A plurality of the world's multiparty elections each year are now held in sub-Saharan Africa. This is an astonishing development given that multiparty elections were extremely rare on the continent fifteen years ago. Yet African countries are beset by widespread poverty, deep ethnic divisions, and weak government institutions, all factors that normally make democratization more difficult. Jeffrey I. Herbst will focus on the likely course of democratization in sub-Saharan Africa and what outside powers can do to further political liberalization.

Jeffrey I. Herbst is a professor of politics and international affairs and chair of the Department of Politics at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The author of States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control, State Politics in Zimbabwe, and The Politics of Reform in Ghana, he is a former Fulbright scholar and McNamara Fellow. His fields of interest include African politics, economic and security issues in southern Africa, comparative politics broadly defined, and the relationship between industrialized and developing countries.