Democratic Experiments in Africa : Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)

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Summary: Is Africa undergoing democratization?
Review: Since independence most African governments have been, in the authors' words, authoritarian and "neopatrimonial". Why was there an outburst of democracy in these nations during the early 1990s, followed by a slide back toward authoritarianism? To answer this question, the authors survey democratization theory, and they compare the African experience to democratization in Latin America and Eastern Europe. The authors' answer to the above question, very simply put, is that beneath the appearance of democratization, all the structural sources of authoritarianism persisted -- and still persist today.