Nic Cheeseman

• Professor at University of Birmingham

Authoritarianism in Africa takes, and has taken, many different forms including one-party states, military rule, and personal dictatorships. This chapter highlights these variations, the different combinations of co-option and coercion they have given rise to, and how this helps to explain the stability and durability of authoritarian governance. T...

The general elections ✅ in South Sudan 🇸🇸 have been postponed to December 2026, leaving limited time to implement mechanisms needed to minimize violence 🕊️ and resolve conflicts. Building on the 2023 publication "How (Not) to Hold Elections in South Sudan", this analysis provides pragmatic strategies for fostering peaceful elections. Inspired by co...

This report aims to enable activists, civil society groups, policymakers, international donors, and researchers to better understand democratic resilience by: 1. explaining what democratic resilience is and why it matters; 2. providing guidance on the most effective ways to strengthen resilience; 3. communicating recent academic research findings...

Globally, climate change represents the most significant threat to the environment and socioeconomic development, endangering lives and livelihoods. Within the UN’s current 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), climate action is explicitly covered under Goal 13, “to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”. This perspective c...

Corruption is a “social bad” regularly linked to lower quality public services and falling public trust in government. It is, therefore, critical to tackle corruption to avoid democratic decay and a disenchanted citizenry. One strategy that has been used to do this is to try to shift public attitudes toward corruption through public awareness-raisi...

This guide is written for civil society groups, anti-corruption institutions, campaigners, practitioners, and donors. It draws on all of the key research that has been published to date to help them answer the following questions: Is a messaging campaign the best option for your project/strategy? What kind of messaging campaign would be most likel...

Counter-serious and organised crime (SOC) strategies often include an awareness-raising element. Such messaging aims to build support for counter-SOC efforts, and intolerance for organised criminal activity. However, a growing body of research suggests that raising awareness to ‘social bads’ like SOC may risk backfiring by encouraging pessimistic a...

Almost all anti-corruption drives contain an awareness raising element. However, recent research reveals that anti-corruption awareness raising messages can backfire by triggering a sense that corruption is too big of a problem to tackle, thus encouraging resignation rather than resistance. We advance this literature by exploring another potential...

In this introduction to the special issue, “Foreign Aid Withdrawals and Suspensions: Why, When and Are They Effective,” we both summarize the current state of the literature and outline a robust new agenda for studying aid suspensions and withdrawals. A common contribution of the papers in this special issue is that they emphasize that donors and a...

A pathbreaking introduction to the controversial, contested and deeply political topic of development. Written in an engaging and eminently readable style, leading authors invite readers to examine the political dynamics behind some of today’s most complex global issues, from rising inequality and social exclusion to the climate crisis. By confront...

The debate on the ‘perils of presidentialism’ has been raging for over 30 years and gone through at least three waves. It began with the influential work of Juan Linz and most recently has seen the emergence of a rich literature on coalitional presidentialism, which has demonstrated the capacity of presidents to manage fragmented multi-party legisl...

A report on the prospects for holding elections in South Sudan, and the challenges and trade offs that this will require.

Many civil society organizations (CSOs) are fighting for survival as governments introduce legislation to curtail their activities. This article examines how domestic civil society campaigns can persuade parliamentarians to reject ‘anti-CSO’ legislation. We employ pairwise comparisons in two regions – East Africa and Central Asia – as well as proce...

A review article of five books, and a new research agenda for understanding the political impact of urbanisation in Africa. The books are: Daniel E. Agbiboa. They Eat Our Sweat: Transport Labor, Corruption, and Everyday Survival in Urban Nigeria. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. 266 pp. List of Figures. List of Tables. Bibliography. Index....

Anticorruption awareness raising efforts are designed to encourage citizens to resist and report corruption but have been found to either not work or have unwanted effects—including increasing bribe payment. This article represents the first test of whether these efforts also undermine critical aspects of a society's social contract, namely, willin...

Gender-based violence (GBV) significantly and substantially threatens women's health. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing risks and patterns of GBV. The impact of COVID-19 on GBV is not inevitable, however, and can be mediated by the policies of governments. In this study we developed the Government GBV Response Index to systematically e...

Awareness-raising messages feature prominently in most anticorruption strategies. Yet, there has been limited systematic research into their efficacy. There is growing concern that anticorruption awareness-raising efforts may be backfiring; instead of encouraging citizens to resist corruption, they may be nudging them to “go with the corrupt grain....

A large literature has described the years after independence from colonial rule as a period of 'departicipation'. Africa's new rulers-whether driven by personal venality or a sincere commitment to nation-building-swiftly gave up on elections, or at best held elections that, by denying choice, left violence as the central dynamic of African politic...

This report addresses the rise of Shadow States in Africa, with case studies of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe as well as a comparative introduction by Nic Cheeseman. To do this it maps the emergence of shadow states – networks of unelected businessmen, civil servants, political fixers, and members of the president’s...

Politics in Africa is becoming increasingly contested. This is true both in terms of electoral politics, with the margin of victory of ruling parties falling in many countries, and in terms of the capacity of citizens to access diverse sources of information with which to hold their governments to account. In turn, the continent’s more authoritaria...

Democracy is one of the most contested words in the English language. In Africa, these complexities are compounded by the question of whether democracy is a colonial imposition. Cheeseman and Sishuwa provide a historiography of debates around democracy, track how these narratives have developed over time, and argue that there is widespread public s...

Small island states are much more likely to have democratic regimes than large continental states. This trend also holds across Africa, where the five island states with populations of 1.5 million or less are all rated at least “partly free” by Freedom House. In this article we explore what it is about being a small island state that might explain...

This book is the outcome of the sixth Stellenbosch Annual Seminar on Constitutionalism in Africa (SASCA). The theme of the seminar was ‘Democracy, elections and Constitutionalism in Africa.’ The participants examined how the fledgling foundations of African constitutionalism could sail through the stormy seas of authoritarian revival and prevent th...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

Do elections turn people into democratic citizens? Elections have long been seen as a way to foster democracy, development and security in Africa, with many hoping that the secret ballot would transform states. Adopting a new approach that focusses on the moral economy of elections, Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis show how election...

The COVID-19 pandemic poses major challenges for those charged with overseeing electoral processes, but the innovative ways in which practitioners are addressing these challenges indicate that elections can be safely held even under pandemic conditions. These innovations also represent opportunities for strengthening electoral practices and making...

Contrary to media depictions of sub-Saharan Africa, in many countries political change has tended to occur gradually. From 2015 to 2019, the general pattern has been for the continent’s more authoritarian states – such as Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, and Rwanda – to make little progress towards democracy and in some cases to become increme...

In this chapter, we examine the shift in presidentialism studies away from Linzian questions of conflict towards questions of coordination in executive-legislative relations. This change of focus has brought presidential studies into line with the research on parliamentary systems, generating a more unified literature on comparative executive polit...

Corruption has long been recognised as a significant challenge to sustainable development, both because it leads to the waste of public resources and because it can distort incentives for officials and citizens alike. The push to combat corruption has generally focused on either efforts to improve the enforcement of the rule of law by political lea...

How are social media and digital technology shaping elections? This question is more important than ever, yet few studies look at WhatsApp's impact on the political landscape—even in Africa, where it is the dominant messaging platform. This article combines a case study of Nigeria's 2019 elections with surveys and analysis from Ghana, Kenya, Malawi...

One factor seems to dictate the extent to which governments have been able to respond successfully to the COVID-19 pandemic: political trust. Trust in political institutions such as the legislature, executive branch, police, and courts, is commonly thought to shape both the stability and quality of democracy. In recent years, as populist leaders an...

The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Politics brings together leading scholars to provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource on African politics ever produced. In over 100 peer-reviewed entries, readers will find authoritative overviews of the key methodologies and approaches, as well as all of the major topics in African politics, one of...

Research on Kenya's 2013 elections has suggested that a "peace narra-tive" was deliberately promoted by an establishment elite to delegitimize protest and justify the use of excessive force. It has also tended to see the Kenyan case as exceptional and to assume that such a narrative was only possible because of the 2007/2008 post-election violence....

For more than seventy years, authoritarian rule was the dominant form of government in sub-Saharan Africa. Three-quarters of African states have experienced some form of one-party or military rule since 1945. Accessible and engaging, Authoritarian Africa: Repression, Resistance, and the Power of Ideas is the first book to examine this subject from...

For all of its dynamism, the Kenyan media has faced major challenges during the process of democratization. In 2007–08, when Kenya suffered widespread ethnic clashes following a controversial election, the mainstream media found that existing protocols were insufficient to manage their coverage of the political crisis. This chapter investigates the...

Analysis and discussion of the impact of WhatsApp on the 2019 Nigerian elections, including case studies of Oyo and Kano and an Executive Summary.

Under what conditions are term limits challenged and upheld? This chapter draws on a comparative analysis of Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia to address this question. I argue that three of the factors that are most commonly cited in the wider literature—the presence of natural resources, the quality of democracy, and the position of the international com...

Money for Votes: The Causes and Consequences of Electoral Clientelism in Africa. By Eric Kramon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 244p. $99.99 cloth. - Volume 17 Issue 2 - Nic Cheeseman

This briefing seeks to shed light on how we should interpret recent events in Zimbabwe by providing an overview of the key themes of the 2018 elections. In doing so, it highlights the rapidly shifting political playing field on which the new president found himself. In particular, we show that in an effort to legitimize his undemocratic rise to pow...

This article asks what Kenya’s 2017 general elections tell us about the capacity of a new constitution to reduce the stakes of political competition and prospects of political instability. Three constitutional changes are particularly important: the adoption of a 50% + 1 threshold for the presidential election; the devolution of power to 47 county...

Between 2015 and 2017 Africa witnessed an overall deterioration in the quality of political and eco-nomic transformation and governance. The magnitude of these changes was small, suggesting dem-ocratic difficulties rather than democratic collapse, but it is striking that every criterion of democracy – bar “political and social integration” – record...

Over 350 entries This new dictionary provides clear and authoritative definitions of terms within the fast-growing field of African Politics. It includes coverage of elections, parties, judiciaries, popular protest, gender relations, the politics of development, and Africa’s international relations as well as major events and figures within African...

In the face of considerable scepticism from some British commentators, elections by secret ballot and adult suffrage emerged as central features of the end of British rule in Africa. This article considers the trajectories of electoral politics in three territories – Ghana (Gold Coast), Kenya, and Uganda. It shows that in each of these, the ballot...

Digital technologies are increasingly used in elections around the world. Where the resources and capacity of the state are limited, some have argued that such technologies make it possible to rapidly “leapfrog” to cleaner and more credible elections. This article argues that the growing use of these technologies has been driven by the fetishizatio...

Democracy supporters face tough times. Authoritarian reversals across North and sub‐Saharan Africa, combined with a lack of progress in the Middle East and Central Asia, have dampened funders’ enthusiasm for the endeavour. To better understand these setbacks, we identify ten challenges in democracy support. These are the challenges of: (i) difficul...

An engrossing analysis of the pseudo-democratic methods employed by despots around the world to retain control. Contrary to what is commonly believed, authoritarian leaders who agree to hold elections are generally able to remain in power longer than autocrats who refuse to allow the populace to vote. In this engaging and provocative book, Nic Chee...

Political risks are inescapable in development. Donors keep them in check with a range of tools, but existing options provide little guidance about how political forms of risk can—or should—shape programme design. This paper presents a novel framework that offers practical guidance on how to think about and manage some of these risks. This is based...

In the 2017 Kenyan elections, voters simultaneously cast their ballots for Member of the National Assembly, Governor, Senator, Member of County Assembly, Women’s Representatives, and the President. Between 2015 and 2017 the Deepening Democracy Programme (DDP) channelled roughly £9 million from UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) in...

The historical literature on statebuilding in Europe has often portrayed a positive relationship between war, state making and long-term democratisation. Similarly, a number of large-n quantitative studies have concluded that war promotes democracy – even in cases of civil war. Against this, a growing area studies literature has argued that violent...

This book provides the first cross-regional study of an increasingly important form of politics: coalitional presidentialism. Drawing on original research of minority presidents in the democratising and hybrid regimes of Armenia, Benin, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Kenya, Malawi, Russia, and Ukraine, it seeks to understand how presidents who lack single...

This book provides the first cross-regional study of an increasingly important form of politics: coalitional presidentialism. Drawing on original research of minority presidents in the democratising and hybrid regimes of Armenia, Benin, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Kenya, Malawi, Russia, and Ukraine, it seeks to understand how presidents who lack single...

Historically, African political institutions such as constitutions, legislatures and judiciaries have been seen as weak and vulnerable to manipulation, leading some to claim that the continent is ‘institutionless’. However, recent developments including the consolidation of presidential term limits in a number of countries demonstrate that this dep...

A growing number of academics are engaging in collaborative research projects with development organizations and policy makers. Increasingly, this includes efforts to co-produce research, rather than simply share information. These new ways of doing research raise important ethical and practical issues that are rarely discussed but deserve attentio...

The question of whether formal political institutions such as the legislature, the electoral commission and the judiciary play a significant role in everyday political life is one of the most important debates in African studies. How we answer this question shapes not only our assessment of the prospects for democratic consolidation - which appear...

The thirteen chapters that make up this book have demonstrated the significance of formal political institutions for democracy and development in Africa. However, it is important not to exaggerate the extent to which African politics has changed. The reintroduction of multiparty politics did not represent a clean break from the authoritarian era an...

Providing a comprehensive and cutting edge examination of this important continent, Routledge Handbook of African Politics surveys the key debates and controversies, dealing with each of the major issues to be found in Africa’s politics today. Structured into 6 broad areas, the handbook features over 30 contributions focused around: The State Ident...

Africa is urbanizing at a remarkable rate, generating a host of new challenges for those in charge of its towns and cities. This paper assesses the potential for local and regional governments to implement innovative solutions to the demands of managing urban spaces through a case study of the much talked about case of Lagos state in Nigeria. Drawi...

Political economy comparisons of Kenya and Tanzania have often found the political salience of ethnicity to be far higher in the former than the latter, with a negative impact on intercommunal trust. This difference has tended to be explained on the basis of the different kinds of leadership that the two countries experienced after independence. Ho...

The presence at Uganda's 1980 general elections of a Commonwealth Observer Group might be seen as a seminal moment. This was the first formal international observation of polls in a sovereign African state and the precursor of multiple similar missions that later became routine. Yet the 1980 mission sits uneasily in the history of election observat...

Few scholars have taught us more about African voters, legislators, and legislatures than Joel Barkan. Drawing on Barkan’s analysis, the first part of this article argues that the African one-party state can be usefully viewed as a competitive-authoritarian system underpinned by a form of political linkage that allows for elements of coercion and c...

This book brings together essays that tackle the political aspects of development. It offers various explanations for variations in the pace and pattern of economic development across both time and space, focusing on a particular variable or set of variables such as civil conflict, natural resources, and regime type. The book traces the trajectory...

Kenya's March 2013 elections ushered in a popular system of devolved government that represented the country's biggest political transformation since independence. Yet within months there were public calls for a referendum to significantly revise the new arrangements. This article analyses the campaign that was led by the newly elected governors in...

Les élections mettent en jeu plusieurs types de représentations publiques de l’ordre, que ce soit durant les campagnes ou au fil des processus bureaucratiques entourant la tenue des scrutins. Cet article s’intéresse à un élément clé de l’élection, à savoir la culture matérielle du bureau de vote et les processus qui lui sont associés. Il en dissèqu...

Barrington Moore's famous line ‘no bourgeoisie, no democracy’ is one of the most quoted claims in political science. But has the rise of the African middle class promoted democratic consolidation? This paper uses the case of Kenya to investigate the attitudes and behaviours of the middle class. Analysis of Afrobarometer survey data reveals that the...

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 t...

In the months leading up to Kenya's general election in March 2013, there was much concern - both within Kenya itself and internationally - that political competition would trigger a fresh wave of ethnic violence. However, the 2013 elections passed off largely peacefully, despite an unexpected presidential result and fact that the losing candidate,...

At first glance, ethnically based and populist forms of mobilization appear to be contradictory and ultimately mutually exclusive phenomena. Appealing to voters on the basis of a shared sense of economic grievance against powerful or wealthy sections of society does not fit well with the emphasis on sectional divisions that is required to rally sup...

Having been declared the winner of the 2013 Kenyan presidential election, Uhuru Kenyatta pronounced the polls a ‘triumph of democracy’. But to many commentators they were anything but. Prior to the election localized violence undermined the willingness of citizens to engage in the political process in a number of areas. During the campaign, the Jub...

The Kenyan elections of 2007 and their violent aftermath inspired a burst of academic productivity, including a number of articles that have informed the pages of African Affairs over the past five years. Having told us much about the causes and consequences of what has become known as the ‘Kenya crisis’, this work also has a great deal to say abou...

The democratization literature has increased our understanding of the role of institutional variables in the study of democratic sustainability. Debates about the dangers of presidentialism have been central to this body of research. In more recent times the presidentialism literature has focused on the capacity of presidents to overcome the confli...