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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Living the Transition. Political Transition and 'Democratisation': A Case Study on Rwanda
| Panel |
35. Reconstruction, Reconciliation and Development in the African Great Lakes Region
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| Paper ID | 438 |
| Author(s) |
Ingelaere, Bert ; Rafti, Marina
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | This paper analyses the trajectory of a political transition and its outcome. The Rwandan political transition serves as a case study to probe into normative assumptions pertinent to the 'transition paradigm' and the junction/disjunction with elite discourses, local realities and popular perceptions of the Rwandan political transition and 'democratisation' in particular.
Against the backdrop of a mutating international political context, following the collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989, domestic and international pressure pushed African authoritarian regimes to shift towards political liberalisation. Many transitions, particularly in divided societies, were drawn-out, in many cases concurrent with violent conflict. Emergent 'democracies' in Sub-Saharan Africa have tended to be merely nominal, or 'formal', lacking in democratic content.
The most influential literature on political transitions, also known as the 'transition paradigm', has conceptualised a theoretical framework based on the fundamental assumption that any country, which shifts away from authoritarianism is a country in transition to democracy. The setting up of the hypothesised new democratic regime is presumed to follow a precise political path (i.e. the transition): the breakdown of the authoritarian regime, the emergence of a democratic opposition, negotiations between the relevant social and political actors, the holding of elections, the enactment of a new constitution and the establishment of a new democratic institutional structure.
In our definition, a political transition is the interval between the demise of one political regime, in the course of which an interim (transitional, hence, provisional) regime is in place and that seeks to set up the arrangements that will install a new political regime. Attempting to tackle the inherent flaw of the democratic projection of the 'transition paradigm', we submit that possible outcomes of political transitions may be democratic, authoritarian, totalitarian regimes or hybrid forms of the three typologies.
We not only question the 'transition paradigm', but in so doing, we also attempt to bring into the transition thesis insights from popular perceptions and experiences that reveal what it means 'to live through a transition.' We therefore shed light on the changes in the (ethnic) perception of the legitimacy of consecutive Rwandan regimes and the experience of their performance in the domains of the economy, security, social cohesion and political representation through an analysis of over 500 in-depth life narratives and subjective well-being ranking exercises over time by the ordinary Rwandan peasant population.
We frame the findings of these life histories in the context of the overall trajectory of the political transition(s) in order to bring peasants back into the social and political processes of the state. Rwanda underwent a political transition between 1990 and 1994. As elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa at the beginning of the 1990s, Rwanda was governed by a (Hutu-dominated) single-party authoritarian rule. During the political transition the socio-political landscape was radicalised, culminating in the 1994 genocide and the subsequent military victory of the Tutsi refugee-led politico-military movement, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The war victors set up a new regime that ensured the RPF dominance in the post-genocide era.
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