Helen Epstein: When protest movements swept across the Middle East region—in Iran in 2009 and then in the Arab Spring countries—they didn’t stop at the Sahara desert. In their new book Africa Uprising, Adam Branch and Zachariah Mampilly document more than ninety political protests in forty African countries in the past decade—most in the past six years. Many have had the same aim as those in the Middle East: to force corrupt leaders out of power. […] Why do so many African leaders assume they can ignore their constitutions, cling to power, and get away with it? In order to understand this epidemic of folly, it’s important to appreciate how much influence the West has over these countries—either through foreign aid given bilaterally, via institutions such as the World Bank, or in the form of clandestine military support. For example, Western aid pays for half of Burundi’s budget, roughly 40 percent of Rwanda’s, 50 percent of Ethiopia’s and 30 percent of Uganda’s . All these countries receive an unknown amount of military aid as well. This money enables African leaders to ignore the demands of their own people, and facilitates the financing of the patronage systems and security machinery that keeps them in power. More here.