POPULAR PROTEST AND POLITICAL REFORM IN AFRICA

This article analyzes the political protests which erupted through sub-Saharan Africa in the eighteen months following the collapse of the Berlin wall in November 1989 and examines subsequent government responses. A sample of thirty regimes is identified, of which about one-half experienced popular unrest and two-thirds undertook peaceful political reform by May 1991. Without rejecting standard structural and diffusionist explanations of protest and reform, the authors favor a contingent approach which emphasizes the resources available to government and opposition political actors as they jockey for power and legitimacy. The article concludes that recent political liberalization measures in African countries, though significant, fall short of a full transition to democracy.