A baixa popularidade de José Eduardo

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Residents in most of the 34 sub-Saharan African countries Gallup surveyed in 2011 gave high marks to their chief political executives, including residents in Mali, where the president was ousted in a military coup late last month. Leaders in Burundi, Benin, and Mali received the highest ratings from their constituents, earning approval from nearly nine in 10 residents. Angola's president received the lowest rating, garnering approval from one in six residents. The data make clear that leadership approval and tenure in the region are unrelated. As points of comparison, most African leaders earned higher approval from their public in 2011 than U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron did from theirs. Approval Ratings Strongly Associated With Institutional Confidence, Local Economy The state of the local economy does have an influence on Africans' assessments of their country's leader, at least to some extent. It is important to note that many countries in the region -- including those that are not resource rich -- experienced relatively strong economic growth from 2010 to 2011. But other factors are also at play. Confidence in institutions is strongly associated with approval of the chief executive's performance. Those who are confident in the honesty of elections are far more likely than those who are not to say they approve of their leader's performance. Confidence in the judicial system elicits similar levels of approval ratings. Further, even after taking gender, education, country, and household income into account, these results hold true. Higher Marks Go to the Top Executive Rather Than the Country Leadership Africans tend to rate their head of state's performance more highly than they rate that of the country's leadership more generally. This suggests that in most cases, Africans differentiate between the top leader's actions and those of the broader leadership. However, in Angola, Ghana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, and South Africa, approval ratings of the head of government are virtually identical to those of the country leadership. Zimbabwe is a different case as residents give higher marks to the country leadership than to the president, Robert Mugabe. This finding suggests that Zimbabweans may credit improvements in their lives more to the actions of the broader unity government in fighting hyperinflation than those of their head of state.