At the beginning of the twenty-first century, precarious statehood in Africa has once again become a severe problem. The dramatic failure of state functions, the disintegration and even collapse of states on this continent also has a pervasive presence in the scholarly literature. The basic thesis of this paper underlines a systematic link between the observed problems of statehood and the few successful democratic transitions in Africa. The fragile or idiosyncratic form of statehood in Africa is one reason for the lack of successful instances of democratization: the structural weakness of neopatrimonial states hinders successful democratization. The paper classifies the phenomena of precarious statehood with three categories introduced through the "apocalyptic triad" of statehood. It discusses various explanations for precarious statehood and the drama of its development and investigates the effects on democratization and consolidation of democracy.

Authoritarian regimes use multiple forms of international cooperation to sustain their rule. In scholarly research, however, the study of these phenomena has been marginal and still lacks conceptual clarity. This paper takes stock of these shortcomings and embarks on a review of the existing literature from democratization, diffusion, policy transfer and Euro‐ peanization studies. In doing so, it identifies a number of conceptual approaches whose in‐ tegration can provide a useful framework for the study of the international cooperation of authoritarian regimes. For this, the specific characteristics of nondemocratic rule need to be taken into account – from their preference of some forms of cooperation over others to practical difficulties for empirical fieldwork. Against this backdrop, we provide examples of different types of authoritarian cooperation and conclude by sketching a research agen‐ da that is as politically necessary as it is academically promising.

In the early 1990s most African countries carried out extensive reforms of their electoral regimes. Adopting a historical institutionalist approach, this paper critically examines the role of institutional path dependence in accounting for the setup of six African electoral regimes. For this purpose, we distinguish between different types of path dependence. The paper further analyzes the extent to which the development of electoral institutions con‐ tributed to the regime‐type outcome (democratic/hybrid/autocratic). The main emphasis herein is on so‐called “hybrid regimes;” in other words, regimes existing in the grey zone between democracy and autocracy. The paper finds that, while institutional path depend‐ ence has a limited but important impact on the setup of the electoral regimes, it is ulti‐ mately the process of decision‐making during critical junctures that accounts for the re‐ gime type outcome. Hybrid regimes lack long‐term institutional ownership.

Recent research has questioned the notion that ethnicity is the main determinant of party preference in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on data from representative survey polls in eight anglophone and francophone sub-Saharan countries, multinomial and binary logit regressions confirm that ethnicity counts but does not explain party preference as a whole. More importantly we find that the relevance of ethnicity varies substantially from country to country. Looking at possible effects, there is little evidence that ‘ethnicized’ party systems harm democracy; discussing possible structural, institutional and historical determinants of the role of ethnicity in party politics, tentative results suggest that specific integrative cultural features, low ethnic polarization, one-party dominance and a historical non-mobilization of ethnicity might thwart the politicization of ethnicity. Future research should focus on the interaction of several factors and how processes of ethnic mobilization evolve historically.

Historical institutionalism has been used to explain the emergence of democracy and dictatorship in various regions of the world, but not applied to political development in Africa. Based on the recently refined concepts of historical institutionalism, the aim of this study is to provide a framework for the analysis of the various regime types that have been established in Africa during the last two decades: democratic, hybrid and authoritarian. Surprisingly little effort has been dedicated to a historically grounded explanation of these regime types. Against a common claim that African politics is mainly driven by informal institutions or behaviors, we argue that an institution‐based examination of African politics is justified. We then provide a proposition of how to link up concepts of historical institutionalism with empirical cases in Africa, within a comparative approach. Our proposition for tracing specific development paths will not be based on the regimes as a “whole”, but on the deconstruction of a political regime into partial regimes and subsequently into selected formal and informal institutions. This will allow for an empirical analysis of the different components of a regime over long periods of time, and thus for path‐dependent analyses of regime development.

The paper points out that there is hardly any research for the reverse transition, the transition from democracy to non‐democratic regimes for more than 30 years. For heuristical purposes, it provides basic data of the decline of democracy, which refers to loss of democratic quality, changes from liberal democracy to hybrid and to authoritarian regimes, during the third wave of democratisation (1974‐2008). The stocktaking shows that most of the cases of decline refer to the change in and from young democracies established during the third wave, especially after 1989. Loss of democratic quality and hybridization are the most frequent cases of decline, while the breakdown of democracy has been very rare. Young democracies and poorer countries are more prone to decline than the older and richer cases – aside from a few remarkable exceptions. Finally, the overview argues that the research on the decline of democracy can benefit from the richness of the approaches of transitology, but should also avoid its methodological traps and failures, concluding with a number of suggestions for the future research agenda.

Generally speaking the effects of international political party assistance are viewed negatively or at least controversially. This study attributes some of the shortcomings of political party aid to the poor relationship between assistance providers and political science party research. They simply operate in different worlds. Party assistance lacks clear-cut concepts and strategies in practice, which makes it difficult to evaluate it adequately. At issue is its 'standard method', with its 'transformative' intention to change the party organization of the assistance receivers. At the same time, the scholarship on political parties can provide only limited help to assistance providers due to its own conceptual and methodological restrictions, such as the Western European bias of its major concepts, the predominance of a functionalist approach, and the scant empirical research on political parties outside Europe and the US. Taking a cue from recent political party research, we could begin to question the overarching role of political parties in the transition and consolidation process of new democracies. Other research findings emphasize the co-existence of different types of party organizations, and the possibility of different organizational developments, which might all be consistent with consolidating democracy. All this suggests abandoning the controversial transformative aim of political party aid.

Generally speaking, the effects of international political party assistance are viewed nega-tively, or at least controversially. This study attributes some of the shortcomings of political party aid to the poor relationship between assistance providers and political science party research. They simply operate in different worlds. Party assistance lacks clear-cut concepts and strategies in practice, which makes it difficult to adequately evaluate it. At issue is its “standard method,” with its “transformative” intention to change the party organization of the assistance receivers. At the same time, the scholarship on political parties can provide only limited help to assistance providers due to its own conceptual and methodological re-strictions, such as the Western European bias underlying its major concepts, the predomi-nance of a functionalist approach, and the scant empirical research on political parties out-side of Europe and the US. Taking a cue from recent political party research, we could begin to question the overarching role of political parties in the transition and consolidation proc-ess of new democracies. Other research findings emphasize the coexistence of different types of party organizations, and the possibility of different organizational developments, which might all be consistent with consolidating democracy. All this suggests the necessity of aban-doning the controversial aim of the “transformative impact” of political party aid.

SHORTER NOTICES - Democracy and Elections in Africa. By Stefan I. Lindberg. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii+227. £36.50 (isbn0-8018-8332-6); £16.50, paperback (isbn0-8018-8333-4). - Volume 49 Issue 1