Mali, a country rich with history and culture, but one of the poorest in the world, emerged in the 1990s as one of Africa's most vibrant democracies. Strengthened by bold political and economic reforms at home, Mali has emerged as a leader in African peace keeping efforts. How has such a transition taken place? How have these changes built on Mali's rich heritage? These are the questions that the contributors to this volume have addressed. During the past twenty-five years, the scholarly research and applied development work of Michigan State University faculty and students in Mali represents the most significant combined, long-term, and continuing contribution of any group of university faculty in the United States or Europe to the study of Malian society, economy, and politics. The applied nature of much of this work has resulted in a significant number of working papers, reports, and conference presentations. This volume represents a coherent and connected set of essays from one American university with a widely known and highly respected role in African development. While the essays identify and review Mali's unique historical and contemporary path to democracy and development, they also contribute to the advancement of theoretical knowledge about African development.

This book explores the process by which constitutions and democratic institutions are constructed. Wing focuses on how innovative constitutional dialogues involving participation, negotiation, and recognition of groups previously excluded from political decision-making may be the key to a legitimate constitution.

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic Cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.

The Mali crisis provoked by the coup d'état of March 2012 led to the collapse of the democratic Malian state, a jihadist Al Qaida take-over of North Mali, and the return of the French Foreign Legion to the Sahara after 54 years of Malian Independence. With 12,000 UN peacekeepers (MINUSMA) and the election of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August 2013, the prospects for peace and democracy in Mali looked brighter ... until IBK'e exhausted regime was overthrown in the coup of August 2020. What mechanisms exist within Malian society and its social capital that might build a sustainable peace economy? How can women mobilize family networks to promote peace and to create employment? Will their efforts avert another round of civil war in 2025 or 2030? Mali suffers from two related crises, and the 2015 peace negotiations with Tuareg and Arab armed movements address the lesser of the two. In fact the crisis in North Mali has been largely provoked by the failure of the State, by a combination of dire poverty, galloping demography, bad governance and questionable legitimacy in a Nation State that has been corrupted by military rule for most of its short existence. The core crisis is in Bamako, the capital city.This book highlights major international themes such as democratic governance, decentralization and political legitimacy; "terrorism" and Islamic fundamentalism; and great power resource-rivalry over oil, gas and uranium lying under the Sahara Desert. Mali is a victim of corporate desires for mineral extraction, but also of cocaine trafficking from South America and a struggle for the leadership of Sunni Islam, all of which have helped undermine Mali's fragile, secular institutions. The Tuareg revolt of the 1990s and the arrival of Malian democracy have been described in detail, but no one has yet told the full story of Mali in the early 21st century-explaining why democracy collapsed, where the Arab jihadists came from, and why France went to war against Al Qaida in the Sahel and in the Islamic Maghreb-a security zone that Europeans neglect at their peril.Our story should have ended optimistically after the election of Mr. Ibrahim Boubacar Keita as Mali's new President, sworn in on September 4th 2013-and the impending trial of the Malian coup leader for the murder of rival soldiers, a plot line filled with mass graves and questions about American and British and French complicity with Algeria and Al Qaida. Instead, events during 2014 and 2020 have raised more questions than answers. While we offer recipes for peace building and routes towards peace and sustainable development, the continuing stories of cocaine mafias, Mali's local corruption and its venal international partners push us towards a pessimistic conclusion.The book includes 12 short "conversations" with Malian political figures, mediators and well-informed commentators. This "multi-voice" format allows our book to offer a range of interpretations for the dramatic events in Mali 2012-2015. We do not necessarily agree with the views expressed in all these conversations, and this gives them extra value.

Questions surrounding democracy, governance, and development especially in the view of Africa have provoked acrimonious debates in the past few years. It remains a perennial question why some decades after political independence in Africa the continent continues experiencing bad governance, lagging behind socioeconomically, and its democracy questionable. We admit that a plethora of theories and reasons, including iniquitous and malicious ones, have been conjured in an attempt to explain and answer the questions as to why Africa seems to be lagging behind other continents in issues pertaining to good governance, democracy and socio-economic development. Yet, none of the theories and reasons proffered so far seems to have provided enduring solutions to Africa’s diverse complex problems and predicaments. This book dissects and critically examines the matrix of Africa’s multifaceted problems on governance, democracy and development in an attempt to proffer enduring solutions to the continent’s long-standing political and socio-economic dilemmas and setbacks.

The 2013 elections helped to restore constitutional order in Mali and marked the start of a period of hope for peace, stability and development. The challenge is now to respond to the Malian people's desire for improved governance. The new government must, therefore, strive to ensure equitable development, increase citizen participation, in particular women's political participation, while improving access to justice and promoting reconciliation.