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Anders Themner (ed.). Warlord Democrats in Africa: Ex-Military Leaders and Electoral Politics. London: Zed Books, 2017. 254 pp.
The editor of this book assembled chapters covering a very important political theme in post-Cold War Africa, roughly from the early 1990s to as recent as 2016. The contributors focus on sub-Saharan African countries that experienced civil wars, analyzing how the former warlords transitioned into civilian politicians under the democratic dispensation. Generally, there is an atmosphere of pessimism, about the prospects of democratization in the selected countries (DRC, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Liberia, Rwanda, Guinea Bissau, and South Sudan), particularly because of the practices of the former warlords, many of whom have continued to apply their wartime tactics even where ceasefires had been declared. Anders Themner describes such leaders as "Warlord Democrats" (WDs) or "Big Men," who have not been fully committed to the democratization process, both as individuals and through the weak and dysfunctional political and state institutions which they oversee (pp. 1-2).
The book's seven main chapters take the reader through various case studies of the so-called WDs, in each case the author(s) begins with a brief biographical account...