Economic Change and Political Liberalization in Sub-Saharan Africa

In 1989, following the beginning of democratization in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe, a wave of political liberalization swept countries south of the Sahara. In Economic and Political Liberalization in Sub-Saharan Africa, Jennifer Widner brings together a distinguished group of scholars to examine the reasons for these tentative steps toward democracy in a context of poverty, highlighting the effects of economic crisis on demands for political reform. Combining broadly comparative, theoretical chapters with important case studies that offer new hypotheses for consideration, the book seeks to establish the nature of the relationship between the economic challenges of the 1980s and the steps toward greater political openness taken by governments at the end of that decade. Cases include Benin, the first African country to engage in political liberation in this period, as well as Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana and Cameroon.