Votes Without Voices: Democratic Erosion and Legal Exclusion in Benin, 2016–2026

This article examines the mechanisms through which Benin—once widely regarded as a democratic model in sub-Saharan Africa—underwent systematic democratic erosion between 2016 and 2026 under President Patrice Talon. Drawing on Freedom House indices, electoral commission records, regional court findings, and international observer reports, it argues that Benin’s collapse was not the product of a coup or sudden authoritarian rupture, but of three interlocking legal mechanisms: the progressive rewriting of electoral law to exclude opposition parties; the weaponization of the Court for the Repression of Economic Offenses and Terrorism (CRIET) against political rivals; and the strategic withdrawal from the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to foreclose external accountability. Situated within the scholarship on competitive authoritarianism, executive aggrandizement, and electoral manipulation in developing democracies, the article demonstrates how incremental, formally legal reforms can hollow out democratic competition while maintaining its procedural surface. It further addresses three alternative explanations for Benin’s trajectory—technocratic rationalization, genuine security threat, and institutional shallowness—and finds each insufficient to account for the specificity and sequencing of the reforms enacted.