The article provides a critical discussion of the literature on “patrimonialism” and “neopatrimonialism” as far as the use in Development Studies in general or African Studies in particular is concerned. To overcome the catch-all use of the concept the authors present their own...

The article provides a critical discussion of the literature on "patrimonialism" and "neopatrimonialism" as far as the use in Development Studies in general or African Studies in particular is concerned. To overcome the catch-all use of the concept the authors present their own definition of...

The article provides a critical discussion of the literature on "patrimonialism" and "neopatrimonialism" as far as the use in Development Studies in general or African Studies in particular is concerned. To overcome the catch-all use of the concept the authors present their own definition of...

The paper points out that there is hardly any research for the reverse transition, the transition from democracy to non-democratic regimes for more than 30 years. For heuristical purposes, it provides basic data of the decline of democracy, which refers to loss of democratic quality, changes...

Conventional wisdom holds that ethnicity provides the social cleavage for voting behav-iour and party affiliation in Africa. Because this is usually inferred from aggregate data of national election results, it might prove to be an ecological fallacy. The evidence based on individual data from...

Recent research on political parties and ethnicity has challenged the conventional wisdom about ethnicity as the major factor that explains voter alignment in Africa. The paper maintains that the cleavage model, although modified to include ethnicity, still provides heuristically the best...