Democratic and economic development will become sustainable in sub-Saharan Africa only with the emergence of coherent, legitimate, and effective states.
About the Author
Richard Joseph is John Evans Professor of International History and Politics at Northwestern University. He is the author of Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria (1987; reissued 2014). He is writing books on post-1975 Nigerian politics and society; and on governance, development, and the state in Africa.
On 9 December 2011, incumbent president Joseph Kabila was declared the official winner of the DRC’s deeply flawed presidential election, resulting in a legal president without legitimacy and an uncertain…
In the twenty years since 1989, acute excitement over democratic transition and consolidation gave way to symptoms of “democracy fatigue” and elite exhaustion; successful economic transition away from state socialism…
