Managed pluralism is developed as an analytical lens for understanding how electoral competition is structured to preserve incumbent dominance without eliminating elections altogether. Rather than offering a descriptive case note, the manuscript situates electoral authoritarianism in Africa's hybrid regimes—focusing on institutional manipulation, coercion, and the survival logic of competitive autocracy—within broader debates on African political order, state formation, and institutional design. Anchored in the cases of Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, the study engages three interrelated questions: how hybrid regimes combine legal-institutional manipulation—such as boundary delimitation, electoral commission capture, and opposition registration barriers—with selective coercion to sustain dominance without full authoritarian closure; how donor-driven democracy promotion (including election observation, civil society funding, and conditionality) shapes incumbent adaptation strategies; and under what conditions competitive authoritarianism either consolidates further or liberalizes into genuine democratic competition. Methodologically, the study employs a mixed approach, combining cross-national analysis of electoral data (V-Dem) for 25 African states from 1990 to 2023, structured-focused comparison of Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, process tracing of incumbent survival strategies, and interviews with opposition actors and election observers. The central analytical contribution lies not only in explaining specific national or regional trajectories, but in clarifying the conditions under which formal institutional frameworks obscure deeper struggles over coercion, distribution, and recognition (Brownlee 2007; Carbone 2008; Cheeseman 2015). The manuscript concludes by outlining
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