Regimes in Tropical Africa - by Ruth Berins Collier (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Regimes in Tropical Africa: Changing Forms of Supremacy, 1945-1975 offers a comparative study of political transformation across twenty-six African countries in the critical decades from decolonization through the mid-1970s. Beginning with the postwar introduction of mass suffrage, competitive parties, and parliamentary institutions, the book shows how colonial rulers attempted to graft European democratic structures onto African societies. These institutions created opportunities for emerging elites to mobilize popular support but also generated risks of elite fragmentation and destabilizing demands. With independence, the mismatch between electoral democracy and the imperatives of elite consolidation led quickly to the dismantling of competitive institutions and the construction of new authoritarian orders.

Through careful analysis of colonial legacies, electoral systems, and the cohesion of nationalist elites, the study explains why some countries gravitated toward relatively unified one-party regimes while others fractured into unstable coalitions or succumbed to military rule. Elections, far from being abandoned altogether, often reappeared in controlled forms, serving to legitimate authority, manage pluralism, and reinforce supremacy. By situating African trajectories within broader debates on state, regime, and class formation, the book highlights how authoritarianism became a mechanism of elite consolidation in postcolonial contexts. The enduring takeaway is that regime change in Africa cannot be understood solely as the collapse of transplanted democratic institutions, but rather as the contested process by which new political classes fashioned durable, if limited, structures of rule.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.