The Institutionalization of Political Power in Africa

On 16 May 2006, after months of intense and divisive national debate, the Senate of Nigeria rejected a bill which would have changed that country’s constitution to permit President Olusegun Obasanjo a third term in office. By asserting the supremacy of the constitution (with its two-term limit) over the desires of President Obasanjo’s supporters that the popular leader be permitted to run for a third term, the Senate’s vote marked a watershed in Nigeria’s political history. As important as the outcome was the way in which the conflict was resolved— by the votes of duly elected legislators rather than through force or the threat of same. Given that Nigeria’s First and Second Republics (1963– 66 and 1979–83) were overthrown by military coups, the settlement of this political struggle via the Senate chamber rather than the gun barrel represents a major shift in the way that decisions over executive tenure in Nigeria have been made. Both the outcome of Obasanjo’s third-term campaign and the process through which it was reached signal a growing trend in sub-Saharan Africa: The formal rules of the game are beginning to matter in ways that they previously have not. Scholarly and popular writers alike have traditionally depicted Africa as a place where formal institutional rules are largely irrelevant. Although every African country has a constitution as well as a body of laws and administrative procedures that place formal limits on executive power, the long-held consensus among observers has been that these rules play little role in actually constraining leaders’ behavior. This view is reflected in the “personal rule” or “Big Man” paradigm that has dominated the study of African Daniel N. Posner is associate professor of political science at the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) and author of Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa (2005). Daniel J. Young is a doctoral candidate in political science at UCLA and is finishing a dissertation on political parties in Africa based on fieldwork in Malawi.