Roughly 30 years after Africa’s encounter with the third wave of democratisation and 20 after the publication of Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle’s seminal book Democratic Experiments in Africa, Jaimie Bleck and van de Walle now take stock of a quarter-century of multiparty elections on the continent. Their main observation is that regular elections have been institutionalised in sub-Saharan Africa by becoming “the default option of politics” (6), but that this development has also not resulted in the consolidation of democracy. Instead, “most African political systems continue to be characterized by abuses of power and a less-than-stellar respect for the political rights of citizens” (5). The authors consider this “continuity in change” the core puzzle to be addressed by their book. It is organised into eight chapters. After the introduction of the “Puzzle of Electoral Continuity” (chapter 1), the authors provide an overview of the “Evolution of Electoral Competition” (chapter 2) and then analyse the “Impact of Elections on Democracy” (chapter 3). Subsequently, they turn to more specific issues and examine political parties (chapter 4), candidates, and their electoral campaigns (chapter 5), the specific issues raised during presidential campaigns (chapter 6), and the “African Voter” (chapter 7), before they finally draw together their conclusions (chapter 8). Bleck and van de Walle call in their analysis on an extensive literature review, as well as on empirical data. The latter comprises overview data for the African continent on issues such as the evolution of electoral competition or the Facebook usage of presidential candidates, as well as more in-depth data on eight countries: Benin, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia. The selected countries are meant to cover different regions, colonial legacies, and levels of democratic consolidation. In addition, they embed their analysis in empirical illustrations from across the continent. In the first chapter, the authors explain the lack of democratic consolidation despite the holding of over 500 multiparty elections on the national level since 1990 by way of two major factors. First, presidentialism prevails formally as the dominant system of government and informally through clientelistic networks. The incumbency advantage that stems from this largely unchecked presidential power prevents the emergence of Africa Spectrum 2019, Vol. 54(3) 282–284 a The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0002039719887977 journals.sagepub.com/home/afr

中文翻译：

---

书评：1990 年以来非洲的选举政治。变化的连续性

在非洲遭遇第三波民主化浪潮大约 30 年后，在迈克尔·布拉顿和尼古拉斯·范德瓦勒的开创性著作《非洲的民主实验》出版 20 年之后，杰米·布莱克和范德瓦勒现在对过去四分之一个世纪的多党选举进行了评估大陆。他们的主要观察是定期选举在撒哈拉以南非洲已经制度化，成为“政治的默认选择”（6），但这种发展也没有导致民主的巩固。相反，“大多数非洲政治制度的特点仍然是滥用权力和对公民政治权利的尊重不足”（5）。作者认为这种“变化的连续性”是他们的书要解决的核心难题。它分为八章。在介绍了“选举连续性之谜”（第 1 章）之后，作者概述了“选举竞争的演变”（第 2 章），然后分析了“选举对民主的影响”（第 3 章）。随后，他们转向更具体的问题，考察政党（第 4 章）、候选人及其竞选活动（第 5 章）、总统竞选期间提出的具体问题（第 6 章）和“非洲选民”（第 7 章） ，在他们最终得出结论之前（第 8 章）。Bleck 和 van de Walle 呼吁对广泛的文献综述以及经验数据进行分析。后者包括非洲大陆关于选举竞争演变或总统候选人 Facebook 使用等问题的概览数据，以及关于八个国家的更深入的数据：贝宁、加纳、肯尼亚、莫桑比克、尼日利亚、塞内加尔、乌干达和赞比亚。选定的国家旨在涵盖不同的地区、殖民遗产和民主巩固程度。此外，他们将他们的分析嵌入到来自整个大陆的实证插图中。在第一章中，作者通过两个主要因素解释了尽管自 1990 年以来在全国范围内举行了 500 多次多党选举，但缺乏民主巩固。首先，总统制作为政府的主导系统正式盛行，并通过客户网络非正式盛行。源于这种基本上不受限制的总统权力的在职优势阻止了《2019 年非洲频谱》卷的出现。54(3) 282–284 a 作者 2019 年文章重用指南：sagepub。