Mali was long considered as a success story of African democratization. Political liberalization started at the beginning of the 1990s butcame to an abrupt end with the military overthrow of President Amadou Toumani Touré in March 2012. It came as a surprise for many international donors who perceived aid-dependent Mali as a poster child for good governance, democracy and human rights in Sub-Sahara Africa. In so doing, international donors turned a blind eye to structural and contingent factors in the democratization process. Factors such as consensus politics at the expense of a strong parliamentarian and extra-parliamentarian opposition, endemic corruption, systemic linkages between politics and the military and a low level of integration of the Northern regions into the Malian society ended various times in critical junctures for Malian democracy. International democracy promoters’ behavior during these critical junctures reveals that they tended to neglect critical political developments and cooperated with established elites who were part of the problem. This led to inadequate policies of democracy support, which tended to strengthen non-democratic behaviors of political elites and undermine democratic consolidation.
In this paper I analyze four critical junctures in the Malian democratization process and international democracy supporters’ exposure to these events, namely the overthrow of the authoritarian leader Moussa Traoré in 1991, presidential elections in 1997, Tuareg uprising in 2006 and the military coup in March 2012. In doing so, I address the main democracy supporters’ perception, reaction and interaction with local actors these phases of political transformation. Special attention will be given to Canada, the European Union, Germany and the USA. From a methodological perspective, the analysis is driven by a longitudinal comparison of critical junctures, and the policies as well as behavior of international democracy supporters.
