This book offers a systematic account of political regime changes in Africa, 1990–94. Through it, we hope to reinsert the study of African politics into the mainstream of comparative political analysis, from which it has been marginalized for too long.

In many respects – empirically, theoretically, and methodologically – scholarly studies of democratization have yet to become fully comparative. Empirically, entire world regions are excluded: Whereas most contemporary studies of democratization focus on Latin America or Southern Europe and latterly on Eastern Europe, Africa has received far less attention. In this book, we examine experimental efforts to install democratic regimes in Africa in the early 1990s. Although many of these experiments did not succeed, the opening of authoritarian regimes did mark the return of politics to the continent, a break-through welcomed not only by African citizens eager to exercise long-denied civil rights but also by political scientists anxious for something consequential to study in Africa. At its most modest, this book seeks to fill an empirical gap by chronicling African efforts – in all their initial euphoria and subsequent disillusionment – to displace incompetent dictatorships with accountable forms of government.

At a more ambitious level, we wonder whether widely accepted bodies of theory on the breakdown of authoritarian regimes and the global wave of democratization are useful in interpreting recent political trends in Africa. Although scholars of democracy have devised concepts that travel quite well, African experiences challenge some aspects of regime transition theories.