Nic Cheeseman begins a rich and stimulating study of African politics with the observation that when he explained that he was writing a book about democracy in Africa, a common response was that it would “surely be a very short volume” (1). One reason for this perception is a chronology of African political history whereby the history of democracy in Africa is, at best, a history of the last twenty-five years. Yet as Cheeseman reminds us, this narrative obscures the diverse political histories of postcolonial African states and the ways in which single-party states were “sometimes more democratic than they seemed” (3). Understanding this past is crucial if we are to understand Africa’s recent democratization process, he argues, for it was often those states that possessed a more open and participatory postcolonial political system that adapted best to the return of multiparty politics.

The first chapter explores the “fragments of democracy” in early postcolonial Africa. In Tanzania, elections were an essential part of Julius Nyerere’s one-party system and frequently saw MPs voted out of office. In Botswana, the institution of the kgotla provided a way for the ruling BDP to “get a feel for the popularity, or otherwise, of its proposals” (51). Chapter 2 turns to civil society and the ways in which organized religion, trade unions, and intellectuals provided a check on the authoritarian regimes of the 1960s and 1970s. Chapter 3 provides a clear narrative of Africa’s “second liberation” after 1989, in which Africa’s authoritarian regimes were pushed by both internal and external pressures toward political liberalization and the establishment of multipartyism. Chapter 4 offers a fascinating and original account of Western efforts at “democracy promotion” in the 1990s.

Yet the story does not end here. In the final part of the book, Cheeseman turns to consider contemporary arguments about the present and future of democracy in today’s Africa, starting with the relationship between multiparty elections and violence. On the face of it, multiparty elections can seem to exacerbate political violence. But Cheeseman makes the case against generalization and for a close reading of particular contexts, since there is “nothing inevitable about the relationship between multiparty politics and violence” (144). Equally, even in those cases where a peaceful election is difficult to achieve, a return to authoritarian rule, even temporarily, is no solution. Chapter 6 engages with Staffan Lindberg’s argument that elections drive democratization. Cheeseman disagrees, but shows that even if elections do not necessarily drive democratization, they do contribute positively to wider political, social, and economic change.

If the evidence presented throughout the book amounts to a strong case against a return to authoritarianism in the name of political stability, the book ends with suggestions of how institutions might be designed to strengthen democracy. Ultimately, Cheeseman concludes, democratic institutions should not simply be exported but should be built on “a country’s own distinctive experiences and practices, in order to develop more locally grounded—and hence sustainable—systems of government” (229).

The great virtue of this book lies in the way it takes history seriously to inform discussion of the present and recognizes the potential for institutions to develop in different ways in different places. This should provide a valuable corrective to the tendency of some analysts to see democracy, in Cheeseman’s memorable phrase, as akin to an “IKEA book-case that can be mass-produced in flat-pack form (229).” Yet if Cheeseman is keen to recognize institutional diversity, there is less space in this account for ideological diversity. His definition of democracy is the dominant contemporary definition, which has multipartyism at its core. But in early postcolonial Africa the definition of democracy was itself a matter of lively debate. These debates helped inspire the political experiments he describes and help explain why some were so reluctant to embrace a return to multipartyism in the 1990s. To make this point is not in any way to detract from the achievement of this important book, but rather to hope that it will serve to inspire further engagement by political scientists with the political and intellectual history of early postcolonial Africa.