Introduction

Abstract

Some thirty years ago, Benin’s Conférence des Forces Vives de la Nation paved the way for the end of Mathieu Kérékou rule and inaugurated a new democratic order in country (Banégas, 1995; Bratton & van de Walle, 1997). The successful transition in Benin pioneered the wave of democratisation in Africa and the demise of formal one-party rule in most countries. In the backcloth of domestic and international pressures, incumbent authoritarian parties embarked in significant liberalisation reforms, from the early 1990s-on, leading up to landmark constitutional revisions, and the introduction of laws allowing the formation of political parties, and the realisation of multiparty elections, for the first time ever or in decades. By mid-1990s virtually all countries had organised a round of competitive multiparty elections (Bratton, 1998; Bratton & van de Walle, 1997).