A Perilous Path to Democracy. Political Transition and Authoritarian Consolidation in Rwanda

The most influential literature on political transitions, the “transition paradigm”, conceived a normative theoretical framework based on the fundamental assumption that any country, which shifts away from authoritarianism is a country in transition to democracy. The Rwandan transition does not fit the “transition paradigm” and Rwanda did not shift in an orderly manner from an authoritarian to a democratic regime. A second school of thought on political transition contends that political transition is not an orderly process and that democracy is not the sole outcome of transition. Scholars have coined new types of “hybrid” regimes that bear democratic and authoritarian regime features and indeed, the post-transition Rwandan regime bears both such features. This paper explores the Rwandan transition and post-transition from the perspective of regime change, that is, changing regime characteristics (ideological/procedural/behavioural attributes) between 1973 to the present day.