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DISSIDENCE, DICTATORSHIP, AND DEMOCRACY: THE STRUGGLES OF MALIAN EXILES IN AFRICA AND BEYOND, 1968–91

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2020

Jean-Philippe Dedieu Open the ORCID record for Jean-Philippe Dedieu [Opens in a new window]
Jean-Philippe Dedieu*
Affiliation:
New York University, NYU-Paris
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Abstract

In contrast with the imperial period, historians have overlooked African exile politics during the subsequent decades of one-party and military rule. Focusing on the Malian case, this article proceeds in three parts. The first section explores the creation in Africa, in particular in Ivory Coast and Senegal, of clandestine opposition movements to Moussa Traoré's regime. The second section focuses on Europe, particularly France, where dissidents benefitted from an unparalleled openness of the political system compared to that seen in African countries. The final section investigates the influence of these networks spanning Africa and Europe on the formation of pro-democracy organizations in Mali and the final overthrow of the Traoré regime in 1991. Theorizing exile as a process which enabled activists to operate in abeyance despite repression – before being able to emerge more openly – refines our understanding of political transitions which were driven by the juncture of internal and external dynamics.

Keywords

Africademocratizationdiaspora politicsdictatorshipEuropeexileMalipolitical transitions
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , July 2020 , pp. 241 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye, The Journal of African History's editors, in particular Gregory Mann, and two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this article. All translations of quoted material are my own.

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40 Nédelec, Jeunesses, 493.

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57 Diarrah, Le mouvement, 31–2; Touré and Bamba, La contribution, 47–54.

58 Archives of the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC) F2014/2(105), Amnesty International, ‘Fermeture de la prison de Taoudenit’, 7 Nov. 1988, 2; Diarrah, Le mouvement, 2.

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144 Capoccia, G. and Ziblatt, D., ‘The historical turn in democratization studies: a new research agenda for Europe and beyond’, Comparative Political Studies, 43:8–9 (2010), 931–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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146 Bratton, M. and van de Walle, N., Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (New York, 1997), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

147 See Diarra, A., Démocratie et droit constitutionnel dans les pays francophones d'Afrique noire: Le cas du Mali depuis 1960 (Paris, 2010), 103–42Google Scholar; Gary-Tounkara, , ‘Encadrement’; Lecocq, B., Disputed Desert: Decolonisation, Competing Nationalisms and Tuareg Rebellions in Northern Mali (Leiden, 2010), 192–248Google Scholar; Mann, Empires to NGOs, 209–42.

148 Ellis, S., ‘Writing histories of contemporary Africa’, The Journal of African History, 43:1 (2002), 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.