The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance: Past, Present and Future

Abstract

This article traces a genealogy of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) and examines the charter's overall implementation. While there has always been a struggle between competing views of how to ensure more or less continental accountability for norms related to democratic governance in Africa, enforcement by the African Union (AU) has definitively become more robust since the ACDEG's adoption. The article argues that this development is observable in three trends: continental legalization, technocratization and judicialization of politics. It evaluates the growth of normative commitments in the field of democracy, elections and governance and their increasing consolidation into binding legal treaties; explores the increasing reliance on AU technical assistance in the implementation and interpretation of these instruments; and assesses the expanding role of continental and regional judicial bodies in enforcing commitments to democracy. Building upon a better understanding of these trends, the article identifies key contextual factors that will shape the ACDEG's future implementation.

The role of coups d’état in Africa: Why coups occur and their effects on the populace

“…The ACDEG, discussed in the previous section on its role in deterrence through the imposition of sanctions, also serves to deter coups by means of a legal accountability framework. The ACDEG has been implemented using three broad frameworks: legalization, technocratization and judicialization (Wiebusch et al., 2019). The judicialization framework allows aggrieved persons and civic groups to seek redress in the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR).…”

Revolutionary legality and the Burkinabè insurrection

“…Although the African Union's Malabo Protocol now treated ‘unconstitutional changes of government’ as a ‘core’ international crime – equivalent to genocide and crimes against humanity – it had still never sanctioned an incumbent for a ‘constitutional coup’ (Wiebusch et al . 2019: 19–20). Now opposition lawyers sought to use the few anti-incumbent provisions in the Charter for exactly this purpose.…”

The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance: Trends, Challenges and Perspectives

“…Their approaches reflected the need for creativity in overcoming the myriad challenges involved in adequately measuring and evaluating the influence of the ACDEG. Wiebusch et al (2019b), Niyungeko (2019), Kitene (2018), and Matlosa (2018b) traced the continental normative, institutional, and procedural expansion prompted by the ACDEG. Mangu (2018) assessed levels of co-operation among the implementation partners of the ACDEG.…”

“…The ACDEG followed a long series of continental debates and policy initiatives on how to improve democratic governance on the African continent (Wiebusch et al, 2019b). For example, the first continental condemnation of an unconstitutional change of government dates back to June 1997, when the Organization for African Unity (the OAU, the AU’s predecessor) at its meeting in Harare rejected the coup d’état against the democratically elected government in Sierra Leone.…”

“…Two special issues revisit legal (Wiebusch et al, 2019a) and governance (Cessouma, 2018; Matlosa, 2018a) implications of the ACDEG and future scenarios for its enforcement a decade after its adoption. The goal of these complementary special issues was to develop a more nuanced understanding of continent-wide democratic governance trends and to assess the prospects and threats to the ACDEG’s implementation from different theoretical, empirical, and country-specific perspectives.…”