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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The local appropriation of democracy: an analysis of the municipal elections in Parakou, Republic of Benin, 2002–03

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Ever since the ‘democratic renewal’ of 1989–90, Benin has been regarded as a model democracy in the African context. The holding of local elections in 2002–03 can be seen as the culmination of this turn to democracy. Donors attach high expectations to decentralisation and local democracy. Based on an empirical analysis of municipal elections in Parakou, the country's third-largest city, the paper tries to gauge whether these expectations have been realised. The paper argues that while multi-party democracy has been instituted under considerable pressure from the outside, the particular form it has taken derives instead from rationales of national and local politics which go back to the late colonial period, and from recent developments in Benin's rent-based economy.