On May 7, 1970 the Fourth Dahomean Republic was inaugurated following a series of developments that snatched political stability from the jaws of civil anarchy, turned back the clock ten years, and gained the small West African state two questionable distinctions: the continent's first collegiate presidency and Africa's first head of state to bounce back to power after being toppled by the military.

As secession and civil war threatened the country following the aborted March 1970 elections, Dahomey had just completed a tortuous tenyear cycle of acute instability, during which every possible combination of political forces had tried and failed to govern the country. The political triumvirate of Dahomey--Ahomadegbe, Maga, and Apity--maintained a tight electoral stranglehold over their respective tribal fiefs in Abomey, the North, and Porto Novo, buttressed by their traditional claims to legitimacy. Intense regionalism and ethnic exclusiveness, dating to the precolonial era and perpetuated by the French administration, mitigated against the emergence of durable interregional political alliances. The period 1958-1965 was characterized by shifting coalitions between the three leaders that collapsed almost as soon as they were created as a result of continuous intrigues, plots, and jockeying for sole power (for a detailed analysis of this period, see Thompson 1963, Decalo 1968).