Prempeh, H Kwasi --- "Constitutional autochthony and the invention and survival of “absolute presidentialism” in postcolonial Africa" [2013] ELECD 893; in Frankenberg, Günter (ed), "Order from Transfer" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) 209

Book Title: Order from Transfer

Editor(s): Frankenberg, Günter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781952108

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Constitutional autochthony and the invention and survival of “absolute presidentialism” in postcolonial Africa

Author(s): Prempeh, H Kwasi

Number of pages: 26

Abstract/Description:

The sheer breadth and reach of presidential power in Africa, as well as its highly personal character, has often caused scholars and analysts of African politics to look beyond the conventional vocabulary and typology in search of an appropriate descriptor. “Big Man rule,” “personal rule,” “presidential monarchy,” “neo-presidentialism” and, borrowing from Arthur Schlesinger Jr, “imperial presidency” are only a few of the many colorful names and epithets by which Africa’s one-man-dominated political and constitutional systems – what I refer to in this chapter as “absolute presidentialism” – have been called. The prevalence in post- colonial Africa of this form of rule, in which practically every state institution is subordinated to the dictates of the president, has been largely responsible for the popularity among Africanist scholars of neo-patrimonial and other personalistic theories and accounts of politics and political phenomena in Africa. How did absolute presidentialism become a defining and dominant feature of political and constitutional governance in postcolonial Africa? Why does it persist? Is the absolute president an authentically African form of rule, with roots in “African” culture? Or might it be a “foreign” borrowing? As a regime type, postcolonial Africa’s tradition of absolute presidentialism was constitutionally installed in the 1960s – the first decade of African independence. It was the centerpiece of a series of constitutional and legislative changes introduced by postcolonial Africa’s new leaders soon after the dust of decolonization had settled.