BRIEFING: BURKINA FASO—THE FALL OF BLAISE COMPAORÉ MARIE-SOLEIL FRÈRE AND PIERRE ENGLEBERT* BLAISE COMPAORÉ RESIGNED AND FLED BURKINA FASO on 31 October 2014 under the sustained assault of a coalition of youth, cultural leaders, civil society organizations and opposition parties, and after the defection of core segments of his military. Compaoré had been in power since the assassin- ation of his predecessor Thomas Sankara on 15 October 1987. This briefing first discusses the actual sequence of events that led to the transition. We then identify some deeper trends that weakened the regime, including the dilemma of succession in a semi-authoritarian regime, the rise of youth and cultural elites as opposition actors who placed themselves beyond the reach of regime co-optation, and the use of Sankara imagery as a tool of mobiliza- tion. We then jointly analyse two features of the transition and the current regime of Lt-Col Isaac Yacouba Zida who, despite being only prime minister, appears to be the country’s new strongman. The first is the relative institu- tional uncertainty that accompanied the fall of the Compaoré regime and which continues to hamper the transition. The second is the enduring role of the military in Burkinabè politics. We conclude by singling out some impli- cations of the transition and the challenges ahead. A miscalculation brings about an abrupt ending Blaise Compaoré had been re-elected president for a second and constitu- tionally last term in 2010. 1 Hoping to stay in power beyond the November 2015 end of his term, he had toyed with multiple options to revise the two-term limit set forth in Article 37 of the constitution. He was reluctant to choose the risky referendum route and hoped to be able to directly change *Marie-Soleil Frère (msfrere@ulb.ac.be) is Professor in Information and Communication Sciences at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) / National Fund for Scientific Research. Frère was in Burkina Faso in October–November 2014 and much of the account of the events described in this article is derived from her personal testimony. Pierre Englebert (penglebert@ pomona.edu) is Professor in African Politics and Development at Pomona College. Englebert was in Burkina Faso for fieldwork in June 2014. 1. Although he seized power in 1987 and was elected four times thereafter (1991, 1998, 2005 and 2010), only his last two elections were under the 1991 constitution as amended in 2002, which limits the president to two five-year terms. African Affairs,1–13 doi: 10.1093/afraf/adv010 © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved 1 African Affairs Advance Access published March 8, 2015 at Bibl Des Sciences Humaines on March 9, 2015 http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from