chief executive can serve, even though several leaders managed to bypass them. While Africa’s executive term limits (ETLs) politics has gained scholarly attention, the literature mostly consists of in-depth small-N analyses. Systematic comparative research is rare. To contribute filling this gap, this article presents a new Africa Executive Term Limits (AETL) dataset… Show more
“…Figure 1.Term-Limit Compliance and Manipulation in Sub-Saharan Africa Notes : Each line tracks the cumulative number of episodes of term-limit manipulation, failed manipulation and compliance, respectively. Data are from the Africa Executive Term Limits dataset (Cassani 2021). …”
Section: Who Are (And Who Are Not) Africa's Lame Ducks?mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Notes: The country and year in which term limits were either respected or challenged are in parentheses. Data are from the Africa Executive Term Limits dataset(Cassani 2021).…”
The vast majority of sub-Saharan countries have adopted constitutional clauses establishing that elected presidents cannot serve more than two mandates. While an extensive literature has examined why African leaders comply with or else try to manipulate term limits, the policy implications of the latter remain unexplored. Existing studies of other world regions suggest that setting a maximum number of terms presidents can serve tends to make them ‘lame ducks’ during their final mandate. We reconsider this argument, and posit and demonstrate empirically that constitutional limits can actually induce positive effects on second-term presidents' actions compared to their first terms. More specifically, the absence of electoral pressures, the concern for their post-presidential future and legacy-building motivations may lead to improvements in the rule of law, especially regarding the functioning of the judiciary. This article represents the first empirical investigation of the performance of Africa's second-term lame-duck presidents.
“…Figure 1.Term-Limit Compliance and Manipulation in Sub-Saharan Africa Notes : Each line tracks the cumulative number of episodes of term-limit manipulation, failed manipulation and compliance, respectively. Data are from the Africa Executive Term Limits dataset (Cassani 2021). …”
Section: Who Are (And Who Are Not) Africa's Lame Ducks?mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Notes: The country and year in which term limits were either respected or challenged are in parentheses. Data are from the Africa Executive Term Limits dataset(Cassani 2021).…”
The vast majority of sub-Saharan countries have adopted constitutional clauses establishing that elected presidents cannot serve more than two mandates. While an extensive literature has examined why African leaders comply with or else try to manipulate term limits, the policy implications of the latter remain unexplored. Existing studies of other world regions suggest that setting a maximum number of terms presidents can serve tends to make them ‘lame ducks’ during their final mandate. We reconsider this argument, and posit and demonstrate empirically that constitutional limits can actually induce positive effects on second-term presidents' actions compared to their first terms. More specifically, the absence of electoral pressures, the concern for their post-presidential future and legacy-building motivations may lead to improvements in the rule of law, especially regarding the functioning of the judiciary. This article represents the first empirical investigation of the performance of Africa's second-term lame-duck presidents.
“…In addition, there are also 3 (three) fundamental elements that characterize neopatrimonialism (Lederer & Höhne, 2021, p. 133�, namely: �1� institutional hybridity, namely the conditions in which in a government system there are informal institutions with patrimonial norms �2� Existence of both patrimonial and legalrational institutions, namely the patrimonial practice being a free rider over the existing formal legal institutions; �3� Personalism, namely there is a concentration of power in an individual who dominates the state apparatus and stands above the law. This concentration is used to obtain legitimacy and winner-takes-all benefits in terms of controlling state resources (Cassani, 2020�.…”
Section: Neopatrimonialism In the Power Cubementioning
The number of candidates who have a kinship with political and/or government entities in the 2020 Pilkada in Indonesia has shot up compared to the previous period, namely originally 59 candidates (2005-2014 period), 86 candidates (2015-2018 period), now 124 candidates (2020-2024 period). The research aims to identify the most dominating dimensions of power in kinship politics by using the power cube theory. In summary, the power cube theory analyzes the interaction of power in 3 (three) dimensions, namely levels, spaces, and forms. The method used is a quantitative method with analytical hierarchy process techniques to determine the criteria for the highest kinship politics and to determine the regions with the highest kinship political relations based on the criteria. Researchers identified the potential impact of kinship politics practice using descriptive qualitative research methods. The results of the study found a visible dimension in the power cube theory, namely that poor regeneration of political parties dominates the causes of kinship politics (73% of the criteria weighted results). The regions with the highest kinship politics based on the criteria for weak party regeneration were South Sulawesi (60.3%), followed by Sumatra (24.88%) and Java (10.07%). There are 5 (five) potential impacts of the practice of kinship politics, namely versatile coalitions, policies originating from elite compromise, marginalized crucial public issues, the birth of regulations that accommodate the interests of actors outside of government, and the declining performance of the bureaucracy in bridging the needs of the people.
“…By manipulating ETLs, political leaders could drive their nations through a path of autocratisation that revives personal rule. To track the diffusion of these institutional arrangements in sub-Saharan Africa during the third wave of democratisation and the subsequent regional record of autocratisation by ETL manipulation, this article rests on the new AETL dataset (Cassani, 2020). AETL covers forty-nine sub-Saharan countries and provide detailed information about ETL politics south of the Sahara, regarding both the adoption of these constitutional provisions and the ETL performance of each African leader.…”
Section: Patterns Of Etl Manipulation In Sub-saharan Africamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Regional-level comparisons are rare (Posner and Young, 2007; Reyntjens, 2016; Tull and Simons, 2017) and even more rarely do they rest on econometric modelling (Dulani, 2011; McKie, 2017). Using the new AETL dataset (Cassani, 2020), this article contributes towards filling this gap and presents new analyses on the factors that could influence a leader’s decision to manipulate ETLs and the outcome of an autocratisation by ETL manipulation strategy.…”
Section: Determinants Of Etl Manipulation In Sub-saharan Africa: An Ementioning
Besides the introduction of multi-party elections, the sub-Saharan wave of democratic reforms of the 1990s encompassed the introduction of limits to the number of terms that a chief executive can serve. Executive term limits (ETLs) are key for democracy to advance in a continent with a legacy of personal rule. However, the manipulation of ETLs has become a recurring mode of autocratisation, through which African aspiring over-stayers weaken executive constraints, taint political competition, and limit citizens’ possibility to choose who governs. This article presents a three-phase model of autocratisation by ETL manipulation and, using new data, offers one of the first regional comparative studies of ETL manipulation in sub-Saharan Africa that rests on econometric modelling. The analysis leads to revisiting some previous findings on the drivers of ETL manipulation and highlights the relevance of other previously underestimated factors that may either discourage a leader from challenging ETLs or prevent their successful manipulation.
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