The Institutional Transformation of Africa's Personalist Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda, and Uganda

This dissertation analyzes processes of institutionalizing authority in four African cases of Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda, and Uganda. Through within-case and cross-case comparative analysis, the study unravels the political underpinnings of institutional transformation and stagnation in contemporary Africa. It considers the role of coalition politics in explaining divergences in institutional outcomes through a paired comparison, starting from the assumption that almost all groups that militarily capture state power, whether by coup or guerrilla warfare, face a daunting legitimacy dilemma. Thus, they tend to seek coalitions with other social and political groups for practical and instrumental purposes. While some govern sustainably with more inclusive coalitions, others face the early collapse of the initial governing coalition. This leads to two paths and two sets of outcomes. On the one hand, broader and more inclusive governing coalitions produce relatively more functional decision-making institutions such as national legislatures and local councils. But such inclusive politics undermines decision-implementation or state capacity, owing to the demands and competing interests of different elite groups and their varied constituencies. Ghana and Uganda fall under this category of democratic institutionalization. By contrast, less inclusive ruling coalitions result in regimes that take the institutional trajectory of concentrated and less institutionalized decision-making procedures but which build more robust implementation/ state capabilities. By excluding some sections of the political elite classes, the ruling group monopolizes the political space and imposes its sociopolitical agenda. Ethiopia and Rwanda represent this case of authoritarian institutionalization. .