Paper short abstract:

Transition is too tightly conceptualised. Political change in Africa can be better understood if we reimagine transition as an analytical tool, drawing on earlier views from intellectual history. This enables seeing political change processes as open-ended, with their own seeds of transformation.

Paper long abstract:

Political change does not necessarily upend political order. There is order if the change that occurs conforms to already known forms of alteration, as facilitated by institutional arrangements and embedded in widely shared normative beliefs. So events considered to 'disrupt' that order, even if promising renewal, may simply cause reactions to the effect of maintaining it. And yet, some disruptive events do yield changes to norms and institutions. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is seen a momentous such event, triggering a re-introduction of the paradigm of 'transition' to label moves away from authoritarian rule, as seen across world regions. Thirty years on however, disillusionment with the results of these transitions, in Africa and beyond, has led to a search for new conceptual tools.

Drawing on Guilhot's (2002) history of the concept, this paper argues that transition, if re-imagined, remains useful to understand political change. In an early understanding, transition was open-ended: a stage in a process that came with its own seeds of transformation. But the idea of transition that took hold after 1989 assumed an orientation of the process of change, towards a specific model of society. This teleological view is still dominant, even as the presumed goal of liberal democracy remains elusive. The early view however saw transition beyond any telos, challenging linear and progressivist visions of history. This resonates with the open-ended nature of political change in early 21st-century Africa. Freed from any historical determinism, transition helps us to better grasp such change.

Paper short abstract:

Regimes frequently offer senior government positions as a means to mitigate threats and accommodate opposition movements. However, does the geography of protest affect regime strategies of accommodation? This question is explored through examining cabinets in multiple African states.

Paper long abstract:

Cabinet reshuffles are widely regarded as means to limit internal rivals and as a means to assuage public discontent. Leaders regularly appoint new government ministers, or dismiss the sitting ones, in an attempt to manage inter-elite relations or to accommodate the requests of popular protests. However, how variations in these threats dictate the breadth and depth of changes within the senior government remains unexplored. Focusing on public discontent, we argue that the geography of the protests can produce different government responses, ranging from absent or limited change in the ruling coalition to a full reshuffle or even the cabinet's eventual resignation. This theory is tested by examining how protest affects changes to the cabinet within and across several African states. The findings demonstrate that cabinet instability reveals the strategies by which regimes use accommodation in an attempt to ensure their political survival. Through this analysis, the article seeks to provide a more granular understanding of regime reactions to protests, and to also contribute to a growing focus on African executives.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to open up a new perspective on regime changes by comparing the Guinean transition (2008-10) and the Tunisian revolution (2010-11). It suggests a crystallization model of political change, focusing on disruptive political events and their transformational consequences.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to open up a new perspective on regime changes by comparing the Guinean transition (2008-10) and the Tunisian revolution (2010-11). Cognizant of the diversity of political trajectories, it suggests a crystallization model of political change (see Simondon 1989), a minimalist-universalist framework that focuses on disruptive political events and their transformational consequences. A framework for case studies and process-tracing rather than variable-based generalization, it breaks with both the classic transition paradigm and the subsequent scholarship on hybrid regimes. Its underlying quest is to better understand how an event can trigger dynamics that would have hardly been imaginable before the event. Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in Sidi Bouzid in 2010, which prompted the Arab Spring, or the 2009 massacre in Guinea on September 28, which profoundly internationalized the so-called transition and eventually led to the 2010 presidential elections, offer intriguing cases of such disruptive events, and invite the general question of how to interpret political order before its disruption in light of what happened after it. The paper considers the importance of social media technologies, global-local linkages of political change, and theoretically aims at bridging the divide between 'empirical' and 'constructivist' paradigms. In short, while disruptive events highlight the potential of 'objective' reality to disturb the political order, regime change also highlights the significance of (inter-)subjective imaginations of political transformation in the wake of such events.

Paper short abstract:

As political organized Arena, electoral process function as referee of this competition. The parallel is making between Cameroonian and Senegalese experiences of democratization by focusing attention on the capability of civil society to protect new game of legal and political rules.

Paper long abstract:

This paper verifies the generalized scientific opinion known in transition's studies that Democratization processes open authoritarian power to political change by renewal of ruling Elites and permits their connection to global challenge of Democracy. Our Hypothesis here is that if Democratization connects to this last, it can also disrupt because of the political weight of Civil Society on electoral process. The only insurance is that democratization permits the construction of an arena in which different organized pretentions supported by political parties are in competition to conquer or preserve power. This study shows that as political organized Arena, electoral process function as referee of this competition. The parallel is making between Cameroonian and Senegalese experiences of democratization by focusing attention on the capability of civil society to protect new game of legal and political rules. Senegalese experience permits to verify that civil society is a significant and determinant actor of electoral process when it is strongly structured and politically engaged. This singular political experience demonstrates that political empowerment of civil society functions as connection's weapon because it imposes democratic culture in authoritarian situation in transition. But, looking at Cameroonian trajectory one discovers that their weakness and political disengagement open the door to manipulation of electoral process and compromises democratic transition by renewal of ruling elites. When study Cameroonian experience, it appears that the political weakness of civil Society result to their relative emancipation and open the door to the abuse of power with consequence on the renewal of political elites.