Tyson's ECOWAS Occasional Journal - Politics in West Africa

  Here are some excerpts from my WaPo Monkey Cage post about Benin's election in April. Benin has become less and less democratic since Talon won the presidency in 2016.  Benin continues to slide toward autocracy Benin’s April 11 elections have many analysts increasingly concerned that the country is following a recent pattern of democratic decline in Africa. ... The details of Benin’s slide toward autocracy fit a distinct pattern outlined in “ How Democracies Die ,” a comprehensive analysis of how democratic underpinnings cease to function. Authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt point out that, unlike the dramatic revolutions or coups that once displaced democracies, in recent decades, democratic regimes tend to succumb via marginal changes, including “legal” reforms such as laws regulating elections and the media. Other political scientists refer to this process as “ authoritarianization .” Levitsky and Ziblatt identify four key indicators of authoritarian behavior, all o

In the 2019 legislative elections in Benin, a new electoral code and some decisions in the politicized bureaucracy and judiciary resulted in all opposition parties (and some pro-government parties) being disqualified from the ballot, so the only two parties to compete were two new pro-President Talon parties.  The 2020 municipal elections  did include one opposition party, the Forces Cauris pour un Bénin Emergent (FCBE), but they only won enough seats to control around 7 mayoral offices, and the new electoral code requires 16 sponsors (mayors or National Assembly delegates) to be qualify as a presidential candidate. So this seemed to be a block-by-block strategy to set up an effectively uncontested presidential election this year. 

You can read the whole thing at the Washington Post's Monkey Cage (someone at WaPo decided to anglicize the country's name). Here are a few excerpts: The challenges of the Ivorian 2020 elections have their roots in conflicts that began 30 years ago, when Ouattara and Bédié were rivals to succeed Félix Houphouët-Boigny , the country’s first president. ... The run-up to the 2020 presidential election appeared to promise further democratic progress, as continued economic prosperity laid the groundwork for stability. A new constitution adopted via a 2016 referendum removed the Ivoirité restriction and included a presidential two-term limit. In March, Ouattara made good on his promise not to seek a third term by designating Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly as the RHDP coalition’s presidential candidate. ...

After my post on president age , it struck me that in just 2 years, three of the 15 presidents ran for a 3rd or 4th term. That seems like a lot, since presidential term limits (usually 2) are one of the continent's democratic successes.  Presidential term limits are particularly important in "presidential regimes" in which the president is both head of state and head of government. In semi-presidential regimes , where the prime minister is head of government and answers to both the president and the legislature, presidential term limits might play a different role. The president is already constrained to a greater degree by the legislature, and prime ministers generally don't have term limits, so term limits on the presidency might not be as high-stakes.  So I thought it would be interesting to look at the status of term limits in presidential and semi-presidential ECOWAS countries separately. (There are currently no parliamentary regimes in the region.) Shugart and

Wow, I haven't posted on here about Togo since 2017 . That's not good! Since then, there have been 3 elections and a constitutional amendment. 

Whoever wins the US election in November and takes office in January will be the oldest president ever inaugurated. Trump was the oldest president to win a first term in 2016, and if he wins a second term he'll by 74 at his 2021 inauguration. If Biden wins, he'll be 78.  That's pretty old! But septuagenarian presidents are a common occurrence in Africa. When Robert Mugabe was forced from office at age 93 he was the oldest head of state in the world.  I posted the ages of all the presidents in ECOWAS countries two years ago. Five out of 15 were 70 years or older. Todd Moss and Stephanie Majerowicz of the Center for Global Development speculated that large gaps could lead to public anger, protests, and government turnover. We can test that hypothesis over the past two years. Below is the list from 2018; if the president hasn't changed I just posted the new age, and if he was recently re-elected. If the president did change, I post the new president with his new age, an