Big Men’ Rule

Presidential Power, Regime Type and Democracy in 30 African Countries

Bibliographic Data

ID7279729
AuthorsOda Van Cranenburgh (corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume15
Issue5
Pages952-973
Publication date2008-11-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDemocratization (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1351-0347 • E-ISSN: 1743-890X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13510340802362539
OpenAlexW2136663329
LanguageEN
Citations received39
References cited2

This article provides a systematic overview of the institutional basis of presidential power in 30 sub-Saharan African countries, using a broad comparative scheme to assess presidential power developed by Siaroff (2003). The dual purpose is, first, to compare the power of African presidents to patterns found by Siaroff for countries worldwide, looking particularly at the relation between regime type and presidential power; and second, to make a preliminary analysis of the political consequences of high levels of presidential power in the light of earlier theoretical claims associating it with regime problems such as democratic breakdown. The article's comparative framework illustrates the high levels of institutional power of presidents in 30 African countries. As argued by Siaroff, regime type tells us little about presidential power; in these African cases, semi-presidential systems score even higher than presidential systems. One 'parliamentary' system also shows a high degree of presidential power. Moreover, there is very little difference in presidential power between democracies and non-democracies, and 'minimal' electoral democracies score higher on average than non-democracies and liberal democracies. Examination of the consequences of high levels of presidential power also shows that more than a quarter (28.6 per cent) of such regimes experienced a democratic breakdown, although this is not a statistically significant level. A weak correlation is found between presidential power and freedom and democracy ratings, again not at a statistically significant level, while correlations with governance ratings are strong and statistically significant. A repeated measures test, however, does show a statistically significant relation with freedom and democracy. Although more research is needed, including a larger N and more variation in the independent variable, the evidence supports intuitive knowledge: a high degree of presidential power bodes ill for democracy and good governance in Africa. Keywords: African presidentialismpresidential powerAfrican regime typesdemocracygood governance Acknowledgements I wish to thank Heleen Palmen for her assistance in the research for this project and Frits Meijerink for his methodological advice. I also thank the participants of the Panel on Presidentialism (Robert Elgie, Jorge Gordin, Kathryn Hochstettler and Detlef Nolte), ECPR General Conference, Pisa, Italy, 6–8 September, 2007), for their useful comments. Notes See Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). Other influential studies on personal rule are Goran Hyden, No Shortcuts to Progress: African Development Management in Perspective (London: Heinemann, 1983) and Richard Sandbrook, The Politics of Africa's Economic Stagnation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). See Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 253 and 259–60; Michael Bratton, 'Second Elections in Africa', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1998), pp 21–37, and Nicolas van de Walle, 'Presidentialism and Clientielism in Africa's Emerging Party Systems', Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2 (2003), pp 297–321. See Oda van Cranenburgh, 'Power and Competition: The Institutional Context of Multi-Party Politics', in M. Salih (ed.), African Political Parties: Evolution, Institutionalization and Governance (London: Pluto Press, 2003), pp. 188–207. For the weakness of parliaments see Peter Burnell, 'Legislative-Executive relations in Zambia: Parliamentary Reform on the Agenda', Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2003), pp. 47–68, and the volume edited by M.A. Mohamed Salih, African Parliaments: between Governance and Government (New York: Pallgrave and MacMillan, 2005); for the power of former presidents, see Roger Southall and Henning Melber (eds), Legacies of Power: Leadership Change and Former Presidents in African Politics (Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute, 2006). See Alan Siaroff, 'Comparative Presidencies: The Inadequacy of the Presidential, Semi-Presidential and Parliamentary Distinction', European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 42 (2003), pp. 287–312. Shugart and Carey argued that rather than the presidential system, it is high presidential power that causes regime problems. See Matthew Soberg Shugart and John Carey, Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 38–43 and 157. For example, three francophone African countries are former Belgian colonies, and anglophone Liberia was not a British colony. Among the anglophone countries included in this study, Namibia did not experience direct colonial rule by Britain; however, through South African rule the same political legacy was transmitted to Namibia. Maurice Duverger, Échec au Roi (Paris: Albin Michel, 1978). See Shugart and Carey (note 6), p 23 and Matthew Shugart, 'Semi-Presidential Systems: Dual Executive and Mixed Authority Patterns', French Politics, No. 3 (2005), pp. 323–51. See Robert Elgie, 'The Classification of Democratic Regime Types: Conceptual Ambiguity and Contestable Assumptions', European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 33 (1998), pp. 219–38 and his 'Variations on a Theme', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 16, No. 3 (2005), pp. 98–113. See Maurice Duverger (note 8). See J. McGregor, The Presidency in East Central Europe (RFE/RL Research Report), Vol. 3, No. 2 (1994), pp. 23–31; Timothy Frye, 'A Politics of Choice: Post-Communist Presidencies', Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 30 No. 5 (1997), pp. 523–52 and Joel Hellman, 'Constitutions and Economic Reform in the Post-communist Transitions', East European Constitutional Review, Vol. 5 (1996), pp. 46–53 and Christian Lucky, 'Table of Presidential Powers in Eastern Europe', East European Constitutional Review, Vol. 3–4 (1993–1994), pp. 81–94. See Shugart and Carey (note 6). Metcalf noted that the scheme often skipped from a score of 1 to 3 and amended that problem by adding intermediate scores. See Lee Kendall Metcalf, 'Measuring Presidential Power', Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 33 No. 5 (2000), pp. 660–85. The fundamental methodological problem remains that the intervals between the values they assign are uneven, which makes it methodologically problematic to sum values. These electoral outcomes are extensively analysed in Shugart and Carey (note 6). See Siaroff (note 5), p. 305. After completion of this research two additional Type 5 regimes exist since Kenya and Zimbabwe instituted a premier. Both countries score 8 for presidential power, raising the mean score for this type to almost 8. Arend Lijphart's analysis also shows that no democratic country conforms completely to the majoritarian model with high power concentration. See Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). According to Freedom House, to qualify for electoral democracy, a state must have satisfied the following criteria: a competitive, multi-party political system; universal adult suffrage for all citizens (with exceptions for restrictions that states may legitimately place on citizens as sanctions for criminal offences); regularly contested elections conducted in conditions of ballot secrecy, reasonable ballot security, and in the absence of massive voter fraud, and that yield results that are representative of the public will; significant public access of major political parties to the electorate through the media and through generally open political campaigning. See http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=351&ana_page=333&year=2007. The criteria for a fuller liberal democracy are taken from Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Towards Consolidation (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 10–11. See in particular Juan Linz, 'The Perils of Presidentialism', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1990), pp. 51–71, and Arend Lijphart, 'Constitutional Choices for New Democracies', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1991), pp 72–85. See Shugart and Carey (note 6), p. 157. Andreas Schedler coined these captive terms in 'What is Democratic Consolidation?', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1998), pp. 91–106. Bratton (note 2). For freedom ratings, see www.freedomhouse.org; Polity IV ratings are available at www.cidcm.umd.edu/polity/data; for governance indicators see Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi, 'Governance Matters V: Governance Indicators for 1996–2005', World Bank Policy Research Working Paper (September 2006), available at www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance. Zambia's temporary move out of the category of electoral democracy may be a severe test of breakdown, considering that in this period a restriction on presidential terms was formulated preventing the incumbent to run again in 2001. I owe this point to one of the referees for this article. There are two more cases of democratic breakdown among the 30 African countries which occurred before the current constitution came into force, i.e. Niger 1996 and The Gambia 1994. If we assume presidential power to be constant and include these two cases the percentage would rise to 38.1 per cent, but it is still not statistically significant. Additional informationNotes on contributorsOda van Cranenburgh Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Leiden University

Democracy · Development economics · Economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Presidential system · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Local Government Finance and Decentralization · Political Conflict and Governance

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub