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Leverage and linkage: how regionalism shapes regime dynamics in Africa

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Abstract

Differences in African regime dynamics are clustered in sub-regions and thus might not be driven entirely by domestic variables such as the coercive capacity of states or the cohesion of ruling parties. The main argument of the paper is that leverage by regional organisations and by regional hegemons as well as specific types of regional linkages matter for domestic political developments. There is huge variation in terms of the competencies of regional organisations to influence democratisation processes, a varying availability of hegemons to enforce regional democratic standards and varying degrees of leverage vis-à-vis member states, which partly explain the regional patterns of regime dynamics. In the African context regional linkage is important in explaining how leverage is used by regional organisations and hegemons.

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Notes

  1. For a more detailed account of the different trajectories of African regimes cf. Bogaards (2013).

  2. For more contingent political reasons some countries have overlapping memberships and belong to more than one organization (Herbst 2007).

  3. The island state of Sao Tomé and Principe is much closer politically and geographically to Southern Africa, and has remained an outsider within ECCAS.

  4. It is strange that one of the four components measuring linkage (of inter alia African and Asian states) to the West is “membership in the Organization of American states or potential membership in the EU” (Levitsky and Way 2010, p. 375). It is no surprise, then, that all states with high linkage belong to these two areas (with the single exception of Taiwan).

  5. Western leverage is actually a poor explanation for democratization, because in Africa much of Western leverage was rather directed towards strengthening supposedly apolitical concepts of good governance, and technocratic and modernising forms of authoritarian rule, as seen in the strong support for the regimes of Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda (Booth 2011; Kelsall 2013).

  6. For a similar argument about state elites’ political culture cf. Taylor and Williams (2008).

  7. Data on GDP come from the World Bank (2014); data on armed forces are based on the Military Balance 2014.

  8. Zimbabwe is not an exception because the regime has clearly tried to stay in power within the boundaries of constitutional rule, even if this constitution may have become a hollow document.

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  1. Institute of Political Science, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

    Christof Hartmann

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Hartmann, C. Leverage and linkage: how regionalism shapes regime dynamics in Africa. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 10 (Suppl 1), 79–98 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-015-0258-5

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