Research

Whether a Third Term, Whither Democracy: an analysis of Southern Africa April 7, 2006

Abstract: This paper seeks to enhance our understanding of democratization in Southern Africa through examining supports for and challenges to presidential term limits. Do presidential term limits matter? What happens to regimes that introduce and enforce presidential term limits, and what happens to regimes that successfully evade them? Controversial, indeed, to the founding political elites in Southern Africa, this example of political reform was established in order to end big man rule, provide greater electoral choice, and facilitate democratic transitions. Heralded by new democrats in countries including Zambia, Namibia, and Malawi, doors of democratization opened. Before long, however, this reform became undesirable and soon faced challenges as the new executive, since entrenched, sought, although ultimately unsuccessfully, to amend the constitution and overturn presidential term limits. Drawing on a literature including veto players, judicial politics, court legitimacy, and political survival, I seek to understand what winning coalition model, comprising necessary economic conditions, emergent social forces, and cooperation of political actors, combined to successfully constrain challenges by the executive to presidential term limits in Zambia, Namibia, and Malawi. I similarly consider the conditions under which a regime, examining Zimbabwe, has evaded presidential term limit constraints. Once this comparative baseline is established, my analysis examines survey and other data attributed to regimes that have enforced and that have evaded presidential term limits. Have presidential term limits contributed to democracy consolidation? Have real or perceived material benefits flowed as a result of presidential succession? Is the winning coalition likely to sustainable? Under what conditions would presidential term limits ever again be in jeopardy? Lastly, I analyze the significance of inter-party versus intra-party presidential succession on democratization, an issue that, having been observed in the cases of Zambia, Namibia, and Malawi, is of particular salience to observers of democracy in South Africa.

Hear my (faint) roar: small state diplomacy in Africa and the case of Zambia

Abstract: Achieving satisfactory resolution of intra-state conflict in Africa has long tested the capacities of individual African states. While the military intervention has frequently been applied by great and middle powers as a tool of statecraft to resolve conflicts in Africa, some small states, however lacking in their capability to or willingness to project military force, have spearheaded diplomatic initiatives to resolve conflict. Zambia during the 1990s played an instrumental role in mediating particularly contentious conflicts in Africa, punching above its weight as a small state to bring diplomacy to bear on long-standing conflicts in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This paper examines the effectiveness of African small state diplomacy as a means of resolving intra-state conflict in Africa, using Zambia as a case study for understanding when and whether diplomacy works best alone and when and whether it is best used in conjunction with other available tools of statecraft, particularly the military intervention.