Benin: How Quickly Democracy Can Erode

Once hailed as a beacon of democracy in West Africa, Benin has undergone a dramatic transformation under President Patrice Talon’s rule since 2016. When President Talon came to power, it began to transform Benin from one of the few exemplary democratic countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, into an autocratic country within a short period of time. It raises an important question: Democratic erosion may depend neither on time nor on a strong democratic tradition.

Sub-Saharan Africa is currently a region where autocratization is most prevalent. In the region, 12 countries, accounting for about 24 percent, are experiencing democratic erosion. Despites this trend, Benin was one of the best models of democracy, harboring strong democratic values and belonging to a small group of only seven stable democratic countries. In the 1980s, resisting Marxist dictator Mathieu Kéréko, Benin became one of the most successful cases in which democracy became the dominant regime. At that time, Benin’s election were considered as fair and free, ensuring competition and maintaining balance through horizontal accountability. There was a stable and legitimate transfer of power, which became the core foundations of its democratic tradition.

However, in 2016, after four successful transfers of power, Benin’s democracy faced a significant turning point with drastic changes. Patrice Talon, a businessman, ran for president and defeated Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, succeeding former President Thomas Boni Yayi. Benin’s democracy was still considered as consolidated and maintained a degree of democratic decency, since the election was evaluated as free and fair. Also, President Talon pledged not to seek a second term and established a committee for political and institutional reforms, showing respect for Benin’s democratic heritage. However, these efforts merely preserved the minimal elements of a democratic facade, while its essential rights and values became severely imperiled under Talon’s administration.

In 2017, according to Freedom House, Benin’s democracy score was 82, but it plummeted to 65 in 2021 and further to 60 in 2025. In particular, the most notable change is the inauspicious decline in political rights. The political rights score dropped from 33 out of 40 in 2017 to 18 out of 40 in 2025. In contrast, civil liberties declined more moderately, from 49 out of 60 to 42 out of 60 during the same period. This suggests that democratic erosion in Benin has been concentrated in the areas of electoral competition and political participation, likely driven by increasing restrictions on opposition parties and the manipulation of electoral processes.

Talon undermined political rights in three stealth authoritarian ways, ultimately dismantling Benin’s electoral tradition. At first, a piecemeal erosion started with the elimination of political competitors using improper accusations of non-political crimes. Starting with the drug trafficking conviction of Ajavon, outright political pressure intensified. The numerous rivals of Talon were brought to court on charges of abuse of power and terrorism, and their political participation has been restricted under judicial institutions and legal frameworks, including the newly created Court for the Repression of Economic and Terrorism Infractions (CRIET). Although these prosecutions appear legally justified, they reflect a deliberate strategy of selectively applying the law to conceal political repression and avoid domestic and international opprobrium.

Second, as political opponents were eliminated, Talon accelerated democratic erosion through electoral manipulation. In the 2019 legislative elections, the participation of opposition parties was at stake following the enactment of a new electoral law in 2018. This new charter for political parties required parties to pay a highly expensive fee of approximately $424,000 to participate in elections. Furthermore, it significantly raised the barriers to entry by increasing the minimum requirement for the founding general assembly from 120 to 1,555 members. This demonstrates that electoral laws were deliberately redesigned to suppress opposition and make elections safe for authoritarian control.

The third way was a judicial review. Led by Talon’s ally Joseph Djogbénou, the Constitutional court required that parties obtain a certificate of conformity from the interior ministry. It illustrates that access to judicial review was facilitated in order to consolidate power, effectively turning the Constitutional Court, an institution meant to uphold the constitution into a privatized tool of the executive. Therefore, the National Autonomous Electoral Commission (CENA) approved only the Progressive Union and the Republican Bloc, both progovernment parties. Consequently, voter turnout drastically plummeted to about 25 percent, the lowest level ever recorded. Although the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AFCHPR) called for suspending elections and including opposition parties, the Talon government ignored these rulings and proceeded with the 2020 municipal election without opposition participation. This demonstrates that the president has used judicial review not as a check on power, but as a mechanism to bolster his own authority. As a result, these three strategies represent a classic form of stealth authoritarianism, reducing democratic elections to a mere instrument for legitimizing authoritarian rule.

However, after the resignation of Joseph Djogbénou from the Constitutional court, the trajectory of democracy in Benin seemed to deviate from its expected downfall. The constitutional court partially recovered, showing signs of resilience by regaining a certain level of independence. When CENA restricted participation of opposition parties in the 2023 elections, the Constitutional court accepted the appeal of opposition parties, leading to seven parties participating in the elections.

Although the intervention of the Constitutional Court temporarily altered the situation in Benin, the new charter introduced in 2018 still maintains restrictions and even intensifying them. In 2024, the legislature approved and promulgated electoral-law amendments mandating that parties win at least 20 percent of the vote, up from the previous 10 percent. Additionally, candidates were also required to be sponsored by at least 15 percent of legislative representatives, up from 10 percent.

During the 2021 presidential election, Talon broke his promise to serve only a single term and sought reelection. Opposition figures remained either detained or in exile, and only a very limited number of opposition candidates managed to compete against Talon. The government consistently argued for the legitimacy of the election through statements by a government spokesman. They proposed that the presence of both ruling and opposition parties ensured democratic legitimacy, thereby maintaining only the minimal formal appearance of democracy. As a result, the V-Dem Democracy Report 2025 classifies Benin as an electoral autocracy, citing the erosion of the rule of law, the weakening of the legislature, and the increase in political violence.

Currently, Benin is approaching the 2026 presidential election, and the CENA has already disqualified a leading opposition candidate in October 2025, while the parliament has initiated discussions to extend the presidential term from five to seven years, further increasing political tension.

The case of Benin is a vivid archetype of how even a consolidated democracy can rapidly collapse. Talon has incrementally eroded democracy by strategically using judicial review, electoral manipulation, and non-political crimes through the logic of stealth authoritarianism. Elected power has perniciously undermined democracy from within, and civil society, now stands on the edge of losing faith in democracy. As a result, vertical accountability, a key pillar of the democratic system, is steadily weakening. The disappearance of opposition constraints, the deterioration of public trust in government, and the emergence of a noncompetitive and repressive political system collectively inflict insurmountable challenges on democracy itself. In the era of the growing shadow of autocracy, the case of Benin may foreshadow our ominous future.