May 30, 2014
Abstract:
Madagascar’s 3rd Republic (1992-2009) was classified
by Freedom House as "partly free" or electoral democracy. However,
instead of moving up to the status of liberal democracy (free), this
electoral democracy reverted to an outright autocracy in 2009, when
Andry Rajoelina, with the help of the military, overthrew the
democratically elected president Marc Ravalomanana. Madagascar’s
short-lived democracy reminds us of the importance of democratic
consolidation for the new democracies emerging from the "Third Wave" of
democratization. The purpose of this article is to identify the major
obstacles and challenges to democratic consolidation in a poor and
divided country, like Madagascar. Building on Larry Diamond’s three
generic tasks of democratic consolidation, this article finds that,
instead of consolidating, Madagascar’s electoral democracy actually
started to deteriorate in 2002, before its sudden death in 2009; and
that, among other factors, the major obstacle to democratic
consolidation was the ever-increasing power of the successive
presidents, who had been characterized as "Monarchic Presidents." In
line with these findings, the major challenge to democratic
consolidation in this country is to constrain the presidential power, in
order to make the president a "regular citizen," or at least a "first
among equal citizens," and not a "father-and-mother of the country."
Number of Pages in PDF File: 35
Keywords: Africa, Madagascar, democratization, democratic consolidation, Marc Ravalomanana, Andry Rajoelina
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2443658
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