Changing the Rules: Institutions, Party Systems, and the Frequency of Constitutional Amendments in Africa

Abstract

What factors influence constitutional stability in the emerging democracies of Sub-Saharan Africa? This is an important question that has never been addressed in a systematic cross-national study of Africa's emerging democracies. Using the Comparative Constitutions Project dataset and our own original dataset for veto players and party systems, we examine the influence of veto players and party system characteristics on the frequency of constitutional amendments in the electoral periods between 1990 and 2020 in forty-one African countries. Our results provide broad support for the veto players theory. More specifically, we find that as the number of actors needed to approve of a constitutional amendment increases, the likelihood a constitution will be amended decreases. The strength of party veto players also influences whether a constitution is likely to be amended. Furthermore, our results underscore the importance of party system characteristics in influencing amendment frequency.