A New Look at the Evidence

Two weeks before Rwanda's Dec 18, 2015 referendum on a constitutional amendment that would allow Rwandan president Paul Kagame to run for additional terms, EU High Representative Federica Mogherini declared: In countries that have consistently respected term limits and allowed for change, socie...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of democracy Vol. 27; no. 3; pp. 61 - 68
Main Author Reyntjens, Filip
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.07.2016
Subjects
Constitutional amendments
Constitutions
Democracy
Kagame, Paul
Kiir Mayardit, Salva
Legislatures
Mogherini, Federica
Presidents
Referendum
Term limitations
Term of office
Djibouti
Rwanda
Africa
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Summary:Two weeks before Rwanda's Dec 18, 2015 referendum on a constitutional amendment that would allow Rwandan president Paul Kagame to run for additional terms, EU High Representative Federica Mogherini declared: In countries that have consistently respected term limits and allowed for change, societies have become more resilient and institutions more credible. There are many examples of that on the [African] continent. This is an attractive assumption, and it is intuitively convincing. This subject has become increasingly topical, as a growing number of countries in Africa have scrapped term limits in recent years. In 2015 alone, the Republic of Congo and Rwanda introduced constitutional amendments to allow term-limited incumbents to run again, and South Sudan (where there are no term limits) extended President Salva Kiir's term by three years. Much has been written on presidential term limits -- why they are useful for democratic consolidation, where and why they have been introduced or abolished, and what impact they have had on the transfer of power.
ISSN:1086-3214
1045-5736
1086-3214
DOI:10.1353/jod.2016.0044