Whether depicted as bloated, extractive, or remote from the lives of ordinary citizens, the African state is widely seen to lack the necessary capacity to provide for the physical and material security of its citizens or to command legitimacy. Yet scho …

The conventional view holds that most of Africa’s political parties are organizationally weak, with little grassroots presence. Yet few studies are based on systematically collected data about more than a handful of parties or countries at any given po …

Not only did the COVID-19 disease arrive on Africa’s shores (and at its airports) later than in Asia, Europe, and North America, but for months the numbers of infections and deaths also appeared to remain relatively low. As of early August, the contine …

Economic destitution – whether measured as the frequency with which people go without basic necessities or as the proportion of people who live on less than $1.90 a day – declined steadily in Africa between 2005 and 2015. However, the findings of Afrob …

The increasing threat to democracy from populist movements and authoritarian leaders occupies a prominent place in current political debate. Yet political scientists who study this question reach contrasting conclusions, often because they use differen …

More than half of all Africans today live in functioning multi-party electoral democracies that are demonstrably freer than the military or one-party regimes that previously dominated the continent. At the same time, the post-1990 gains that African co …

“Though Africa has recorded high levels of economic growth over the past decade, previous Afrobarometer surveys of citizens found little evidence that this growth had reduced levels of poverty in any consistent way. However, new data from Afrobarometer …

“This paper reviews longitudinal survey data on South Africa’s political culture produced by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (1994-1998) and Afrobarometer (2000-2011) and finds that while there are real problems with democratic citizenship …

“South Africa has seen a significant increase in the size of its black middle class in the post-apartheid period, but the attitudinal consequences of indicators of the middle class, as of 2011, are inconsistent and modest in size. While members of the …

Opinion surveys capture public perceptions. What are the key considerations when designing and implementing them in the APRM? All participating countries in the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) process have had to struggle with the long, complex an …

“This paper is part of a broader regional research exercise by the Southern African Migration Project (SAMP) designed to assess the emigration potential of final-year students across the region. The fundamental question addressed by the PSBS (Potential …

Lesotho citizens went to the polls to elect a new government acceptable to the great majority of its citizens in 2002. The fears of the ruling party and opposition were quieted by the elections and the installation of a more balanced parliament. The pr …

“Social scientists are only beginning to understand the range of potential impacts the HIV/AIDS pandemic may have on Southern African societies.However, the implications of the pandemic for the survival and consolidation of democratic government, in pa …