Commonwealth & Comparative Politics

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Democratic backsliding in sub-Saharan Africa and

the role of China’s development assistance

Steve Hess & Richard Aidoo

To cite this article: Steve Hess & Richard Aidoo (2019) Democratic backsliding in sub-Saharan
Africa and the role of China’s development assistance, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics,
57:4, 421-444, DOI: 10.1080/14662043.2019.1646008

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14662043.2019.1646008

Published online: 03 Oct 2019.

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COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS
2019, VOL. 57, NO. 4, 421–444
https://doi.org/10.1080/14662043.2019.1646008

Democratic backsliding in sub-Saharan Africa and the

role of China’s development assistance
Steve Hessa and Richard Aidoob
a
Department of Political Science, Transylvania University, Lexington, KY, US; bDepartment of
Politics, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC, US

ABSTRACT
The article observes 19 hybrid regimes in sub-Saharan from 2005 to 2014 and
examines the influence of each country’s level of economic development,
short-term macroeconomic performance, and ratio of Chinese to Western
official financing on the trajectory of its political development, with some
regimes making improvements in the quality of democratic governance,
others backsliding into greater authoritarianism, and still others remaining
largely stable. The study suggests that while Western leverage might have
been influential in the democratic development of observed hybrid regimes,
it could have been counterbalanced by the presence of alternative Chinese
foreign assistance.

KEYWORDS China; Africa; democracy; development; economic development; development assistance

Introduction
Writing in the Journal of Democracy in 2015, Larry Diamond noted that in
every year from 1975 to 2006, the observed number of democracies in the
world had either increased or held constant. This upward trend, however,
stopped in 2006 and has since showed signs of reversal – a pattern
Diamond labels as the ‘democratic recession’ (Diamond, 2015, p. 141; Levitsky
& Way, 2015, p. 45). Freedom House’s more recent 2018 Freedom in the World
data supports this trend, finding that the percentage of countries rated as
‘free’ declined from a peak of 46.6 per cent in 2007 to 45.1 per cent in
2017, while the proportion of ‘not free’ countries increased from 22.3 per
cent in 2007 to 25.1 per cent in 2017 (Abramowitz, 2018, p. 4). The report
also suggests that the number of countries experiencing declines in aggre-
gate freedom scores has exceeded the number showing improvement for
each of the last twelve years (Abramowitz, 2018, p. 8). An alternative
measure, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project’s Liberal Democracy
Index (LDI), finds that while the level of global democracy remains near its

CONTACT Steve Hess shess@transy.edu

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
422 S. HESS AND R. AIDOO

historical high, ‘more countries experienced significant democratic backslid-

ing than improvement over the last five years,’ suggesting that overall,
global democracy has receded to its levels from ten or fifteen years ago (Lühr-
mann et al., 2017). Similarly, the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index
(BTI) has also recorded a modest global decline on its Democracy Status
measure from 2006 to 2016 (Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index
[BTI], 2016), while the global average on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s
Democracy Index has seen an overall decline from 2006 to 2017 (Economist
Intelligence Unit, 2018). According to Diamond (2015, p. 144), global shift
could be related to several constituent patterns: signs of deconsolidation in
established democracies, the stabilisation and entrenchment of fully authori-
tarian regimes, and the slowing of democratisation and rise in backsliding
among hybrid or partially democratic regimes. This article examines the
latter phenomenon – that of democratic backsliding, which Lust and
Waldner (2015, p. 2) define as ‘a deterioration of qualities associated with
democratic governance within any regime; it is a decline in the quality of
democracy, when it occurs within democratic regimes, or in democratic qual-
ities of governance in autocracies.’
To explore the phenomenon of democratic backsliding, this article exam-
ines all nineteen sub-Saharan African (SSA) regimes classified as ‘partly free’
in Freedom House’s 2005 Freedom in the World report: Burkina Faso,
Burundi, Congo (Brazzaville), Djibouti, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Guinea-
Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria,
Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia (Abramowitz, 2018). As of
2005, these regimes met the basic criteria of ‘hybrid regimes’ as described
in Diamond’s 2002 essay; they embraced the ‘form’ of electoral democracy,
holding regular, competitive and multiparty elections but failed to meet inter-
national standards for the ‘substance’ of democracy Diamond (2002, pp. 21–
23). In such regimes, a degree of multiparty competition and uncertainty
about electoral outcomes is present. The electoral process is flawed, distorted
by the incumbent party’s manipulation and misuse of government resources;
its, surveillance and intimidation of opposition activists, journalists and civil
society actors; its formal restrictions on freedoms of speech and assembly;
and/or its politicisation and corruption of judicial and electoral bodies for pol-
itical ends (Diamond, 2002; Levitsky & Way, 2010). Such regimes exist in a ‘pol-
itical gray zone’ between genuine electoral democracy and fully authoritarian
regimes (Carothers, 2002). The ambiguity of such regimes creates an ‘inherent
tension;’ nominally democratic institutions are intended to help incumbents
manage popular challengers but they also allow for a degree of political con-
testation, providing space for opposition forces to organise a challenge to
incumbents (Levitsky & Way, 2010, p. 20). Under certain conditions, such chal-
lenges can become powerful enough to threaten the regime, forcing the
incumbent to either manipulate electoral results, repress the challengers, or
 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 423

allow the democratic process to play out. All of these can result in regime
change (Levitsky & Way, 2010, p. 20). As a consequence, hybrid regimes are
susceptible to political instability and regime change, including both shifts
to greater democracy as well as backsliding into more closed forms of author-
itarianism (Goldstone et al., 2010). Looking at these nineteen hybrid regimes
from sub-Saharan Africa, the article investigates the role of socioeconomic
development, short-term economic performance, and international leverage
in influencing their divergent regime trajectories during the period of
2005–2014, some cases moving the direction of greater democracy, others
backsliding into greater authoritarianism.
A focus on the time period, 2005–2014, and geographic focus on sub-
Saharan Africa (SSA) is of particular theoretical and practical importance.
First, 2005–2006 coincides with the period in which the global ‘democratic
recession’ began (Diamond, 2015), as charted by an overall decline in global
democracy observed by Freedom House, Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Econ-
omist Intelligence Unit. Second, the period 2005–2014 also falls within the
past two decades that China has been characterised by re-emergence or
resurgence as a critical supplier of trade, aid and assistance in sub-Saharan
Africa offering outside support ‘with less to no strings attached’ (Hess &
Aidoo, 2015, pp. 1–2). China’s new position as an alternative source of econ-
omic support may have contributed to the deleveraging of traditional
Western donors and international financial institutions (IFIs), enabling
African incumbent leaders in hybrid regimes to engage in backsliding when
challenged by powerful opposition challenges. Importantly, Chinese assist-
ance and engagement varied substantially by country, ranging from countries
seeing a rapid intensification in involvement, such as Congo (Brazzaville),
Ethiopia, and Djibouti, to others, such as Burkina Faso and the Gambia,
which recognised Taiwan during this period,1 seeing relatively little. Third,
during this time period, the global economy experienced a sudden decline
and subsequent turmoil and uncertainty during and after the 2007–2008
global financial crisis. While SSA as a region fared better than the global
economy during the Great Recession, some economies fared much better
than others. Those countries most negatively impacted were those with
higher average incomes, greater dependence on exports to advanced econ-
omies, fewer commodity exports, and more civil unrest (Cuevas et al., 2012;
Sayeh, 2012). As a consequence, SSA during the period, 2005–2014, provides
an excellent vantage point from which to observe factors such as the impact
of short-term economic change and the deleveraging of Western influence on
the political trajectories of hybrid regimes.
Providing a limited snapshot of patterns taking place during the observed
decade, the article suggests that certain structural variables, including a coun-
try’s level of socioeconomic development, did not appear to stand out as
strong drivers of backsliding among African hybrid regimes observed
424 S. HESS AND R. AIDOO

during this period. Economic performance tended to be weaker in backsliding

regimes than those encountering political stability or improvements in demo-
cratic governance. Moreover, strong economic performance appeared to be a
precondition for hybrid regimes to improve the quality of democracy over
extended time periods. Among the factors observed, the strongest
influence on backsliding appeared to be the absence of Western leverage.
Hybrid regimes that experienced backsliding had dramatically higher levels
of alternative, Chinese assistance (relative to Development Assistance Com-
mittee (DAC)-official development assistance (ODA)) than those regimes
that experienced improvements in democratic governance. However,
several outlier regimes, such as Burundi, Uganda, and the Gambia, underwent
backsliding in the absence of Chinese assistance. The presence of these out-
liers suggests researchers deepen their analyses by considering the following
factors. First, there is a need to highlight the reality that African leaders are not
subjects merely dependent on larger, international forces. Rather, political
elites who have important agency in political development act as auton-
omous decision makers who make the strategic choice to engage in backslid-
ing in order to leverage themselves against opposition forces, and maintain
their political survival. Thus, while ‘backsliding is the result of conditions
that either enable the incumbent to more easily concentrate power or that
increase the risks to the incumbent of not concentrating power’ (Dresden &
Howard, 2016, p. 1123) the decision to backslide is a strategic one made by
the incumbent him/herself. Secondly, as noted by Levitsky and Way (2010),
the democratising pressure associated with Western leverage is not inter-
rupted only by the presence of a black knight providing an alternative
source of assistance. Leverage can, as seen in Burundi and Uganda, also be
mitigated by the importance of a recipient country as a strategic security
partner. Thirdly, the findings in this study are based on a limited sample
and are highly descriptive in nature. As more data becomes available, more
empirical research is needed to better determine the degree to which
Chinese assistance (as opposed to other factors) may have impacted the pol-
itical trajectory of hybrid regimes in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.

Conceptual overview: economic development, macroeconomic

performance, and leverage
Economic development
As scholars since Seymour Lipset in the 1950s have frequently observed,
democratic regimes are more likely to appear in countries with higher
average incomes (Lipset, 1959). Noting this pattern, Barrington Moore
(1966) argued that the development of democracy occurred in historical
cases where capitalist modernisation produced a commercial middle class
 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 425

powerful enough to tear down despotic barriers to its economic advance-

ment. Conversely, the presence of ‘labor-repressive’ modes of production
tended to lead to democratic breakdown and political transitions into author-
itarian modes of government (Moore, 1966). Challenging Moore’s thesis that
the bourgeoisie was the historical agent of democratisation, Rueschemeyer,
Stephens, and Stephens (1992) instead found that when modernising
societies produced powerful and well-organised working classes, these
popular classes were the force that would emerge with the organisational
power and interest in forcibly pushing for democratisation, often against
the resistance of a reluctant capitalist class. Przeworski and Limongi (1997)
challenged the notion that the establishment of democracies was the result
of endogenous social forces that emerged the through process of modernis-
ation. Instead, they suggested that democracy was ‘not a byproduct of econ-
omic development’ (p. 177). Democracies came into being for a variety of
reasons, including external factors, and emerged at many different income
levels. But new democracies were much more likely to survive when they
appeared at higher levels of development. In later research, Boix and Stokes
(2003) argued that economic development does in fact ‘have a strong
endogenous effect on democratisation’ (p. 519) when it produces greater
economic equality and social mobility, reducing the threat of redistribution
to economic elites posed by newly empowered working class voters, and
improvements in human capital, such as rising literacy rates. Similarly,
recent work has found that factors such as unequal socioeconomic distri-
bution, low per capita incomes, high poverty rates, and high rates of infant
mortality were strong predictors of democratic reversals (Maeda, 2010).
While disagreeing on the mechanisms driving democratisation, these works
agreed that high levels of development significantly stabilised democracies
and reduced the likelihood of democratic reversals.

Macroeconomic performance
Challenging scholarship that linked democratic transitions and reversals to
development factors, O’Donnell (1973) found that the collapse of democratic
rule in many Latin American countries in the 1960s was less connected to
those societies’ level of development and more connected to short-term econ-
omic crises. In those cases, democratic and semi-democratic regimes had
attained relatively high levels of development through import substitution
industrialisation (ISI) strategies but had then struggled to implement the
‘hard’ stage of economic reform. This resulted in short-term economic crises
that prompted powerful economic and political elites to reject democratic
rules and procedures as an impediment to development and embrace bureau-
cratic-authoritarian forms of government. In a similar vein, Linz (1978)
suggested that democratic regimes tended to break down when elected
426 S. HESS AND R. AIDOO

governments were incapable of addressing wide-ranging societal problems,

including economic crises. Such conditions resulted in ‘legitimacy crises’,
wherein political actors uncommitted to the democratic process would
oppose the system. Later, Gasiorowski (1995) found that recessionary econ-
omic crises were a strong predictor of democratic breakdown in cases observed
from the 1950s to the late 1980s. Subsequent studies lent support to this idea,
with Alesina, Özler, Roubini, and Swagel (1996) and Feng (1997) finding that
strong economic growth minimised the threat of political instability and irregu-
lar government changes. Svolik (2008) suggested that among unconsolidated
or transitional democracies, authoritarian reversals were most closely related to
economic recessions, not other factors such as level of development, presiden-
tial political systems or military authoritarian pasts. Dresden and Howard (2016)
have found that economic crises increased the likelihood of democratic back-
sliding, particularly in resource-dependent states. In such cases, economic
crises tended to weaken public support for incumbent regimes, creating an
opportunity for opposition forces and popular challengers to gain ground
and motivating incumbent rulers to engage in backsliding behaviours to
tighten their increasingly tenuous grip on power.

Leverage
According to scholars such as Huntington (1991), Bunce and Wolchik (2006),
and Levitsky and Way (2010), international factors have played an important
role in determining the political trajectory of regimes. One such factor is ‘lever-
age’, a regime’s ‘vulnerability to external democratising pressure’, which is
greater when a state is small, economically weak, and/or dependent on
Western aid (Levitsky & Way, 2010, pp. 40–41). Such leverage is reduced
when Western powers have competing foreign policy interests, such as a
target’s importance as a supplier of energy resources or as a strategic security
partner. Additionally, Western leverage is weakened by the presence of a
‘black knight’ – an outside power that can offer military, economic or diplo-
matic support that undermines democratising pressures (Hufbauer, Schott,
& Elliott, 1990; Levitsky & Way, 2010, pp. 41–42). Notably, recent research
has indicated that non-democratic black knights are unlikely to deliberately
bolster an autocratic regime or undermine democracy promotion efforts
unless they perceive that doing so would either serve their particular strategic
interests or enhance their own regime’s survival (Chen & Kinzelbach, 2015,
p. 401; Risse & Babayan, 2015, p. 384). According to Levitsky and Way
(2010), leverage plays a critical role in guiding the political direction of
hybrid regimes. When Western powers have little leverage, leaders of
hybrid regimes have a relatively free hand to engage in backsliding in
pursuit of their own interests – typically political survival. But when Western
leverage is strong, leaders of hybrid regimes, are often deterred from taking
 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 427

backsliding actions. This is particularly true in organisationally weak regimes

(Levitsky & Way, 2010, pp. 70–71).

Approach to development assistance in sub-Saharan Africa:

Western vs. China
China’s approach to development and economic assistance in Africa has often
been referenced as being significantly different from the efforts by Western
countries and institutions, which have had decades of a somewhat checkered
history on the continent. This difference is often evident in surveys that reg-
ister support for Beijing’s particular approach to development assistance.
According to survey research, African respondents believe Chinese assistance
(relative to support provided by other, typically Western actors) may be
helpful to their own national development cause (see Sautman & Hairong,
2007). Secondly, African elites and political leaders are also quick to extol
this difference through anecdotes which draw distinctions based on past
and present engagements of both Western governments and China. In
2008, Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade asserted that ‘with fewer con-
ditions, less bureaucracy, and much faster timeline, China’s approach to our
needs is simply better adapted than the slow and sometimes patronising
post-colonial approach of European investors, donor organisations and non-
governmental organisations’ (Wade, 2008 as quoted in Halper, 2010,
p. 103). This perception echoes an earlier declaration by Ugandan leader,
Yoweri Museveni who unabashedly asserted that
Western ruling groups are conceited, full of themselves, ignorant of our con-
ditions, and they make other people’s business their business, while the
Chinese just deal with you as one who represents your country, and for them
they represent their own interests and you just do business. (see Halper, 2010,
pp. 99–100)

These accounts clearly highlight some of the diverse policy styles and
approaches that are often considered as African leaders choose one
partner-in-development over another. Additionally, these also underscore
the contours of international leverage that in turn influences the directives
and actions of incumbents.
The generally positive embrace of China’s approach to development assist-
ance is partly attributable to the frustration of large sections of African popu-
lations who see no change in their poverty, destitution and need, in spite of
the huge amounts of foreign development assistance and aid that comes to
help remedy their situation. Similarly, under the gaze of a democratically
empowered public, African political leaders are under pressure to find a
formula that will deliver development assistance with little to no interference
in their governance – ranging from dictates on the use of development
428 S. HESS AND R. AIDOO

assistance and aid, to demands for political and economic structural reforms.
As noted by Brautigam (2009), despite all the development-focused phases
that have evolved along with the convictions about how aid can best foster
development, these have yet to produce pro-poverty outcomes in Africa. It
is with such need that African leaders and masses are open to acceptance
and implementation of China’s approach to development in the form of aid
delivery and other economic arrangements. ‘China’s aid and economic
cooperation differ, both in their content and in the norms of aid practice’
(Brautigam, 2009, p. 11).
The content of the assistance to African countries has been one of the main
differences between China and the Western approach to foreign assistance and
aid. Many scholars and experts have critiqued Western assistance to Africa as
unclear, inconsistent, tied to preconditions which are sometimes perceived as
rather destabilising, and generally neglecting the needs of Africans (Chissano,
2007 as quoted in Brautigam, 2009, p. 10). China’s assistance has been charac-
terised as the alternative – much simpler, with a relatively unchanging format
emphasising the development needs of Africans. Based on its own historic
experiences with foreign aid, Brautigam (2009, p. 11) asserts that China’s aid
and economic assistance accentuates infrastructure, production, and university
scholarships – needs that are often overlooked or downplayed by traditional
donors (from the West). This unique feature of China as a developer of Africa’s
infrastructure has become a significant part of its engagements on the continent
(Foster, Butterfield, Chen, & Pushak, 2009), particularly as Beijing has more
recently reconsidered and truncated projects and engagements that African
partners perceive as non-viable or unsustainable (Aidoo, 2017).
Another major distinction in the approach to assistance is one that is con-
nected to the identity that China projects in its cooperation and assistance to
African countries. Over the past two decades, African political leaders and
masses have expressed confidence in Beijing as a partner-in-development
that possesses a much deeper understanding of African development
needs, as China has the ability to juxtapose its own historic experiences along-
side that of Africa’s colonial past (Hackenesch, 2013). The mutuality of devel-
opment objectives is one often linked to the principle of South-South
cooperation. African leaders frequently invoke South-South solidarities in
their reference to what China (as the largest developing country) can contrib-
ute to their development and the West cannot. During the 1955 Bandung con-
ference, African leaders shared their affinity for China’s development
approach and diplomacy through statements of affirmation that also under-
scored the likeness in history and destiny (see Vang, 2008). Today, African
leaders from both democratically stable and hybrid regimes continue to tap
into this message of solidarity through their pronouncements. During a
recent visit to China in September 2018, Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo
stated that Ghana is aiming to replicate China’s development model which
 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 429

has seen the Asian economic giant create progress and prosperity for its
masses in the past decades (Ghanaweb, 2018). This vote of confidence re-
echoes that of Liberia’s former Finance Minister, Antoinette Sayeh who
asserted that for Africans ‘we have a lot to learn from China, beyond its
financial capacity to assist. China has made the most progress over the past
several decades in reducing poverty. That experience is of great interest to
us (Africans)’ (Brautigam, 2011, pp. 11–12).
Third and most known of these differences, especially to the political elites
and leaders in hybrid and nondemocratic regimes is the claim of assistance or
aid without strings attached. This has come to distinguish Beijing as a different
kind of donor away from the infamous pre-conditional foreign aid or assist-
ance from Washington and other Western capitals. Though the idea of non-
conditional aid or noninterference in the domestic politics of recipient
African countries has been argued as untenable as Africa’s political and econ-
omic circumstances have evolved along with China’s global economic status
(Aidoo & Hess, 2015), African leaders have shown preference for China’s state-
ment and adherence to non-conditional economic engagements, and the
noninterference doctrine in its diplomacy. Having experienced Western pre-
conditions attached to democratic and economic reform projects such as
the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the 1980s and 90s, and sub-
sequent aid received by African countries, most African governments find
China’s less conditioned economic arrangements and brand of noninterfer-
ence in the internal political affairs much less intrusive. In spite of the
embedded conditions of viability for commercial projects as well as adher-
ence to the One China policy, the general laxity of not requesting political
and economic reforms as precondition for development assistance is a
feature that has been perceived as double-edged. Apologists of such arrange-
ments refer to the sanctity of sovereignty as a vital reason for the non-con-
ditional and noninterference elements in Beijing’s diplomacy in Africa, while
critics reference the supposed erosion or backsliding of democratic progress
in Africa (Collier, 2007).
Furthermore, exploring the Western-based and Beijing-based differences
in approach includes the agency of local African elites and the issue of
backsliding, especially within the context of domestic politics. The neoliberal
Washington-based approach is often credited with the encouragement of a
liberal democratic culture in hitherto undemocratic polities, by setting and
enforcing norms of accountability in governance, especially among local
political elites. China’s approach to foreign aid and investments across
Africa has been imputed for having an adverse effect on Africa’s democratic
culture and institutions. Repeated use of Zimbabwe, Angola and Sudan as
examples of democratically struggling African states where the local elites
favour doing business with China underscores Beijing’s indifference
toward the illiberal ways of these often election-based, personality-
430 S. HESS AND R. AIDOO

dominated regimes (see Jakupec & Kelly, 2019). Relatedly, the recipients of
Chinese foreign assistance in Africa are often strategic partners to China, as
access to natural resources and consumer markets undergird Beijing’s geo-
political ambitions. Additionally, Beijing’s ambitions are often in juxtaposi-
tion with the physical infrastructure edifices and investments that go to
support the personal and politically clientelistic aspirations of local elites
in these weak democracies. Thus, the content of the development assist-
ance often made up of development projects demanded or favoured by
the larger population purposefully drive the choice of donor by the
African political elites, knowing full well these projects will eventually help
them make a case for their hold onto power. Different incidents of (inten-
tional or unintentional) interactions between Chinese diplomats and
Zambian political elites during the 2011 elections were considered as
China’s efforts at helping the incumbent political elites of the Movement
for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) to hang onto power (Hess & Aidoo, 2015).
Rather than working to reinforce their liberal democratic structures,
Jakupec and Kelly (2019, p. 89) argue that these pretend democracies (in
this case hybrid regimes) are historically conditioned by the Washington-
based approach. These regimes often embrace the Beijing Consensus,
which presents an authentic, long-term, geopolitical response to the Washing-
ton Consensus, and is attractive to the disaffected and disenfranchised devel-
oping countries seeking foreign aid. Nevertheless, it is also essential to
reiterate that counter to the general narrative (particularly from the West)
of China handing out development assistance without regard to the econ-
omic viability, instances of truncated development project implementation
and withdrawn assistance in Africa offer an insight into Beijing’s astuteness
as a rational geo-economic development actor (Aidoo, 2017). China’s recent
refusal to fund a Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in Kenya after an earlier
expression of interest (Daily Nation, 2019) portrays this reality. Similarly,
African economies also tend to be strategic in their choices between Beijing
and the West based on development needs and politics (Carmody, Dasandi,
& Mikhaylov, 2019), as they seek to lessen international leverage. These dis-
cussed differences between China’s approach toward development assistance
and the established Western approach in Africa provide avenues of leverage
for African governments, particularly regimes that display strong preferences
for noninterference, non-conditional, and simply-structured aid and assist-
ance from China.

Research design
To consider leading theories of democratic backsliding, this article conducts
a comparative analysis of a sample of nineteen hybrid regimes in sub-
Saharan Africa during a period beginning in 2005 and ending in 2014.
 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 431

For all independent variables, the range covers this period (2005–2014),
whereas the dependent variable, measuring democratic backsliding/
advancement, ends in the year 2017, allowing for the observation of
lagged effects of the independent variables. The nineteen cases include
all of the countries in the region that received a ‘partially free’ rating
from Freedom House in the year 2005. This designation indicates a com-
bined score on political rights and civil liberties ratings (or ‘freedom
rating’) ranging from 3.0 to 5.0 on a seven-point scale. Among the nineteen
cases, Kenya, Madagascar, and Niger were the most free with freedom
ratings of 3.0 in 2005, whereas Burundi, Djibouti, and Ethiopia, were the
least free, with ratings of 5.0. The mean for the group was 4.05 (Abramowitz,
2018). The Polity IV POLITY regime measures were referenced to confirm the
reliability of designating these cases as hybrid regimes (see Lührmann et al.,
2017). For the 2005 Polity IV POLITY regime measure, which ranges from +
10 (strongly democratic) to −10 (strongly autocratic), the nineteen cases
ranged from Kenya (+8) to −5 (the Gambia) with a mean of + 2 (Marshall,
2018). For Polity IV, this meant that in 2005 six regimes were ‘democracies:’
Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau, and Burundi; six regimes
were ‘open anocracies:’ Zambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mozambique, Niger,
and Djibouti; and seven regimes were ‘closed anocracies:’ Burkina Faso, Tan-
zania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Gabon, Congo (Brazzaville), and the Gambia. As
intended in their designation as hybrid regimes, each of the nineteen
cases in 2005 failed to meet the ‘fully democratic’ standard of ‘unrestricted,
open and fully competitive’ political participation, elective executive recruit-
ment, and ‘substantial’ constraints on the executive. Additionally, none of
the cases were mature or institutionalised autocracies, with no regularised
rotations of national executives, the complete elimination of institutional
checks on the executive, and the suppression or restriction of competitive
political participation (Marshall & Jaggers, 2007). Thus, each of the nineteen
cases could be characterised as hybrid regimes having ‘competition that
[was] real but unfair’ (Levitsky & Way, 2010, p. 12).
The nineteen observed cases took significantly different political trajec-
tories during the period 2005–2017, with over half seeing a decline in the
quality of overall democratic governance, four experiencing improvements,
and three seeing no observable change. The twelve cases with a net
decline in their freedom rating from 2005 to 2017 (a rise in a case’s combined
scores in civil liberties and political rights) were identified as having experi-
enced backsliding. These included the Gambia, Ethiopia, Congo (Brazzaville),
Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Gabon, Uganda, Niger, Madagascar, Djibouti,
and Mozambique. Those four cases with a net improvement in their
freedom rating from 2005 to 2017 (a decrease in a country’s combined
score of political rights and civil liberties), were identified as having experi-
enced a movement in the direction of greater democracy. These included
432 S. HESS AND R. AIDOO

Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Liberia. The remaining three cases,
Nigeria, Zambia and Tanzania experienced no observed change during this
period of time (Abramowitz, 2018).
To measure the degree of economic development in a country, the study
utilises the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development
Index (HDI), averaging the annual HDI for each case over the timespan of
2005–2014. Instead of using measures of income, such as Gross National
Income (GNI) per capita to determine a society’s degree of development,
the HDI considers three dimensions of development: having a long and
healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living.
For the health dimension, HDI uses life expectancy at birth as an indicator
and creates a life expectancy index. On the knowledge dimension, HDI
adopts the indicators of mean of years of schooling for adults aged 25
years and older and expected years of schooling for children at the age
at which they enter school and generates an education index. For the stan-
dard of living dimension, HDI uses the indicator of GNI per capita adjusted
for relative purchasing power parity (PPP) to create a GNI index. These three
indexes are aggregated into a composite index using geometric means
ranging from 0 (lowest level of human development) to 1 (highest level
of human development) (UNDP, 2018). Using this multidimensional
measure for development is consistent with more recent scholarship that
finds that societies with lower education levels and standards of living are
more susceptible to democratic backsliding (Barro, 1996; Glaeser, La Porta,
Lopez-de-Silanes, & Shleifer, 2004; Kapstein & Converse, 2008). Such
societies are more likely to lack the kind of active, educated and politically
efficacious citizenry capable of either deterring an incumbent leader from
engaging in executive aggrandisement or electoral manipulation or effec-
tively pushing back should he or she do so. Cutting against the popular rep-
resentation of sub-Saharan Africa as a uniformly underdeveloped region and
in tune with Radelet’s (2010) observation that states in sub-Saharan Africa
had taken dramatically different developmental trajectories from the mid-
1990s to the mid-2000s, the average annual HDI scores of the nineteen
cases varied dramatically from 2005 to 2014. The highest HDI (0.66) was
observed in Gabon, followed by Congo (Brazzaville) (0.55) and Zambia
(0.53). The lowest HDIs were in Niger (0.32), Burundi (0.36) and Burkina
Faso (0.37). The mean HDI for the nineteen cases was 0.45 (UNDP, 2018).
World Bank data for average annual GDP growth per capita from 2005 to
2014 is applied to examine claims that democratic backsliding is associated
less with a society’s level of development and more with short-term macroe-
conomic performance (Dresden & Howard, 2016; Linz, 1978; Svolik, 2008). As
suggested by Sayeh (2012), while sub-Saharan Africa as a region outper-
formed the world in economic growth during and after the 2007–2008
global financial crisis, there was significant variation across countries.
 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 433

Among the nineteen cases examined, Ethiopia (7.79 per cent average annual
GDP growth per capita), Sierra Leone (5.06 per cent), Mozambique (4.38 per
cent), and Zambia (4.34 per cent) stood out for their rapid paces of economic
growth. Meanwhile, Burundi (0.81 per cent), Guinea-Bissau (0.66 per cent),
Madagascar (0.07 per cent), Gabon (−0.03 per cent), and the Gambia (−0.25
per cent) experienced weak or even negative average annual growth from
2005 to 2014 (World Bank, 2018).
To observe the degree of Western leverage over cases, the study exam-
ines the ratio of Chinese finance to official development assistance (ODA)
provided by members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) during
the period 2000–2014. The DAC consists of thirty-member states that are
exclusively from high-income democracies, including European nations as
well as the United States, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New
Zealand. These member states have agreed to uphold the 2005 Paris
Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and 2008 Accra Agenda for Action, which
require that the delivery of foreign aid ensures ‘ownership, alignment, har-
monisation, results and mutual accountability’ and encourages poverty
reduction, promotes good governance, reduces corruption, and improves
transparency (OECD, 2016). Unlike DAC members, China emphasises the
principle of noninterference and extends aid and assistance without econ-
omic or political conditions (Kilama, 2016; Hess & Aidoo, 2010). Thus, if
DAC assistance places a degree of democratising pressure on recipient
states, China’s unconditioned delivery of assistance could have a black
knight effect (Levitsky & Way, 2010, pp. 41–42), providing incumbent execu-
tives with an effective counterbalance to such pressure. As a consequence,
Chinese aid is compared in relative terms to OECD-DAC ODA. To measure
Chinese aid, the report uses AidData’s Global Chinese Official Finance
Dataset. The dataset uses the Tracking Underreported Financial Flows
(TUFF) methodology to triangulate data from four different sources:
English, Chinese, and local language news reports; official statements and
publications from Chinese officials; documents released by official counter-
parts in partner countries; and the reports and field research of NGOs and
scholars (Dreher, Fuchs, Parks, Strange, & Tierney, 2017). This approach is
applied to develop a dataset of ‘4,304 projects financed with Chinese
official development assistance (ODA) and other official flows (OOF) in
138 countries and territories around the world’ during the years 2000–
2014 (Dreher et al., 2017, p. 4). Because China’s delivery of aid does not
follow the OECD-DAC standards for transparency and Beijing does not
publish official statistics for development aid, the Global Chinese Official
Finance Dataset provides a unique and useful instrument for gauging the
extent of Chinese aid.
434 S. HESS AND R. AIDOO

Results

Human GDP Per Capita China Finance Freedom House

Development Index Growth (% of DAC ODA) Rating Change
(2005–2014) (2005–2014) (2000–2014) (2005–2017)
Gambia, The 0.44 –0.25 0.00 4.00
Congo (Brazzaville) 0.55 2.05 0.41 3.00
Ethiopia 0.40 7.79 0.35 3.00
Burundi 0.36 0.81 0.04 3.00
Guinea-Bissau 0.41 0.66 0.10 2.00
Gabon 0.66 –0.03 1.29 2.00
Kenya 0.52 2.49 0.23 2.00
Niger 0.32 1.84 0.15 2.00
Uganda 0.47 3.26 0.06 2.00
Madagascar 0.50 0.07 0.03 1.00
Djibouti 0.44 3.02 0.37 1.00
Mozambique 0.39 4.38 0.13 1.00
Nigeria 0.50 3.27 0.85 0.00
Zambia 0.53 4.34 0.25 0.00
Tanzania 0.49 3.32 0.18 0.00
Sierra Leone 0.39 5.06 0.08 –1.00
Malawi 0.43 2.70 0.04 –2.00
Burkina Faso 0.37 2.81 0.00 –2.00
Liberia 0.41 3.30 0.04 –2.00

Level of socioeconomic development, as measured by average annual HDI

scores from 2005 from 2014, did not appear to be a significant indicator for
backsliding or democratisation. The nineteen cases had an average annual
HDI of 0.45 from 2005 to 2014. Those cases identified as backsliders had an
average score of 0.45, ranging from Niger’s average HDI of 0.32 to Gabon’s
average HDI of 0.66. The four countries with identified improvements in
democratic governance had an average HDI of 0.40, a figure not significantly
different from the average of cases with backsliding regimes. Moreover, cases
with improvements in democratic governance would be expected to have a
higher, not lower, level of socioeconomic development than their backsliding
peers. Of course, the nineteen cases as a group have generally low levels of
human development. As of 2014, only Gabon, Congo (Brazzaville), Zambia,
and Kenya were classified by the UNDP as ‘medium human development’
countries, with the others falling into the category of ‘low human develop-
ment’ countries (UNDP, 2018).
Economic performance stood out as a potential factor influencing political
change. Among backsliding cases, economic growth was slow. The average
annual per capita GDP growth from 2005 to 2014 was 2.17 per cent.
However, there was substantial variation among backsliding countries, and
this score was significantly skewed upward by one outlier – Ethiopia,
which had a remarkably high growth rate of 7.79 per cent. If this case is
excluded, the backsliders averaged a 1.66 per cent average annual rate of
growth, including five cases: the Gambia, Burundi, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau,
and Madagascar with average annual growth rates below 1 per cent. In
 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 435

comparison, the four cases with improvements in the quality of democratic

governance economic growth was above average. These countries averaged
an annual growth rate of 3.47 per cent and the three cases with no observed
political change averaged 3.64 per cent. Notably, while the backsliders con-
tained both high and (very) low growth countries, the growth rates of impro-
vers and stable hybrid regimes were all solidly in positive territory, with
Malawi (2.7 per cent) having the lowest average annual growth of the
growth. These figures would suggest that solid economic growth might
serve as a precondition for improvements in the quality of democracy in
hybrid regimes.
Of course, with the rising influence of China and other non-Western
powers, the influence of Western powers over Latin America and the post-
communist region in the immediate post-Cold War period may not be
repeated in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. According to AidData’s
Global Chinese Official Finance Dataset, China committed to extending
$354.3 billion USD in official finance from 2000 to 2014, compared to the
United States’ official finance of $394.6 billion during the same period (Aid
Data, 2018). China’s total official finance, which was only $2.6 billion USD
in 2000, has since surged to over $30 billion USD in every year since 2009,
reaching a level in $37.3 billion USD in 2014 – the last year in which data
was available (AidData, 2018). The nineteen cases investigated in this
study all received significant but highly variable amounts of ODA from
OECD DAC member states. For all nineteen cases, the average annual ratio
of ODA to GNI from 2000 to 2014 was 14.9 per cent, ranging from post-
conflict Liberia (65.6 per cent) to Gabon (0.5 per cent). On average, countries
with observed improvements in democratic governance had a greater level
of dependence on OECD DAC aid (29 per cent) than backsliding countries
(11.8 per cent). The average of democratising countries was skewed
upward by the presence of post-conflict Liberia, but even after excluding
Liberia, the remaining three democratising countries had an ODA-to-GNI
ratio of 16.6 per cent, a number nearly 30 per cent higher than the
average observed in backsliding countries.
To address the potential role of China as a black knight – an outside source
of support that might leverage incumbent executives from the pressure of
democratising powers, the ratio of Chinese official finance to OECD-DAC
ODA was also examined. For the nineteen observed cases, the average
annual ratio of Chinese official finance to OECD-DAC ODA from 2000 to
2014 was 24 per cent. Among backsliding cases, the average annual ratio
was 26 per cent, while among democratising cases the ratio was 4 per cent.
For the cases with improvements in democratic governance, Chinese
finance was uniformly dwarfed by official assistance from DAC member
states, with Sierra Leone (0.8 per cent) having the highest ratio of Chinese
finance. These findings suggested that a relatively high level of ODA from
436 S. HESS AND R. AIDOO

DAC members (creating democratising pressure) combined with an absence

of significant Chinese finance (a potential counterbalance against democratis-
ing pressure) created conditions conducive to democratisation. Conversely,
leaders of hybrid regimes with high levels of Chinese official finance appeared
to have a freer hand to engage in backsliding. Among the eleven cases where
the ratio of Chinese official finance to DAC ODA exceeded 10 per cent,
average combined freedom ratings rose (signifying a decrease in freedom)
by 1.45. For those with ratios above 30 per cent, average combined
freedom ratings rose 1.80. Meanwhile, among the eight cases where the
ratio of Chinese official finance to DAC ODA was below 10 per cent,
freedom ratings were largely stable, with average combined freedom
ratings increasing by only 0.38. Such patterns followed observations made
in important country cases.
For example, in Ethiopia, after leading the EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revo-
lutionary Democratic Front) to power in 1991, Meles Zenawi actively courted
Western assistance by abandoning the party’s leftist and revolutionary rheto-
ric and adopting and applying the constitutional framework for a competitive
multiparty democracy. In these efforts, he successfully secured over $1 billion
USD in development assistance from DAC donors from 1991 to 1994 (World
Bank, 2018). From the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Ethiopia’s unidirectional
dependence on Western assistance remained high, and the EPRDF allowed for
increasingly open, if flawed, multiparty political competition, culminating the
hotly contested 2005 parliamentary elections in which opposition parties
received one-third of the seats in the national legislature. However, as early
as 1995, EPRDF leaders had become concerned with the country’s overdepen-
dence on Western trade and development assistance, which left the regime
vulnerable to external pressure to further open its political system and
improve its human rights record (Adem, 2012, p. 145; U.S. Department of
State, 1996).
In an effort to deleverage Western powers and win greater autonomy from
outside actors, Meles actively reached out to non-DAC donors, such as China
and Russia. These overtures proved successful, particularly in regards to
Beijing, which ultimately lent Ethiopia an estimated $12.3 billion USD in
from 2000 to 2014 (Brautigam & Hwang, 2017). As it increasingly shifted its
sources of external assistance away from Western democracies and toward
China, the Meles administration took a harder rhetorical line against
Western pressure to adopt democratising reforms and improve human
rights conditions and embraced increasingly tighter restrictions on political
opposition parties and independent media, particularly in the wake of the
2005 parliamentary elections. For example, after a 2005 report by the Euro-
pean Commission condemned recent Ethiopian elections as below inter-
national standards and marred by post-election violence, Meles publicly
stated that the official report was filled with ‘lies and innuendoes’ and
 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 437

‘garbage’, and then questioned aloud whether or not Ethiopia would continue
to accept development assistance from the organisation (Vasagar, 2005). In
subsequent elections, Ethiopia experienced rapid democratic backsliding. In
the run-up to 2008 local elections and 2010 parliamentary elections EPRDF
increasingly used violence and intimidation and legal restrictions to limit
opposition candidates and overtly utilised public funding and resources to
support the EPRDF. Such efforts successfully suppressed political opposition,
resulting in a 2010 election that gave 99.6 per cent of the seats in parliament
to the ruling party (Tronvoll, 2011, pp. 1–14).
In more recent years, Ethiopia’s political development has again veered in a
different, less certain direction. Mass unrest fueled by the displacement of
Oromo farmers on the outskirts of Addis Ababa broke out in 2015, morphing
into a national antigovernment protest. Demonstrating his relatively free hand
in dealing with the political opposition, then-Prime Minster Hailemariam
Desalegn first responded with harsh repression, declaring a state of emer-
gency and unleashing the security forces on demonstrators, arresting
23,000 and killing 700 (Weber, 2018, pp. 1–2). After these more repressive
means failed to quell the unrest, Hailemariam Desalegn unexpectedly
resigned. This allowed Abiy Ahmed, head of the Oromo Democratic Party, a
coalition party of the EPRDF, to emerge as the country’s prime minister.
Abiy has since publicly endorsed a policy of political liberalisation, releasing
political prisoners, relaxing controls over the media and opposition parties,
condemning the repressive actions of his predecessors, and voicing support
for political reforms such as establishing term limits for the office of prime
minister (Weber, 2018, pp. 2–3). Despite these developments, observers
have noted that Ethiopia remains a highly unfree state (Freedom House,
2019) and alleged that Abiy has done little to address the ongoing problem
of intercommunal violence and violence against journalists, proposed a new
law ostensibly aimed at curtailing hate speech and false news that could
restrict free speech, and has selectively targeted Tigray officials for arrest
and dismissal from office in an effort to consolidate his personal power
within the party (Freedom House, 2019; Mumo, 2019; Yonas Bula, 2019).
While the political course of Ethiopia under Abiy remains uncertain, the coun-
try’s experience over the last two decades under Meles and Hailemariam
suggests that having effectively deleveraged the pressure of Western partners
by finding an effective counterbalance and alternative source of external
support in China, Ethiopia’s leaders have secured a much freer hand as they
deal with political challenges from inside the party, the political opposition
or on the streets.
However, Chinese official finance was not always present in cases of back-
sliding. Several backsliders, including Burundi (4 per cent), Uganda (6 per
cent), and Madagascar (3 per cent) had very low Chinese official finance to
DAC ODA ratios. As noted by Levitsky and Way (2010, p. 41), Western leverage
438 S. HESS AND R. AIDOO

is weakened not only by the presence of a black knight, such as China, that
offers an alternative source of outside assistance. It is also weakened by ‘com-
peting Western foreign policy objectives’ such as the strategic importance of
particular countries. In the case of Burundi and Uganda, two countries that
backslid in the face of Western leverage, both played important roles in
addressing regional security challenges. Burundi, for example, played a criti-
cal role in demobilising the last major Hutu rebel factions, Forces for National
Liberation (FNL), in 2009. While struggling with its own internal stability,
Burundi managed to help support regional stability in the volatile Great
Lakes region, deploying peacekeeping troops to the African Union Mission
in Somalia (AMISOM) in 2007 and Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation
Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) in 2014 (Congressional
Research Service, 2017). Similarly, Uganda has played an outsized role in pro-
moting regional stability, with its forces engaging the Lord’s Resistance Army
(LRA) and al Shabaab, while also contributing the largest contingent of forces
(over 6,000 troops) to AMISOM in Somalia (AMISOM, 2018; Dagne, 2011).
Moreover, the case that experienced the most extensive backsliding (a dra-
matic four point change in its combined freedom rating) was the Gambia. It
recognised Taiwan throughout the 2000–2014 time period under examin-
ation and consequently received no Chinese official finance (Reuters,
2017). Of note, in 2017 elections, which took place under the watch of a
European Union Election Observer Mission (EU EOM), the Gambia experi-
enced a potential political breakthrough with the surprising defeat of
long-ruling leader, Yahya Jammeh, to opposition challenger, Adama
Barrow. Jammeh initially accepted his defeat, then quickly reversed course,
alleging election irregularities and attempting to maintain his hold on the
presidency. However, lacking the support of allies and under concerted
pressure from the international community, including the European Union,
the United States, the United Kingdom, the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS), the African Union (AU), and the UN, Jammeh
stepped down and fled into exile (Kora & Darboe, 2017, pp. 147–148).
Since that point, the Gambia has seen improvements in democratic govern-
ance, with its Freedom House political rights rating improving to 6 from 4
and its civil liberties rating improving from 6 to 5 (Freedom House, 2018).
Thus, in this case, the political changes associated with Western democratis-
ing pressure were not nonexistent but rather delayed. These observations
suggest that the extensive expansion of Chinese assistance throughout
much of the continent has thus provided an alternative source of external
support, improving the bargaining position of incumbent African elites vis-
à-vis Western powers, and weakening Western leverage and democratising
pressure. Thus, while Chinese support does not in itself appear to encourage
backsliding, countries that have high levels of Chinese finance are more
greatly insulated from Western democratising pressure. And should
 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 439

incumbent leaders – the agents who strategically choose to whether or not

to engage in backsliding – carry out such actions, they will face fewer reper-
cussions and incur lower political costs for doing so.

Conclusion
While datasets have provided evidence of an emerging global democratic
deficit since 2006 (Diamond, 2015), this study provides a more focused
picture of how this larger trend may have played out among hybrid
regimes in sub-Saharan Africa. Among the nineteen cases examined, a coun-
try’s level of socioeconomic development did not play an observable role in
encouraging improvements in democratic governance. Moreover, lower
levels of socioeconomic development did not appear to make regimes
more susceptible to backsliding. Despite significant variation among the
cases observed and improvements over the observed time period, the nine-
teen cases all remained at relatively low levels of human development.
Poor economic performance also did not appear to directly influence backslid-
ing in hybrid regimes. However, there is some support for the notion that poor
economic performance interrupts improvements in democratic quality that
might be driven by other factors. All four of the cases that showed improve-
ments in democratic governance occurred in cases that experienced an
overall economic expansion from 2005 to 2014. The study provides some
support for the suggestion that shifts in the regional balance of power and
influence in sub-Saharan Africa, namely the rise of China as an outside
player, and the relative decline of traditional Western donors, has played an
important role in regional declines in democratic governance. In terms of
international leverage, those countries with higher levels of dependence on
ODA from OECD-DAC member states were more likely to experience improve-
ments in democratic governance. This examination of international leverage
also suggests that China, as an emerging alternative source that extends
external aid and assistance with ‘no strings attached’, has likely played an
important role as a black knight in influencing shifts in democratic quality
in hybrid regimes. Countries with higher ratios of Chinese finance to OECD-
DAC ODA were less likely to experience democratic improvements and
more likely to experience backsliding. Meanwhile, those four hybrid regimes
that saw improvements in the quality of democratic governance – Sierra
Leone, Liberia, Malawi, and Burkina Faso all had low levels of Chinese
finance relative to OECD-DAC ODA. These findings suggest that official devel-
opment assistance and other forms of leverage provided by Western donors
may have played an important role in encouraging improvements in the
quality of democratic governance, as seen in Sierra Leone and other African
hybrid regimes. Meanwhile, China’s provision of alternative support could
have helped counterbalance this democratising pressure in many venues,
440 S. HESS AND R. AIDOO

deleveraging Western pressure, and enabling many African incumbent execu-

tives in hybrid regimes to engage in backsliding.
These findings diverge in subtle ways from patterns observed in post-com-
munist Eastern Europe, where leverage alone (in the absence of linkage) was
usually only effective in pushing closed authoritarian regimes to nominally
accept elections and shift into competitive authoritarianism, not in driving
already-competitive hybrid regimes into making improvements in civil liberties
and other aspects of democracy (Levitsky & Way, 2010). In the case of typically
low-linkage hybrid regimes, Western leverage alone appears to have proven
effectual in promoting improvements in democracy but only in cases in
which such leverage was not counterbalanced by alternative Chinese
financing or undermined by sudden economic downturns associated with
the 2007 global financial crisis. Such findings suggest that enhanced Western
diplomatic engagement with sub-Saharan Africa and increased support for
development assistance could play a constructive role in addressing the
regional pattern of backsliding observed since 2006. However, the impact of
such efforts would likely be mitigated by the depth of Chinese support for
the recipient nation, which would provide an alternative, non-Western
source and minimise the costs incurred for engaging in backsliding. Since
the rise of Xi Jinping in 2013, China’s confidence as a global power and willing-
ness to extend support and financing in the developing world has only grown
through bold new programmes such as the One Belt, One Road Initiative (2013)
and the continuing extension of loans and credit through sources such as the
People’s Bank of China, the China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank
of China, and the China–Africa Development Fund (China Africa Research
Initiative, 2019; Rolland, 2017). These developments suggest that for many reci-
pient nations in sub-Saharan Africa, Western engagement and development
support might need to significantly surpass 2005–2014 levels to establish
effective leverage. This would mean raising the position of foreign assistance
and democracy promotion on the national foreign policy agenda of major
Western democracies at a moment in which Western power and influence
appears to be in relative decline and politics in the United States and many
European powers has shifted in a more inward and isolationist direction.
Finally, more research is needed to more precisely assess the impact of
Chinese engagement on the political development of partner states. As more
data becomes available, large N quantitative studies can more convincingly
weigh the impact of Chinese assistance on recipient nations. Additionally,
more in-depth qualitative research can better explain the individual-level
decision-making and behaviour of African elites – the agents, such as Ethiopia’s
Abiy Ahmed, who can seemingly drive their country’s political development in
directions unanticipated by preexisting historical patterns and large scale
theoretical models more focused on national-level structural factors.
 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS 441

Note
1. The Gambia’s recognition of Taiwan ended in 2013.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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