Explanations of regime change in Africa

Academic literature often tends to explain drastic political changes, like a leader’s removal, by focusing on the characteristics and impacts of critical junctures. An example of such work is ‘coup politics’, which explores the conditions and immediate logistics that lead to the forceful removal of a leader. The existing scholarship tells us that coups are relatively rare, and especially so amongst established leaders (Albrecht 2015; Singh 2014; Svolik 2009). Yet, modern regime changes are increasingly deviating from typical coup dynamics (Souaré 2014) and displaying irregular patterns (Geddes, Frantz and Wright 2018). Yet the form of irregular replacement and power seizures from within are underspecified. If coups no longer follow the patterns of a standard military takeover, and often do not remove the regime but simply the leader, what facets of coup literature remain as useful to explain modern regime change? Further, outside of these variations in form, the literature on coups emphasizes the minutia of coup strategy, but is silent on what happens in its aftermath. This implies that the ‘moment’ is somehow suspended within the political environment, changing everything but with little reference to the regime politics that created its conditions.

Another body of literature highlights the revolutionary function of social movements, and their transformative impact on regime change (Carothers and Young 2015; Yarwood

2016). This thesis is summarised by Hollyer, Rosendorff and Vreeland, who argue that

“the collapse of autocratic regimes is often brought about through large scale mobilization and collective action by elements of the populace” (2014: 764). In elevating the role of protest movements as catalysts of political change, these arguments resonated widely in relation to the 2011 Arab uprisings, where mass protests are said to have caused the collapse of regimes across the region (Asseburg and Wimmen 2016; Khatib 2013; Ishay 2013). These cases, however, do not seem to suggest that the organised opposition and the public have had more relevance in bringing about a leader’s removal and determining the political trajectory of a state, than senior domestic elites (Albrecht and Ohl 2016;

Barany 2011). Despite this reality, the role of protestors and civil society has been pushed as the key factor of change in several cases across the African continent, including both Sudan and Algeria (African Business 2019; Kushkush 2019; Welborn 2019). Again, the presence and magnitude of protests is neither a necessary nor a sufficient factor in explaining the likelihood of regime change. If it did, we would expect far more regimes to integrate civil society into new dispensations, and significant change in the composition, policies and politics of subsequent governments who submit to popular will.

There is little evidence to believe this has happened either in the Arab spring cases, or in the recent transitions across Africa.

A third debate arises from the ‘transitology literature’, which interprets regime change as evidence of a trajectory towards or away from supposedly democratic or autocratic models (Dresden and Howard 2016; Geddes 1999; Huntington 1991; Lührmann and Lindberg 2019). Inspired by the political transformations ushered in after the end of the Cold War, this body of work explains regime changes as either a transition towards Western-style democracies, or an inverse backsliding into authoritarianism. These arguments presume a teleological trajectory from one regime to another, interpreting political changes in either direction as an oscillation towards ideal-typical regimes. In contrast, failure to consolidate new regime practices is evidence of continuity. Often coupled with an emphasis on democratic practices and democratisation (Hall and Ambrosio 2017), the specifics of regime change are dismissed in favour of the number and quality of political junctures such as elections, without reference to the composition, politics and perseverance of elites and their manipulation of institutions (Magaloni 2006;

Blaydes 2010).

While they single out key political processes, these frameworks fail to situate the occurrence of regime changes, public protests and regime transitions within a state’s political environment. These approaches instead explain change by “chasing events, rather than explaining or anticipating them” and subsequently categorise these events as ideal-type examples or deviations (Hale 2005: 134). This has led to misinterpretation of important dynamics within regimes that precede and follow regime crises. In particular, we suggest that the changes occurring after a leader’s removal are slight but significant:

far from constituting a revolution of the existing political order, the alterations in elite jostling, leadership, senior composition and agendas are fundamental to understanding the future actions and stability of subsequent governments.

During recent removals across Africa, neither the ‘coup’, ‘protest’ or ‘transition’

frameworks explain the activity that preceded and followed the leader’s removal. In Zimbabwe and Sudan, Mugabe and Bashir, respectively, reshuffled frequently in the months before their removal. They sought to shore up their political leverage by securing the loyalty of subnational elites, rather than appealing to public support. They both vacillated between emphasizing inclusivity and loyalty to placate the elite class, not the public. In Algeria and Sudan, robust public protests did not result in producing democratic breakthroughs, nor in ‘authoritarian backsliding’ (Dresden and Howard 2016; Lührmann and Lindberg 2019). Sudan, in particular, integrated civil society elites but significant political power remains in the hands of former loyalists of Bashir.

But these removals did have several common elements, including the structure, incentives and behaviour of the authoritarian elite that spurred these regime changes. The most senior elites who conspired to overtake leaders established a ‘dictatorship by committee’

before moving onto stages of purging and brutal selection. The results across all three states are volatile transitions oscillating between the entrenchment of new leaders and senior elites, the degradation of governance institutions, and limited openings of the political space.

We argue that insights from the political survival literature offer a more coherent narrative for explaining change as a component of the overall political cycle. In particular, a common misperception of African polities is that a single leader – a ‘big man’ – orchestrates a hierarchical patronage network of elites who exploit, suppress and extract from citizens, while not subject to any external constraints (Kuran 1991; Tullock 1987;

Wintrobe 1998). When these leaders are replaced, so too are their ‘networks’. However, modern African autocracies have institutions that restrain the ‘tyrannical’ tendencies of any single ruler, and regulate competition among regime insiders more so than from external and opposition elements (Boix and Svolik 2007; Heydemann 2007; Levitsky and Way 2002, 2010).

In such systems, the power structure requires constant strategic manipulation and management because the survival of the leader is dependent on the willingness of those around them – his ‘rival allies’ – to support continued rule. In other words, regime elites are the foundation of the incumbent’s political survival (Raleigh and Dowd 2018). In turn, leaders privilege two practices: spreading power around to keep it, and co-opting enough of the ‘right’ elites to sustain a mutually beneficial commitment (Bueno De Mesquita et al. 2003). This framing emphasizes that power is transactional, and that the relationships between the leader and elites determines the level and distribution of power to be shared (Bove and Rivera 2015; Van De Walle 2007). Yet the practices of power require great dexterity and political flexibility by leaders and senior elites: a leader’s elite management strategies to arrange association, loyalty, and alliances are variously illustrated in the work of several scholars as ‘political bargaining’, ‘political calculus’, ‘ethnic balancing’, and ‘political marketplace’ (Arriola 2009; Benson and Kugler 1998; De Waal 2015;

Goldsmith 2001; Lindemann 2011b; Svolik 2012). Each detail how leaders accommodate powerful elites and communities, who in turn leverage their local influence for rewards and recognition by regimes. Failure to consolidate, centralisation and accommodate power between powerful elites will create opportunities to remove a leader (Geddes, Frantz and Wright 2018).

Rather than debating whether a revolution or no change is the result of a regime crisis, we argue that this moment reboots a cycle of elite dissension and consolidation. It creates a reconfiguration of power structures in which members of the former regime assume new roles, and integrate new elites to build legitimacy. Following the fall of a long-term leader, remaining senior elites then cooperate, consolidate, and curtail each other’s power.

The result is a volatile, unstable, and autocratic structure which creates incentives for future factionalisation.