Democratization by Elections or Democratic Regression? Nigeria, Zambia, and Kenya after the Last Elections (2021-2023)

This paper analyzes and compares three key elections in Zambia (2021), Kenya (2022) and Nigeria (2023). The aim was twofold: assessing the impact of elections on the democratic process and on the party system. The Zambian elections confirmed a trend towards democracy and party system consolidation, which since 2016 has become a two-party system. 2021’s general elections marked also an important defeat for the incumbent and the consequent government change, with a significant increasing of voter numbers. This double result – the government change and the good level of voter participation – were considered as two indicators of the vitality and the full legitimacy of the democratic process. Contrary, in the other two cases under scrutiny problems of democratic consolidation seems to arise. In both cases the incumbent coalition won but what seriously affected the electoral legitimacy is the decline in voter participation recorded (i.e. dropping to 27% in Nigeria). The role of ethnicity was tested for all three cases by disaggregating the vote at the constituency level.