Type of Document	Dissertation
Author	Papé, Marc Adoux
URN	etd-05022006-111252
Title	Hopes and Impediments for a Democratic Transition in Africa: The Case of "Francophone" West-Africa
Degree	Doctor of Philosophy
Department	Political Science, Department of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Hee Min Kim Committee Chair Antoine Spacagna Committee Member Dale L. Smith Committee Member Damarys Canache Committee Member Scott Flanagan Committee Member
Keywords	Democratization in Africa French-Speaking Africa Francophone Africa Democratic Transition
Date of Defense	2005-05-27
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract ABSTRACT The research question that the present project intends to wrestle with is to determine the causes of the long survival of authoritarian rule in post-colonial Francophone West Africa (FWA). The answer to that question should enlighten us on the related causes of the democratic transitions under way in the region since the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Assuming that the same causes produce the same effects, we should explain both the long survival of authoritarianism and the transition towards democracy by using the same explanatory variable(s) for the countries of our theoretical universe. The dissertation is not pretending to shed new light on the theories of democracy and its processes, nor to generate a brand new original hypothesis about democratization, but to bring new eyes and to raise new questions in the application of existing theories to Francophone West Africa, an often-neglected area of our Comparative Politics discipline. Most specifically, it builds on the “neo-patrimonial” conceptual and analytical framework provided in the pioneering work of Michael Bratton and Nicholas Van De Walle (1997) to provide a systematic account of the dynamics and outcomes of regime transition in Francophone West Africa from the late 1980’s through the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the process, it refines the hypothesis of the link between “democratic transition” and “neo-patrimonialism”, and it takes stock of the literature on the conceptualization of “democratic transition”.
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