One of the most important recent developments in Africa has been the spread of democracy. Since 1991, almost all countries have held multiparty elections for their national executives. Although the electoral playing field is usually still skewed in favor of incumbent presidents and their parties, elections can and have been lost in many countries. The trend is toward the institutionalization of democratic rules, with gradual convergence on elections as the only acceptable method of selecting leaders. At the national level at least, democracy is on an upward march in Africa.

Yet, at the same time, hereditary chiefs continue to have significant power and prestige across much of the continent, as Chapter 2 described. In many of the continent's biggest democratic success stories, such as Ghana and Botswana, traditional chiefs remain powerful within their local communities. This sets up an inconsistency within the political system.

Of course, every political system involves some contradictions and historical holdovers. To quote Richard Sklar, “Traditional leaders under the auspices of a democratic republic may be illogical; yet, as Winston Churchill observed during a wartime debate on reconstruction in the House of Commons, which had been destroyed, ‘Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.’”

But the position of chiefs in Africa's more democratic countries cannot simply be explained as the persistence of custom. It is not just that traditional chiefs have maintained power in these countries. Following the introduction of competitive elections, governments have often increased their status and de facto power. This chapter provides the first evidence that a positive relationship between democracy and the power of chiefs holds across sub-Saharan Africa. Then it begins developing a potential explanation for why elected politicians have incentives to empower traditional leaders.

Traditional Resurgence and Democracy

Existing studies tell us surprisingly little about the relationship between democratization and the status of chiefs in Africa. The recent resurgence of traditional leaders has been widely noted, but scholars have not used a comparative framework to examine its empirical relationship to democratization. Conversely, studies of cross-national patterns of democracy in Africa have not considered its relationship to traditional institutions.