Democratisation through power-sharing: is 'riding the tiger' a necessary evil or unfortunate distraction?

The Kenya and Zimbabwe 'power-sharing' agreements were brokered as elite pacts with the involvement of the African Union and the South African Development Community (SADC) respectively, following the failure of the electoral mechanism to provide a peaceful transition between democratically elected administrations in either country. This paper will explore whether these experiences signal the exhaustion of the 'third wave' of democratisation in each country, within the context of their respective autocratic governance legacies and the global governance framework, or whether they are interim transitional opportunities for localised politics to (re)assert itself as the struggle is taken into the state and to the state class itself. Will the 'Mount Kenya Mafia' or the ZANU-PF 'old guard' eventually stand aside for a democratic discourse and practice to emerge, or will the limitations of liberalism in an African context continue to throw up less orthodox, and more violent, means to change social, class and property relations. And where is civil society positioned in this form of external extraversion to an African-based 'king-maker'?