Book Abstract
Reining In the Big Men: The Politics of Executive Term Limits
Under what conditions does the rule of law, especially with regards to the constraining of executive power, become institutionalized in newly liberalized countries where presidential authority has historically been greatly unchecked? This book challenges previous assumptions about the development of constitutionalism in democratizing countries by investigating the variation in the adoption of and later adherence to limits on executive tenure across sub-Saharan Africa. Finding traditional explanations regarding the level of democracy, international donor pressures, and historical precedent to be wanting, my research employs both quantitative medium-n analyses of potential variables and fieldwork-informed case studies of debates over presidential term limits in Uganda, Zambia and Cote d'Ivoire to investigate the conditions under which constitutional rules are able to successfully adjudicate executive behavior. I develop a model of actor decision making that probabilistically links the relative strength of the incumbent party vis-a-vis the opposition to the outcome of term limit choice due to elite perceptions of electoral uncertainty and its twin mechanisms of the threat of turnover and the probability of winning re-election under the banner of another party. This theory developed to explain the adoption of and adherence to term limits is then assessed to see if it also holds for 1) the choice of and adherence to other executive constraints in sub-Saharan Africa and 2) executive term limit debate outcomes in other liberalizing regions of the world, including Latin America and Central Asia.
Chapter-by-Chapter Book Summary
Chapter 1- Introduction
The introductory chapter outlines the central puzzle of the dissertation concerning the conditions under which executive power is likely to be either constrained or not constrained by constitutional law. Specifically, it focuses on the variation within sub-Saharan African nations with regards to the adoption, adherence and contravention of executive term limits. The analysis begins with a brief overview of the nature of executive power across sub-Saharan Africa since the Independence era. It then goes on to demonstrate that, beginning with the liberalization period in the early 1990s, there has been a high degree of variation with regards to both the adoption and enforcement of term limit laws. Next, a summary of the main argument is presented, which contends that constraints on executive power have a higher probability of being adopted and upheld in instances when the incumbent party’s power relative to the opposition is in decline, which makes the ruling party uncertain of its ability to retain power, and alternatively, that such constraints are not implemented and/or later lifted when the incumbent party is strong relative to rival parties and, therefore, no threat of replacement exists for the incumbent party. Once the argument has been stated, the chapter examines how this probabilistic theory linking relative party strength to constitutional choice and change speaks to the comparative literature on the development of a constitutional rule of law, the consolidation of democracy and the scholarship on the endogeneity of institutional choice. The chapter continues with a discussion of methods and case selection and then concludes with a brief summary of the remaining chapters.
Chapter 2- Whither Executive Term Limits: Modeling the Decision
The second chapter seeks to set the stage for the latter chapters by developing the theoretical model and fleshing out the key explanatory variables through a structured contingency approach that explores the micro-foundation of individual actor decision making within the structures (both formal and informal) that shape political competition in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, the chapter begins by examining the unique characteristics of African party systems and next delineates the actors involved in the decision and their preferences (both about the outcome and their individual action regarding the vote). Once these factors have been identified, a model of individual actor decision making is constructed that links perceptions of the strength of the incumbent party vis-à-vis the opposition to decision on term limits by three categories of actors- presidents, cabinet ministers and rank and file parliamentarians. The model identifies two mechanisms which directly link relative party strength to term limit outcomes: the threat of replacement and ease of switching parties that actors perceive. When combined with all actors’ penchant for re-election, these perceptions drive each actor’s preference for or against executive term limits.
Chapter 3- The Adoption of Executive Constraints
This chapter seeks to explain under what conditions sitting presidents and single-party legislatures would favor the adoption of executive term limits and under what conditions they would not implement such a constraint on executive power. After demonstrating how standard explanations of institutional design in new democracies, including pacting, international pressures and diffusion effects, do not sufficiently explain the pattern of term limit adoption across sub-Saharan Africa an argument linking relative party strength to term limit outcomes is proposed and a measure of party strength is assessed over a medium-n group of 25 sub-Saharan countries. Next, using the decision model developed in Chapter 2 as a starting point, the case of term limit adoption in Zambia is explored and contrasted with the case of Cote d’Ivoire where term limits were not adopted during the period of liberalization in the 1990s. The cases give further empirical evidence to the argument that the countries in which the incumbent party was uncertain about their ability to win the first multi-party election were more likely to adopt executive term limits than the countries where the incumbent party was able to control the transition to the extent that the chance of turn-over was low.
Chapter 4- Explaining Variation in Executive Constraint Enforcement
The forth chapter explores the pattern of term limit enforcement/contravention across sub-Saharan Africa through a medium-n quantitative analysis of country cases in which at least one president has reached the end of his two-term limit in office. The analysis is employed to investigate whether relative party strength also conditions term limit outcomes in this time period (as it did during term limit adoption) or if another explanatory variable is at play in this second time period (such as international donor pressures, economic performance under the incumbent, ruling party seat share in the legislature and the level of democracy in general, among others). Through both a difference of means test and a logit model, the analysis finds that relative party power is indeed the variable most closely correlated with term limit outcomes in this period just as in the previous time period, though the former colonial power is also significant as being a former French colony greatly increases the probability that a country will abolish executive term limits.
Chapter 5- Contravention of Term Limits- The Case of Uganda (please find a .pdf of the full text of this chapter at the bottom of this page)
This chapter and the following chapter (Chapter 6) take an in-depth look at African countries that adopted term limits in time period one (as examined in Chapter 3) at the moment when the first president is reaching the end of the constitutionally-mandated two terms in office (time period two). If term limit adherence is driven by high levels of political competition between parties of relatively equal strength (Chapter 4), then country cases in which term limits are lifted by incumbent parties should feature an incumbent party whose power is high relative to opposition forces. This proposition is investigated through a close case study of the “kisanja” debate in Uganda where the parliament did vote to lift executive term limits, leaving the door open for President Museveni to run for a third term in 2005. Based on interview data with cabinet ministers and parliamentarians and archival research, it is argued that low levels of electoral uncertainty is indeed the mechanism that leads to term limit contravention.
Chapter 6- Adherence to Term Limits- The Case of Zambia
This chapter primarily examines the case of Zambia in 2000-2001 were term limits were able to constrain the president, causing him/her to step down from office. Throughout the chapter, the aim is to flesh out the mechanism that links relative party power to the vote by parliamentarians to uphold the two-term limit provision, thus causing President Chiluba to step down. In the end, it is argued that continued high levels of electoral uncertainty, the same mechanism that drove the adoption of term limits in chapter 3, lead parliaments to uphold term limit laws even against their own incumbent presidents. As in the chapter on Uganda, interview data and archival documents are cited as evidence.
Chapter 7- Argument Extension and Conclusion
Finally, Chapter 7 uses both qualitative and quantitative data to assess the argument developed to explain the adoption and adherence to executive term limits against the contravention of other executive constraints across Africa and against the outcomes of challenges to term limit laws in other liberalizing regions such as Latin America and the Central Asian Republics. The chapter concludes with some notes on how the findings from this study inform a number of larger debates in comparative politics.