For decades, France has exerted a neocolonial grip on its former African empire, known as the Françafrique. Yet a series of electoral breakthroughs and military coups by opponents of this order have put its future into question.

Covering a broad sweep of history from the eighteenth century to the present day, two leading authorities on French neocolonialism, Ndongo Samba Sylla and Fanny Pigeaud, offer a series of sharp political reflections on the French effort to subdue and subvert democracy in its former colonies.

With incisive analysis of recent events in Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Senegal, the book offers an eye-opening counter-history of democracy and elections. It reveals how colonial officials limited the vote in the first French colonies; how they organized unequal rights within the new colonies; how one-party regimes spread; how significant historical coups d'état unfolded; and how contemporary actors interfere in elections.