Within the context of the key Workshop proposal on Political Capital, the paper I propose focuses on two specific aspects of political capital in the contemporary world, that is to say on the political capital of presidents in Presidential Republics and in the geographical context of Africa.
This topic has been chosen for three main reasons. First, political capital has to be seen in a worldwide, not merely Western context, as the world is by now a single political stage composed almost exclusively of independent units.
Second, presidents in presidential republics constitute unique examples, in contrast to prime ministers in parliamentary systems, of leaders unencumbered with structures which markedly affect the character of their leadership and, therefore, the mechanisms by which they acquire and lose political capital: we are therefore more likely to be able to estimate the extent of political capital of presidents of presidential republics.
Third, as the large majority of the African presidential republics became independent between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s, it is easier to draw valid comparisons among the leaders of the countries of that continent than even in the other two regions, Latin America and the ex-Soviet countries, in which presidential republics have come to be the main form of government.
We are a very long way from being able to measure, even in broad terms, the extent of political capital of leaders. To move to an extent in that direction, the paper will examine the impact of two indicators likely to provide comparative evidence about variations in the extent of political capital of Founders of African presidential republics: these indicators are the duration of the Founders’ rule and the extent to which they have been liable to military coups, these two indicators being of course to an extent inversely related.
