Time to go: Paths of term limit resilience in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Although term limit violation is a widely examined form of autocratisation in sub-Saharan Africa, this research focuses on the relatively understudied but increasingly frequent cases in which term limits prove resilient. We distinguish two forms of term limit resilience, namely, compliance and enforcement, and we offer the first regional-level study of its determinants using qualitative comparative analysis. We find democracy – that is, the factor that is often considered the strongest predictor of term limit resilience – to be decisive when term limits are threatened or likely to be threatened. However, other mechanisms resulting from the interplay of factors that can be present in both democratic and non-democratic regimes stand out for their explanatory power – most notably, path dependence, regime legacies and opposition. Conversely, factors such as the international promotion of democracy and military autonomy appear to play a secondary role, at least from a comparative viewpoint.