Analysis No. 192, August 2013 LEADERSHIP TURNOVERS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: FROM VIOLENCE AND COUPS TO PEACEFUL ELECTIONS? Giovanni Carbone Many African countries replaced their military or single-party regimes with pluralist politics during the early 1990s. This led to the introduction and regularisation of multiparty elections for the selection of a country’s president or prime minister. Of course, in many places, elections were not enough to start genuine democratization processes, as non-democratic rulers rapidly learned how to manipulate the vote and survive in the new political environment. Yet empirical evidence from our new “Leadership change” dataset – covering all 49 sub-Saharan states since 1960 (or subsequent year of independence) to 2012 – shows that elections did alter quite profoundly the way ordinary Africans can influence the selection and ousting of their leaders. Coups are now a rarer phenomenon, leadership turnovers have become more frequent, and peaceful alternation in power through the ballot box, if still uncommon, is part of a new political landscape. Giovanni Carbone, Associate Professor of Political Science, Università degli Studi di Milano ©ISPI2013 1 The opinions expressed herein are strictly personal and do not necessarily reflect the position of ISPI. The ISPI online papers are also published with the support of Cariplo The Arab Spring protests brought to the fore, once again, the issue of how to oust immovable authoritarian leaders. Tunisia’s Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali had been in power for 24 years. Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt for 30 years. Muhammar Ghaddafi reigned over Libya for 42 years, while Syrians are still to see the end of the 43-year long rule of the al-Assad family. As authoritarian repression and widespread corruption coupled with growing economic hardship, the politics of many Middle East and North African countries became potentially explosive, and a single spark triggered a string of popular protests that spread rapidly across national While pressures for borders. People insisted that their leaders go. In some countries they political change were managed to force out incumbent rulers, in some others they did not – or at redesigning least not yet. In the process, Arab protesters and reformers also demanded Mediterranean Africa, guarantees that, in the future, they would be in a better position to countries on the other side replace their leaders in case they do not perform, they rule too harshly, or of the Sahara were only they are simply disliked by the population. This called for the introduction marginally affected by the of truly competitive elections – an unrivalled mechanism for ensuring that events of the Arab Spring. political leaders can be ousted and replaced at regular intervals through This is partly because constitutional means. sub-Saharan Africans had While pressures for political change were redesigning Mediterranean already been through their Africa, countries on the other side of the Sahara were only marginally own season of political affected by the events of the Arab Spring. This is partly because reforms sub-Saharan Africans had already been through their own season of political reforms. Back in the early 1990s, a wave of political openings had been ignited by the same cocktail of authoritarian rule, predatory corruption and economic decline that was at work in the Arab world in 2011. In the space of a few years, single-party regimes and military rulers were replaced by pluralist political systems virtually everywhere in black Africa. Opposition forces were legalized, multiparty parliaments were established, independent courts, free media and civic associations were gradually allowed to emerge. At the heart of it all, elections began to be contested by competing candidates and political parties. Needless to say, while pluralist elections became the norm in sub-Saharan Africa since the 1990s, only a few countries actually satisfied internationally recognized standards of “democratic” rule. Yet, there is little question that the average degree of democracy in the region improved quite dramatically. The last decade of the twentieth century definitely marked a political watershed and, whatever the shortcomings of contemporary African regimes, they are generally much more open than they were 25 years ago. This is evident if we look at Figures 1 and 2, based on one of the best-known indexes of democracy. Out of scale ranging from - 10 (least democratic) to + 10 (most democratic), sub-Saharan countries 3 jumped up from a - 5.8 average in 1989 to + 2.5 in 2010 (Figure 1). While the latter score is still modest in absolute terms, the overall change marks ©ISPI201 a very impressive 8-point improvement. The watershed of the early 1990s 2 is quite visible from the graph. Similarly, if we single out states that are deemed democratic (i.e. scoring + 6 or more on the Polity2 scale, see Figure 2), their number as a share of all countries on the continent increased quite noticeably from less than 6.5% in 1989 to a peak of 45.8% in 2007, only slightly receding to 41.7% in 2010. More generally, the overall share of country-years that African states spent under democratic rule went up threefold, from 9.8% in the 1960-1989 period to 31.7% in the 1990-2010 period (Table 1). The widespread introduction and the centrality of multiparty elections in Africa’s reformed regimes supposedly altered the way politics is played out south of the Sahara. Competitive elections, in particular, are primarily a tool for the selection of a country’s political leadership. Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume that the way in which political leaders are selected and ousted in Africa was significantly adjusted after 1990. In a region better known for military coups, violent conflicts and irresponsible rulers, regular pluralist elections should have shaken up things. But do these assumptions and expectations correspond to political reality? How was the selection of leaders, their duration in power and the way they are replaced affected by the new electoral environment? Building on over two decades of evidence, we were able to construct a comprehensive “Leadership Change” (LC) dataset – covering all 49 sub-Saharan states since 1960 (or subsequent year of independence) to 2012 – to provide empirically-informed answers to this kind of questions1. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Figure 1 - Annual average degree of democracy (Polity2 score) for the region, 1960-2010 Source: author’s elaboration of data from Polity IV Project, www.systemicpeace.org 3 1 I am grateful to Anita Bianchi for assistance in data gathering and analysis and to Filippo ©ISPI201 Gregorini for data analysis. 3 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Figure 2 - Share of democracies (i.e. Polity2 ≥ 6) among sub-Saharan political regimes, 1960-2010 Source: Polity IV Project, www.systemicpeace.org 1960-1989 1990-2010 1960-2010 Democracy 9.8 % (115) 31.7 % (335) 19.9 % (454) Authoritarian rule 90.2 % (1063) 68.3 % (721) 80.1 % (1827) Total 100.0 % (1178) 100.0 % (1056) 100.0 % (2281) Table 1 - Percentage of country-years under democracy or autocracy (absolute values in brackets), 1960-2010 Notes: A country is deemed “democratic” when Polity2 is ≥ 6. Source: Polity IV Project, www.systemicpeace.org Political leaders in post-independence Africa Independent Africa has a record of long overstaying rulers. Omar Bongo, who led Gabon for 42 years up until his death in 2009, tops this special league. He is followed by Gnassingbé Eyadéma of Togo, who also died in office in 2005 after 38 years in power. In both cases, rule was so personalised that, after they died in office, the two presidents were quickly replaced by their sons Ali Bongo Ondimba and Faure Gnassingbé. As many as 34 African leaders ruled their countries for 20 years or more (Table 2 and Figure 3). Eleven of them remained in power for 30 years or more. Their rule stretched across profoundly different political eras. Mobutu Sese Seko, for example, took power in the Congo when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, and he was only ousted at the time of 3 Boris Yeltsin’s second term in post-Soviet Russia. José Eduardo dos Santos still rules Angola despite being inaugurated when Leonid ©ISPI201 Brezhnev was in the Kremlin. It may thus not come as a surprise that a 4 few post-independence African rulers – including Hastings Banda of Malawi and Francisco Macías Nguema of Equatorial Guinea – declared themselves “presidents for life”. Long stays in office also implied that the citizens of a few countries have hardly ever seen a leadership handover. This only occurred once, for example, in the entire independent history of Angola (1979), Cameroon (1982), Swaziland (1983), Gambia (1994) and Djibouti (1999). Zimbabwe, on the other hand, has been ruled by Robert Mugabe uninterruptedly since independence in 1980. The same goes for Africa’s most recently-born states, namely Eritrea (under Isaias Afewerki since 1993) and South Sudan (governed by Salva Kiir Mayardit since its founding in 2011). As of 2013, Africa still counted 10 heads of state who had been in office for at least two decades. Leader In power from/to Consecutive years in office Omar Bongo (Gabon) 1967-2009 42 Gnassingbé Eyadéma (Togo) 1967-2005 38 Josè Eduardo dos Santos (Angola) 1979-2013 (in office) 34 Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea) 1979-2013 (in office) 34 Félix Houphouët-Boigny (Cote d'Ivoire) 1960-1993 33 Haile Selassie I (Ethiopia)