This book is a valuable addition to the Zimbabwean politics literature and to broader debates about power-sharing and institutional change. The book uses two prisms – elite political agreements and power politics – to explain the resilience of the authoritarian Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) party's lengthy hold on political power in Zimbabwe. Michael Bratton has been engaged with the subject of Zimbabwean politics for decades, making him well placed to grapple with this important question.

Since independence in 1980, ZANU PF has incrementally personified the state and it has proven adept at embedding formidable, particular and durable modes of systematising and exerting power, so part of the book's argument goes. But this modus operandi has not always been full proof, as seen in the March 2008 parliamentary and presidential elections, in which ZANU PF lost to the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party. Following the defeat, an alliance between ZANU PF and Zimbabwe's military elites resorted to political violence in order to forestall a transfer of power to the MDC. Ultimately, ZANU PF was forced to enter a power-sharing settlement with the MDC.

It is this power-sharing period (2008 to 2013) that the book is primarily concerned with. Why, the author asks, did ZANU PF reassert its grip on power despite entering an externally guaranteed power-sharing arrangement that on paper opened democratic spaces, through provisions stipulating the implementation of important institutional reforms? The answer, the book contends, mainly lies in ZANU PF's effective resort to power politics, which included the maintenance of institutional arrangements and cultures that obviated the possibility of liberal and cooperative politics. A key strength of the book is its formulation of this argument against an instructive historical background. Indeed the book ably demonstrates how ZANU PF's 2008 to 2013 power politics has long cultural and institutional roots. Less convincing is the book's depiction of alliances between civilians and the military across time. ZANU PF's alliance with military elites is presented in rather uncomplicated terms. Likewise, Rhodesian military elites were plagued by deep internal divisions and were also greatly at odds with Rhodesian Front (RF) politicians (Flower Reference Flower1987).

All in all, there are some important theoretical and policy lessons in the book. ZANU PF's wholly uncommitted approach to power-sharing reforms poses a challenge to institutional change theories that locate opportunities for transformation in the space between rubrics and observance, while the myriad ways in which power-sharing enfeebled the MDC calls to question the value of pursuing institutional change from within. In the policy realm, the book shows that power-sharing does not substantively resolve political problems emanating from a disputed election result. Paying greater attention to local institutional and cultural legacies would help preclude the misguided relatively widespread application of the power-sharing model that has been witnessed in recent years.