Failed hereditary succession in comparative perspective: The case of Senegal (2000–2024)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Contrary to enduring theoretical expectations on neopatrimonialism, family successions are rare in sub-Saharan Africa. This article demonstrates that family successions are difficult to set up and might fail when rulers attempt to implement them. Building on the scholarship on political dynasties and family successions in broader comparative politics, I demonstrate that the study of failed attempts helps unveil the specific mechanisms of such failure. While scholarship documents how formal rules (such as term limits) constrain the ruler’s succession agenda, I contend that other types of constraints -party politics, opposition coalition, and public opinion-might also strongly impact it but have remained underexamined. The Senegal case study helps uncover these constraints. The article begins by emphasizing the theoretical importance and empirical challenges of studying non-cases of family successions and, more specifically, failed attempts. Then, the article examines the Senegalese failed hereditary succession between former President Abdoulaye Wade and his son Karim. Through a longitudinal single-country case study (2000–2024), this article employs process-tracing to uncover the three main interrelated mechanisms, which led to this failure: Popular resentment towards the succession attempt, a succession crisis due to the ruler’s not leaving power, and elite defection leading to party split. In mutually reinforcing each other, these dynamics converged to block the transfer of power from the ruler to his son. Therefore, this single case study of a failed attempt enhances our empirical and theoretical understanding of what drives variation in the success or failure of family succession. I argue that the role of actors (party elites and voters) in the succession process and how they engage with the rules of the game (mainly over party leadership selection and elections) impact the succession outcome.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".