Book Reviews 211
John F. Clark. The Failure of Democracy in the Republic of Congo. Boulder,
Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008. xii + 309 pp. Maps. Tables. Notes. References.
Index. $59.95. Cloth.
Clark’s book is both refreshing and timely given the paucity of published
research in the English language about Congo-Brazzaville’s current poli-
tics and history. It comes at a time when democratic experiments in all
central African countries have either stalled or reverted to homegrown
authoritarian regimes. Congo fits the latter scenario, and in exploring its
recent political trajectory it is only relevant to ask a seemingly mundane
question: Why did the experiment in multiparty democratic government
fail there in 1997? To unlock the predictable, yet not inevitable, democratic
collapse in Congo, Clark leaves no plausible causes unturned, moving from
Congo’s history and political culture to its political economy, to its eth-
nic and regional identities, to the role of its armed forces and extralegal
militias, and finally to its political institutions and the influence of French
neocolonial policies. After concluding that explaining such a failure might
amount to an impossible task, Clark settles on a less ambitious, yet reward-
ing approach: understanding the failure of democracy in Congo. Drawing
on very sophisticated theoretical frameworks and displaying an impressive
comparative vein, Clark is able to present a convincing case. His approach
rests on the “agency-structure dichotomy,” which he uses with flair to dem-
onstrate how structure both shapes and is shaped by individual agency. It is
indeed this fluidity that traverses Clark’s narrative, aided by both his fine-
grained prose and vast command of the literature—fluidity between struc-
ture and agency but also between longue durée and histoire immédiate, as well
as between endogenous dynamics and exogenous influences.
By focusing on president Lissouba’s portentous decision to cordon off
the residence of the former dictator Sassou on June 5, 1997, as the catalyst