Africa's Personalist Regimes and Their Foreign Policies: The Exigencies of Regime Security Under Mafia Rule

ABSTRACT This study examines the foreign policies of African personalist regimes, connecting their internal politics with their external behavior. The study begins by describing the nature of these regimes, distinguishing them from two other regime types common in contemporary Africa. Although these regimes arise through different “pathways to power,” they all exhibit the qualities of mafia organizations, as described herein. The domestic logic of these personalist regimes leads to many similarities in their foreign policies. Yet interstate relations among sets of contiguous personalist regimes display variation in the degree of enmity with them, reflecting significant differences in foreign policies. This variation presents a puzzle: Why do some personalist regimes intervene in the affairs of neighboring states, whereas others do not? This article both traces the overall foreign policy logic of African personalist regimes and attempts to account for the variation in their external behavior.