Africa Lunch Meeting with Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy at the University of Birmingham and the author of How to Rig an Election (Yale University Press). Contrary to what is commonly believed, authoritarian leaders who agree to hold elections are generally able to remain in power longer than autocrats who refuse to allow the populace to vote. Calling upon first-hand experiences, hundreds of interviews and election reports from Kenya, India, Nigeria, Russia, the United States, Zimbabwe and more, Professor Cheeseman will expose the limitations of national elections as a means of promoting democratisation, revealing the six essential strategies that dictators use to undermine the electoral process in an attempt to guarantee victory.

(Photo credit: © Giampaolo Musumeci, CNCD-11.11.11 2011.)