The African Peer Review Mechanism:: an Aid for Africa's Democratic Governance or a New Managerialist Tool?

Over the last few decades, any external effort aimed at facilitating democratic governance in the former OAU countries was considered as encroachment into the internal affairs of sovereign state. Emerging as part of the transformation of the OAU into AU, the APRM has removed the cloak of sovereignty used by the ruling African elite to prevent democratic changes in their countries. This book reviews the APRM and its value to democratic governance in Africa. "Auditing" is used to characterise the form and substance of the APRM and is applied by the mechanism to appraise the performance of its members in respect of their democracy and governance record. In this regard peer review is perceived as synonymous with auditing. The book contexualises peer review within the rubric of the "new managerialism" and examines the APRM in relation to the phenomenon of managerialist accountability regime. It therefore, concludes that, the APRM uses processes that lean more towards a new regime of accountability when auditing members to enhance democratic governance. The author uses an innovative way of borrowing a concept and its application from one discipline to inform discourses on another.