The politics of democratic regime legitimation in Benin: Institutions, social policy, and security

Since the 1990 wave of democratization which swept Africa, some countries have been more successful than others in overcoming decades of authoritarian rule, economic crisis, and ethnic and regional antagonisms. For new democratic regimes with norms and rules specifying political competition, participation, accountability and human rights, building political legitimacy is a fundamental requirement. Benin was the first African country to peacefully topple a dictatorship through a sovereign National Conference in 1990, and it has set a continental standard for successful democratization. This dissertation is an analysis of the work of constructing a legitimate democratic political order, and a case study of the changing terms, resources, and processes of internal and external democratic regime legitimation in a context of international systemic change, economic crisis, and politicized regionalism and ethnicity.;Legitimacy is characterized by interdependent normative, procedural and performance dimensions. Institutional design, social policy-making and domestic security are the empirical windows demonstrating the array of resources available to regime participants in the legitimation project. The Constitutional Court played a critical role in establishing the normative and procedural accountability of the president and legislature to the rules of the new constitution, displacing the military as historical arbiter of inter-institutional disputes. Systems of representation and decentralization are constitutionally open to continuing debate and reform, establishing a democratic outlet for addressing shifting ethno-regional conflicts. Education and health policy-making test all three dimensions of legitimacy as individuals look to the state to provide basic social services even as economic restructuring forces innovations demanding more local contributions, responsibility, and accountability. Relative success in the health sector contrasts sharply with continuing conflict over the role of the state in education.;Securing both public order and democratic and human rights norms has become a crucial test. The loss of authoritarian control, while diminishing human rights abuses, has weakened police capacity to maintain public order and provide for personal security against crime, local security organizations, and vigilantism. The tension between security and insecurity flows through each empirical window, and is the basis for reconsiderations of national identity integral to the legitimation process.