Africa

Africa is characterized by hybrid ‘Westminster presidentialism’, electoral democracy, ‘big men rule’ and but also by a number of constitutional referendums The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) strategy papers (2003) and the African Union’s Charter (2007) highlight and recommend direct democracy instruments such as referendums and initiatives. The chapter analyses the legal framework and the implementation of referendums in francophone and Anglophone countries in Africa. Referendums were predominantly implemented at the national level. After independence, referendums were often used to support nation-building in the 1960s. The number of referendums was high with regime change and multi-party system in the 1990s but also with processes of democratic backsliding in the following years. Presidential plebiscites were the predominantly used form. These were frequently characterized by governmental control within de facto one-party systems in order to strengthen African (semi-) authoritarian regimes. In this context, direct democracy integrity was frequently compromised. Only sporadically referendums were used as an inclusive democratic instrument to strengthen democratization and to finalize conflict resolution.