Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failures, and the Struggle for Political Reform (New Approaches to African History)

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic Cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.

• Boko Haram (Ohio Short Histories of Africa)
• Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change (African Arguments)
• Inside African Politics
• States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control - Second Edition (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics)
• Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa
• The Mayor of Mogadishu: A Story of Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia
• Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present
• Muslim Societies in African History (New Approaches to African History)
• Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (New Approaches to African History)
• Institutions and Democracy in Africa: How the Rules of the Game Shape Political Developments