Consolidation of Authoritarian Regimes in Africa: The Discourse

What is common among authoritarian regimes is regime “survival in office”. Over the past two decades, authoritarian regimes have become commonplace in Africa. The central thesis is because regimes lack popular consent. Regime survival is a state project pursued through two principal instruments: Coercion, which is forcefully marginalisation and elimination of political opponents as well as emasculating the electoral process. Relatedly, is the application of co-optation, the transformation of opponents into supporters by means of corruption and clientelism as well as arm-twisting gatekeepers of the relevant sections of extant law? This panel seeks to interrogate why governments that emerged through the electoral process slide into autocratic regimes. Equally, there are high numbers of leaders that prefer to consolidate authoritarian regimes instead of democracy in Africa. By consolidated authoritarian regime, I mean political settings where autocrats deliberately thwart political competition and pluralism through widespread violations of basic rights, which closes off the space for opposition. Analysis of these un-democratic trajectories will entail the understanding of why both civilian and military autocratic cultures and regimes are at increase. Analysing what the absence of democracy means to the citizens is central if we have to find the right indicators for addressing autocratic regimes.