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This research note contributes to the emerging debate on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for democracy, autocracy and regime change. Following a review of the literature on the short-term impact of the pandemic on citizen freedoms, I conduct a preliminary test showing that COVID-19 has widened the freedom divide between democracy and autocracy. I propose a prudential interpretation of this new finding and of its implications for medium- to long-term regime change dynamics. In an age of advancing autocratization, regaining awareness that democracies and autocracies treat citizens differently could help marginalize antisystem political forces in democratic countries. However, increased levels of repression in regimes that are already authoritarian are no good news in terms of prospective democratization. Moreover, the management of the social and economic consequences of the pandemic is likely to represent a key driver of future regime change, duo to its impact on the legitimacy and stability of both democracies and autocracies.

Besides the introduction of multi- party elections, the sub- Saharan wave of democratic reforms of the 1990s encompassed the introduction of limits to the number of terms that a chief executive can serve. Executive term limits (ETLs) are key for democracy to advance in a continent with a legacy of personal rule. However, the manipulation of ETLs has become a recurring mode of autocratisation, through which African aspiring over- stayers weaken executive constraints, taint political competition, and limit citi-zens' possibility to choose who governs. This article presents a three- phase model of autocratisation by ETL manipulation and, using new data, offers one of the first regional comparative studies of ETL manipulation in sub- Saharan Africa that rests on econo-metric modelling. The analysis leads to revisiting some previous findings on the drivers of ETL manipulation and highlights the relevance of other previously underestimated factors that may either discourage a leader from challenging ETLs or prevent their successful manipulation.

Besides elections, the sub-Saharan wave of political reforms of the 1990s led several countries to introduce limits to the number of terms that a chief executive can serve, even though several leaders managed to bypass them. While Africa's executive term limits (ETLs) politics has gained scholarly attention, the literature mostly consists of in-depth small-N analyses. Systematic comparative research is rare. To contribute filling this gap, this article presents a new Africa Executive Term Limits (AETL) dataset. Covering 49 sub-Saharan polities throughout the 1990–2019 period, AETL represents the most complete and updated collection of data on Africa's ETLs politics, and a versatile research tool to address several questions on the present and future of this continent. A preliminary assessment of the new data finds ETLs to be increasingly respected, and to have positive returns for government alternation and development. These findings point to new research avenues that AETL may help travel.

In questo contributo si ripercorrono, e vengono riproposti, alcuni pensieri di Gi-no Pagliarani contenuti dal suo volume Il coraggio di Venere. Si è anche ritenuto utile, per il lettore, riproporre quanto scritto da Franco Fornari nella Presenta-zione dell'opera e da Diego Napolitani nella Prefazione.