Hegemonic presidencies in Sub-Saharan Africa: the cases of Zimbabwe and Rwanda

The world is going through a moment of democratic regression characterized by increasing resistance to democratization and the emergence of new forms of authoritarianism. However, even in non-democratic contexts, power legitimation remains relevant: since regimes cannot rely on repression and coercion alone, incumbents need to generate some level of consent. This research proposes a model of analysis to contribute to the understanding of the legitimation strategies developed by personalized, semi-authoritarian and resilient regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa through a comparison between two case studies: the regime led by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe (1980-2017) and the regime led by Paul Kagame in Rwanda (1994-2017). Because legitimation is a multidimensional concept, the model of analysis proposed is based on five distinct domains corresponding to sites where strategies and narratives of power justification are constructed and challenged: History and historiography; constitution, legal framework, and institutional architecture; economic and developmental performance; the state-civil society relation and the regime’s positioning in the regional and international spheres.