Democratic Trajectories in Africa

Danielle Resnick is a Research Fellow at the United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). Her research focuses on democratization, political parties, voting behaviour, and the political economy of development in sub-Saharan Africa. She is the author of Urban Poverty and Party Populism in African Democracies (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). She received her PhD in Government from Cornell University in 2010 and previously worked at the World Bank and the International Food Policy Research Institute. Nicolas van de Walle is the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Government at Cornell University in Ithaca New York. He taught at Michigan State University from 1990 to 2004. He has published widely on democratization issues as well as on the politics of economic reform and on the effectiveness of foreign aid, with special focus on Africa. His books include Overcoming Stagnation in Aid-Dependent Countries (Center for Global Development, 2005), African Economies and The Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999 (Cambridge University Press, 2001), and Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspectives (with M. Bratton, Cambridge University Press, 1997). He is also the author of over a hundred journal articles, reports, and book chapters. In addition, Professor van de Walle has worked extensively as a consultant for a variety of international and multilateral organizations, including the World Bank, USAID, and UNDP. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1990.

Combining scholarly rigor with incisive policy analysis, the editors and their top-notch group of contributors skillfully dissect the effects of political and developmental aid on democratization in Africa. The examination of non-Western aid alongside Western aid and the rich country case studies are additional pluses. An invaluable, long overdue study, decisively filling a major gap in the literature both on African politics and on international aid.

• 1. Introduction: Why Aid and Democracy? Why Africa? ; 2. Democratization in Africa: What Role for External Actors? ; 3. Foreign Aid and Democratic Development in Africa ; 4. Foreign Aid in Dangerous Places: The Donors and Mali's Democracy ; 5. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Limits of Foreign Aid on Malawi's Democratic Consolidation ; 6. The Changing Dynamics of Foreign Aid and Democracy in Mozambique ; 7. Donor Assistance and Political Reform in Tanzania ; 8. Foreign Aid and Democratic Consolidation in Zambia ; 9. Beyond Electoral Democracy: Foreign Aid and the Challenge of Deepening Democracy in Benin ; 10. Ghana: The Limits of External Democracy Assistance ; 11. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations