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POLITICS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND GLOBALIZATION
Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, eds. Democratization In Africa: Progress and Retreat. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press and the National Endowment for Democracy, 2010. A Journal of Democracy book, xxvii + 360 pages. Figures. Tables. Maps. Index. $30.00. Paper.
How is Africa ruled? Better than before, according to Larry Diamond in his introduction. Of Africa's fifty-odd countries, twenty are now full-fledged "electoral democracies" and only Somalia and Swaziland have held wo competitive elections (x).
At the same time, many of these elections have been blatantly rigged and deeply flawed. Recently, there have been five outright reversals of democracy, and a large number of countries have very low levels of democratic quality; restricted freedom and political competition, widespread corruption and clientelism, and a "big man syndrome" prevail. Elections are becoming a means of power preservation in Africa.
Most of the individual chapters of this collection of twenty-four short essays were published in the Journal of Democracy between 2007 and 2009, and they fall into two categories. The introduction and the first...