Institutionalization of electoral authoritarianism in North Africa: the 2024 presidential elections in Mauritania

Over the past two decades, elections have become a central feature of authoritarian governance, increasingly serving regime stability rather than democratization. While earlier scholarship emphasized elections as moments of vulnerability, more recent research highlights their consolidating effects when competition becomes institutionalized. This article examines the 2024 presidential elections in Mauritania, addressing the puzzle of how procedurally credible and internationally validated elections can coexist with persistent authoritarian rule. It argues that Mauritanian authoritarianism has been strengthened through the institutionalization of electoral competition as a mechanism of regime reproduction, relying less on systematic fraud than on the interaction of formal institutions and informal practices that minimize uncertainty and contain opposition challenges. Drawing on qualitative evidence from field observation in Nouakchott, semi-structured interviews, and documentary analysis, the study analyses four stabilizing mechanisms: dominant-party organizational control, elite co-optation and opposition fragmentation, institutional management of competition, and international legitimation combined with selective post-electoral repression. The findings show that the 2024 election reinforced authoritarian consolidation by generating legitimacy and elite coordination while preventing meaningful prospects for alternation.