The relatively new African phenomenon of the one-term Presidency – the subject of a recent instalment of this column – is not letting up, with the continent’s latest failed wannabe two-term head of State being Seychelles’ Wavel Ramkalawn, who lost a runoff vote this month.

But is this democratic awakening, where voters are increasingly unwilling to tolerate incumbents who underperform, a boon or a bane?

The answer is a no-brainer – the defeat of an incumbent after only one term does countries a world of good. This is no conjecture but has been proved times without number by our friends from the academic world, who spend a good deal of their time studying these things.

Let’s start with a panel survey conducted around Zambia’s 2021 election, which dashed Edgar Lungu’s hopes of extending his stay in office. He had first completed the term of his predecessor, who died in office in 2015, before serving a full five-year first term of his own. He died a bitter man in Pretoria in June, and his body has remained in a mortuary in the city ever since as a legal dispute rages between his family, who want his remains to be buried in South Africa, and the Zambian government, which is pushing for repatriation and burial at the official cemetery for serving and former heads of State in Lusaka.

But I digress. The Zambian study, published in the Public Opinion Quarterly journal last year, describes the country under Lungu as a competitive authoritarian regime – a multiparty system occupying the grey zone between autocracy and democracy. One of the herd instincts of competitive authoritarian regimes is to use State power to manipulate every aspect of elections in their favour.

In short, Lungu’s defeat – which the study’s authors called a “seismic event” – created perceptions of “electoral quality” among supporters of both the opposition and the outgoing ruling party.

This finding underscores why a culture of single-term Presidencies can entrench democratic confidence. Each peaceful change of guard reminds citizens that leaders serve at their pleasure.

Given declining electoral participation in many countries, this is encouraging news, as confidence in electoral processes is likely to motivate citizens to exercise their vote. South Africa has not been immune to this apathy, with only 27.7-million of the 42.3-million registered voters, just 59% of those eligible, turning out on election day last year.

Although Zambia was a competitive authoritarian regime during Lungu’s time, it was by no means in the same league as countries such as Angola, Uganda or Zimbabwe. Still, the Zambia example suggests that the positive effect observed there could deliver outsized legitimacy dividends in autocratic States that nevertheless hold elections.

Although rather dated, having been published in 2007, an Afrobarometer working paper found that, in many cases, when incumbents are voted out through peaceful, free and fair elections, the trust of their supporters in State institutions such as the police, the courts and body or bodies running elections does not significantly differ from that of winning party supporters, provided electoral integrity is high. In other words, credible leadership turnover can enhance legitimacy across the board – not just among the winners.

Yet another study, undertaken in the Netherlands and published in 2022, analysed the results of three Parliamentary elections held between 2007 and 2012, with the findings implying the desirability of one-term Presidencies, especially if incumbents from different parties alternate in leading the country.

The researchers note: “Trust in the institutions of democracy decreased by up to 7.1% among voters whose party lost two elections in a row when compared with those whose party lost once. On the other hand, there was no difference in how satisfied double losers were with democracy in general.”

This is my reading of this finding: in countries with, say, two dominant parties, the one-term Presidency lowers the chances of a party suffering electoral defeat twice in a row, implying enduring trust in democratic institutions among supporters of all political parties.

Taken together, these studies show that leadership turnover – even after a single term – strengthens both the perception and practice of democracy. Far from destabilising nations, it institutionalises accountability and sends a clear signal to political leaders that public office is a temporary trust, not an entitlement to a decade in power, the average combined duration of two terms.