Accountable Government in Africa

Perspectives from public law and political studies

In the early 1990s, a wave of democratization swept the African continent, resulting in a flurry of constitution-making and constitutional revision which entrenched human rights and established various institutional mechanisms to hold governments to account. After two decades of constitutional changes and other developments affecting governance in Africa it is now time to take stock and assess to what extent accountable governance has taken root there. Combining insights from public law and political studies, this edited volume looks at various institutions and mechanisms of accountability - national prosecuting authorities, the judiciary, human rights commissions, political parties and informal mechanisms. It assesses their effectiveness in holding African governments to account and how these institutions themselves are being held accountable. The book brings together a number of leading experts in the fields of public law, political science and democratisation and presents new knowledge about legal and political developments in a number of African countries (South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana and Mali), knowledge that is relevant to the policy goal of developing and deepening democratic governance and accountable government on the continent.