The Leadership Factor and the Quest to Reform the African State

The early post-colonial era in Africa (1957-1990) presented national African leadership with unique challenges. The confluence of negative colonial legacies, cold war machinations, the proliferation of military coups d'etat, and vulnerability to external economic shocks increased risks to political leaders. Their response to these exigencies was a systemic inclination toward regime consolidation, monopolization of power and authority, and curtailment of political rights and civil liberties with the intent of preserving order and ensuring regime survival. Corresponding suboptimal economic policies, in many cases, served these political ends. One widely held assumption was that reforms, namely political and economic liberalization, were risky, and that political stability and order were preconditions for pursuing any other transformative agenda. Hence, the pursuit of reforms eluded many African leaders of the time. However, a few leaders defied this trend and broke from the status quo in undertaking liberalizing reforms. What explains their impetus for undertaking liberalizing reforms during this period of systemic power consolidation?;To investigate this question, I employed process tracing, cross-case analysis, and comparative historical analysis of the William Tolbert regime in Liberia, the Jerry Rawlings regime in Ghana, the Daniel Moi regime in Kenya, and the Julius Nyerere regime in Tanzania to determine the factors that have historically generated or inhibited political and economic liberalization in African states. Data were collected through content analysis and in-depth interviews with 60 former and current government officials knowledgeable of the decision making surrounding the reform process in their respective countries. I developed a theoretical framework to explain the variation in outcomes. The findings revealed that agential factors, particularly leadership values, principles, worldview, and political orientation, in combination with structural factors, play a significant role in explaining varying outcomes pertaining to reform. My contribution to the literature on African reform, which has focused overwhelmingly on structural and international factors, is my identification of the "leadership factor" as being a major driver of reform.