Anja Osei is Professor of Comparative Politics with a focus on Africa at the Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science at the Free University of Berlin. After studying African Studies at the University of Leipzig, she completed her doctorate there on the topic of "Party-voter linkage in Africa: Ghana and Senegal in comparative perspective". From 2010 to 2022, she worked as a postdoc at the University of Konstanz.
Her research focuses on state and society in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular interest in democratisation, authoritarian regimes and political institutions such as parliaments and parties. In addition to her research on elites, she is leading the European Research Council (ERC)-funded project "Do Legislatures Enhance Democracy in Africa? (DLEDA)". Using a mixed-methods design, she and her team investigated what contribution parliaments in Africa make to democratisation. To this end, surveys were conducted in the parliaments of seven African countries: Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Uganda and Tanzania.
2024: "Personal Power in Africa: Legislative Networks and Executive Appointments in Ghana, Togo, and Gabon", Government and Opposition 59,1, 272-296.
2024: with Elisabeth Bruhn. "Tanzania under Magufuli: The Personalisation of a Party-Based Regime". Democratisation, 31,2,481-503.
2022: "Vicious Cycles: Candidate Selection, Vertical Accountability, and MPs' Performance in Sierra Leone", Africa Today Vol. 68(3): 109-129.
2021: "Post-conflict democratisation in Sierra Leone: The role of the parliament" Journal of Legislative Studies, 27(1): 112-135
2020: with Hervé Akinocho and Stephen Mwombela. "Presidential term limits and regime types: When do leaders respect constitutional norms?", Africa Spectrum 55(3): 251-271.
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