Democracy and Elections in Africa. By Steffan Lindberg. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 240p. $55.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

This book is an original, important, and in many ways impressive study that will make a contribution to both electoral and Africanist scholarship. The author's central argument is that repetitive elections (three or more) increase the democratic qualities of regimes and broaden and deepen civil liberties in societies. This argument is carefully placed within democratic theory and rigorously tested by a dense and generally sophisticated empirical analysis, although I have criticisms regarding the tightness of the theory and two variables used in the empirical analysis.