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"Democratization Benin."
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Benin: A Strong Court Falling Victim to Its Achilles’ Heel
This contribution examines the evolution of the Constitutional Court of Benin (CCB) as a critical guardian of constitutionalism, political stability, and human rights in the context of Benin’s democratic transition following the 1990 Constitution. Next to actively defending the constitutional order and being resilient against executive overreach, the CCB also expanded its authority by amending the constitution to address anticipated threats to democratic principles. However, vulnerabilities in its institutional design, particularly concerning the appointment procedure and terms of office, rendered it susceptible to political manipulation. These design flaws were compounded by public mistrust of constitutional reforms, thwarting efforts to rectify these shortcomings. 25 years after its inauguration, the CCB was co-opted by political elites, culminating in its diminished efficacy. Despite this decline, the CCB’s early legacy and its partial safeguards offer valuable lessons for constitutional resistance and resilience.
Journal Article
Democracy, Development, and Disintegration
This study seeks to explore the relationship between democracy and development and disintegration in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). This idea is borne out of the recent withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger from ECOWAS. The three countries were suspended by the organization for their failure to uphold the tenets of democracy as entrenched in Article 1(a) of the ECOWAS Protocol. There now exists a schism in the organization. The study argues that mandating the practice of democracy as suggested by the foreign powers is not enough. Why force democracy on member states and ignore the fact that these same countries are in fact part of the least developed among the countries of the world? The study is guided by the democratic peace theory. Secondary sources such as books, journals, policy guidelines and internet materials are employed. The study finds out that the sub-region has been fraught with political instability, and the lack of socioeconomic integration and development even as members of a common subregional arrangement. The study therefore recommends that, rather than outright sanctions that may further result in disintegration, alternative diplomatic measures be enforced to ensure a synchronization of democracy, development and cooperation in ECOWAS.
Journal Article
Party Systems and Decentralization in Africa
What explains when and to what extent central governments implement decentralization? By centering on the strategic incentives that follow from the particular configuration of
competitiveness and party system coherence
, we propose a theory that can begin to explain the divergent outcomes in the many forms of decentralization initiated across Africa. This explanation for the extent to which robust decentralization is implemented over time suggests two counter-intuitive findings. First, authoritarian regimes may decentralize further than democratic ones, given the incentives to the hegemonic party where such reforms are initiated. Second, highly fragmented and deeply localized polities may decentralize most minimally, even where there is a broad consensus about the desirability of such reforms. We provide a first test of the theory through a comparative analysis of over a dozen countries, focusing on process tracing for Ethiopia, Botswana, Ghana, and Benin.
Journal Article
State of government accounting in Ghana and Benin: a “tentative” account
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the state of government accounting in Ghana and Benin using neo-patrimonial and organizational façade lenses.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used two country case studies that engaged with stakeholders including donors, civil society, politicians, and civil servants. Semi-structured interviews were used as the main data collection technique, which were complemented by document analysis.
Findings
The study finds that government accounting reforms are decoupled and used in both countries as a façade which is caused, to a varying degree, by indigenous neo-patrimonial governance traits of informal institutions, patronage, and clientelism. And despite the relatively superior Ghanaian system, in terms of its functioning, compared to the Beninese, government accounting plays a more symbolic role in the former than in the latter.
Originality/value
This is one of the very few theoretically informed empirical studies that examine the state of government accounting in the two major African settings – Anglophone and Francophone. The results inform policies more tailored to indigenous governance issues for better outcomes.
Journal Article
Sustaining and jeopardising a credible arbiter
Democracy greatly benefits from credible courts. If context conditions make democratic consolidation unlikely, as in many African countries, credible arbitration between political actors can be essential for democracy. This article argues that informal judicial networks can critically affect a court’s credibility. Network analysis of Benin’s Constitutional Court using original data on major politicians and all 25 judges who have served between 1993 and 2018 provides evidence that biased judicial networks can jeopardize the crucial role of courts for democratic consolidation. In Benin, the loss of credibility under the Yayi presidency correlates with a clear political representation bias on the constitutional bench whereas sociocultural representation remained balanced. Since executive and legislative appointment practices account for the network balance or bias, the political creation and privation of informal judicial relations emerges as an interesting avenue for studies of democratic consolidation.
Journal Article
A missing link? Elite factionalism and democratization in Africa
This article integrates the dynamics within authoritarian elites into analysis of democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa. This variable has been excluded from nearly all analysis on the subject. Based on a comparison of three cases, this article concludes that only in cases where popular mobilization was accompanied by deep divisions within the ruling coalition did democratization ensue. The division of the authoritarian coalition in Benin and South Africa created a window of opportunity which enabled pro-democracy forces to push through democratic reforms. Furthermore, only when a majority of the authoritarian elite in South Africa favoured negotiations with the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid political organizations did the transition towards democracy in South Africa make any progress. In contrast, in the Togolese case, a united ruling coalition precluded any reform that would have challenged its political hegemony.
Journal Article
Does democratisation foster effective taxation? Evidence from Benin
Fiscal sociology has alleged the existence of a mutually reinforcing effect between the emergence of representative government and effective taxation. This paper looks at Benin, a low-income country that successfully democratised in the early 1990s. It finds that Benin appears to have reinforced its extractive capacities since democratisation. However, the effect of democratisation has been indirect, while the influence of the International Financial Institutions (IFI) and the size of the country's informal sector have played a more direct role. Nevertheless, the hypothesis that effective taxation is based on a quasi-consensual relationship between the state and the taxpayers finds some confirmation.
Journal Article
POLITICAL OPENNESS IN POST AUTHORITARIAN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA (SSA)
Approaches that treat all countries as fundamentally similar provide only limited insights into the variations in democratic experiences. This article attempts to start filling in this space. In doing so, the approach (following Englebert and Boduszynski and Diamond), is to first classify all sub-Saharan African countries into sets of political regimes by looking at their democratic performance over the 1985-2010 period. The authors then review the degree to which dominant modernization and Modem World System theories account for differences among these categories. The findings of this article suggest that most of the conventional variables, particularly of the modernization type, do not adequately explain the divergent processes of democratic consolidation in each country because they place too much emphasis on internal affairs, societal pressures, and developments within the nation-states themselves. Instead, the degree to which an African country is tied politically, economically, and socially to western countries and western-led multilateral institutions is a crucial factor in explaining democratic success or failure.
Journal Article
Democratic contestation on the margins
This edited volume adds to the growing body of knowledge on democratic and authoritarian regimes in sub-Saharan Africa, expanding the analysis to countries that have, to date, received scant attention. The authors examine democratic contestation in six countries as well as explanations for their trajectories.
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