Tracks of the third wave: democracy theory, democratisation and the dilemma of political succession in Africa

The sweep of the third-wave moment of democratic impulses through Africa saw mass movements against authoritarian rule and the demand for liberalisation of political spaces. Ruling-group compromises and promises of democratisation diluted the fervour of this demand. Conservative interests captured the process by creating formal institutions of political competition but without corresponding necessary conditions for democracy. They set up regimes of political succession that rendered the political field a closed space. National trends in succession are linked to the discursive paradigm that underpins third-wave democratisation. Selected studies of succession in African states indicate trends towards illegitimate and unpopular self-succession, hereditary trends, the appointment of proxies and only a few instances of emerging liberal democratic regimes. The dominance of perverse third-wave trajectories in Africa points to the inadequacy of the minimalist epistemology upon which the idea of the third wave is based.