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Landlocked in the heart of Africa with a population of just over eight million and a Gross Domestic Product of USD 700 , Burundi differentiates itself as a unique outlier among case studies of African democratic experiments. Its first attempt at a democratic transition in 1993 spiraled into a decade long bloodbath, though this latest stretch of warfare continues a history defined by cyclical violence. Often omitted from the history books, what Stephen Weissman calls “the first clear genocide since the Holocaust” ravaged this small central African state in 1972 – one of four uprising-and-repression cycles since Burundi’s independence. Delving into Burundi’s colonial history is critically important to understanding its failed democratic transition; it illuminates the precipitating causes that one may site as not conducive to democracy such as the structural factors of ethnic stratification and economic underdevelopment. However, as important as such factors were,......

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Approximate Word Count: 3146
Approximate Pages: 13 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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