A continental consensus has emerged in Africa about the importance of democratic constitutional governance for peace and development. This consensus is increasingly translated into normative, institutional and procedural frameworks that offer a growing number of opportunities for the African Union (AU) to intervene in constitution building processes of its member s...

On various continents, intergovernmental organizations resort to legal engineering in order to promote democratic governance in their member states. Those legal efforts operate in a fluctuating political and societal environment, which they seek to transform but which, in turn, shapes the authority, the effectiveness and even the very nature of the legal instrument...

This article traces a genealogy of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) and examines the charter's overall implementation. While there has always been a struggle between competing views of how to ensure more or less continental accountability for norms related to democratic governance in Africa, enforcement by the African Union (AU) ha...