Senegal’s populists confront the challenge of governing

Media reports describe the power struggle between Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Ousmane Sonko, his former prime minister and the current president of the National Assembly, as a personal dispute. But this falling out actually illustrates a recurring problem for populist movements: How does a movement that came to power by challenging the political establishment then govern within these very institutions? 

It’s easy to argue that the current establishment is wrong when running against them in an election. But it is much harder to create new governing institutions, or govern within the institutional constraints that you previously opposed. While Faye has attempted to govern pragmatically since he took office in 2024, Sonko has continued to advocate for a break with the old political order.

New party cements this political divorce

The origins of the Faye-Sonko dispute lie in the unusual circumstances that brought their movement to power in 2024. Sonko founded the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (known by its French acronym, PASTEF) in 2014 and has served as its charismatic leader and chief political strategist. Faye was one of PASTEF’s co-founders and served as the party secretary-general from 2022 until winning the 2024 presidential election. 

While Sonko is the more publicly popular of the two men, a defamation conviction in 2023 barred him from running for president in 2024. Sonko’s supporters believe his conviction was politically motivated because he was the main opposition figure in the race to succeed President Macky Sall, after placing third in the 2019 election. Sonko endorsed Faye, who is mononymously known as “Diomaye” and campaigned under the slogan “Diomaye mooy Sonko,” meaning “Diomaye is Sonko” in the Wolof language. 

Faye won the 2024 election with 54% of the vote, despite having been released from prison on an insurrection charge less than two weeks before the election. After taking office, the new president immediately appointed Sonko as his prime minister.

The partnership soon crumbled

But by early 2026, Faye and Sonko’s partnership had broken down over differences in opinion about how to govern. Some analysts suggested that the dispute is also about whether Faye would be willing to step aside for Sonko to run for president in 2029. 

Faye dismissed Sonko as prime minister on May 22, during a tense debate over how to handle Senegal’s extensive debt crisis. Sonko wanted to handle the debt crisis domestically, proposing an economic recovery plan financed largely through new taxes and public spending cuts, to avoid further debt. Faye chose instead a pathway that engaged the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Sonko publicly condemned Faye’s decision to negotiate with the IMF on debt restructuring as “a disgrace.” The IMF froze Senegal’s lending program last year because of the previous administration’s hidden debt, which has increased from $7 billion to more than $11 billion since Sonko introduced his domestic recovery plan. 

After Sonko’s dismissal, the president of the National Assembly resigned. That cleared the way for Sonko to replace him – an easy win for Sonko, as PASTEF controls 130 of 165 seats. Faye then appointed a cabinet without any members of PASTEF. Given the strong PASTEF/Sonko majority in the legislature, Faye’s agenda has stalled. Faye’s ability to enact any solutions to the country’s debt crisis is also in jeopardy since any IMF deal will require parliamentary approval.

Faye was facing a political stalemate

With few political options, in July Faye founded a new party – Kiiraay-Republican Patriots. Kiiraay means “shield” in Wolof. Faye has emphasized that his new party will be guided by ethics and transparency, with political office treated as a duty and not a reward. The president continues to sack office holders who retain loyalty to Sonko, most recently replacing the leaders of the state-owned oil and mining companies. 

The ideological overlap between Kiiraay and PASTEF is significant. It will be hard to convince voters that there are two distinct paths between them when the key difference is leadership style. So far, the majority of PASTEF members appear to be following Sonko’s lead, while Kiiraay is relying on support from smaller parties that joined Faye’s coalition ahead of the 2024 election. 

Faye can dissolve the legislature and hold new snap elections this November but has not yet announced plans to do so. More likely, he will look to consolidate his new party before calling for new legislative elections. In the longer term, this political split positions Faye and Sonko to go head-to-head for the presidency in 2029. However, the division also puts Sonko back in the comfortable position of opposition leader – he can complain about the government without the challenges of having to govern, or the risks of disappointing voters with a poor performance. If Sonko’s opposition continues to stifle Faye’s agenda, this might position Sonko for an easy win.

Sonko is discovering the limits of populism

More than a simple power struggle, this split also reflects a much more fundamental political tension. How can a populist political movement govern effectively once it is responsible for the government institutions it once advocated against? Faye and Sonko have embraced increasingly different solutions – Sonko has remained the movement’s populist firebrand while Faye is trying to govern as a pragmatist.

At its core, populism interprets politics as a struggle between the ordinary people and the corrupt elite. That message works well for opposition movements mobilizing citizens against an incumbent government. But once the populists win power and become the establishment, that message no longer resonates. 

Governing requires some level of compromise, negotiation, and working within institutional constraints. A populist movement must decide what compromises they are willing to make, and that choice can be politically risky. A leader who compromises too much may face accusations of betraying the movement, but a leader who refuses any compromise will find governing impossible.

Some populist leaders fail to find this compromise

Academic research on populists once they enter government suggests that some leaders are better at making this transition than others. In many cases, once populist leaders gain power and are included in a governing coalition, they begin to moderate their populist appeals and act more like mainstream parties, a concept known as the inclusion-moderation thesis. 

Choosing to moderate, however, is dependent in part on the leader’s style of governing. Recent scholarship distinguishes between adversarial leadership, when leaders continue their more confrontational political rhetoric, and managerial leadership, when leaders adapt to existing governmental constraints. The politicians most responsible for day-to-day governance tend to moderate their positions the most. This distinction can help us make sense of the choices made by both Faye and Sonko in recent months.

Sonko’s popular appeal has consistently rested on the premise that Senegal can and should break from the existing political order. In many ways, his arguments are classic populist politics – Senegal’s political class is corrupt and disconnected from the average citizen, Senegal can and should have more control over its economic sovereignty and natural resources, and these changes cannot happen through accommodation with the national and international institutions that helped produce the status quo. Sonko often criticizes domestic elites and foreign partners and tends to rely on public pressure through popular mobilization to drive policy changes. 

But populist policies are harder to sustain when you become the establishment. It’s even more of a challenge to govern a country whose public debt stands at 132% of its GDP, particularly when the necessary austerity measures are likely to anger your political base.

Faye is discovering the costs of pragmatism

In contrast to Sonko’s confrontational leadership style, Faye has taken a more measured, diplomatic, and consensus-seeking approach. Faye opened new negotiations with the IMF over the debt crisis. He has emphasized the importance of maintaining close relationships with current international partners like France and the United States, while continuing to diversify and expand Senegal’s foreign partnerships. 

Faye has put institutions – not personalities – at the center of governance in Senegal, calling for institutional changes while emphasizing the need to respect constitutional procedures and confer with opposition parties. This approach does not mean that Faye has abandoned PASTEF’s goals. Instead, he seems to recognize that meaningful progress towards those goals requires successfully navigating the existing constraints. 

The populist dilemma after victory

The rise of Sonko and PASTEF did not occur in a vacuum. It followed more than a decade of rising popular frustration with the political establishment and the gradual erosion of democratic norms under presidents Abdoulaye Wade and Macky Sall. 

Wade was elected in 2000 as a symbol of democratic change, having defeated the party that had been in power for 40 years, since independence. By the end of his presidency, however, he faced popular protests over his attempts to push for a third term and change the electoral rules.

Sall also represented democratic change upon his election in 2012, after splitting from Wade’s coalition. But by the end of his presidency, he became the very leader he had once opposed – he jailed opposition leaders and tried to postpone the 2024 presidential election.

This history helps explain why PASTEF’s anti-establishment message resonated so strongly with Senegalese voters. The question moving forward is not simply who will win the Faye-Sonko power struggle. It is whether either leader can transition their populist movement from one that promised fundamental change to a government that is capable of delivering it. 

That may be the broader challenge for all populist movements. Winning power is not enough. The real challenge is governing without becoming the very establishment you once opposed.

Kelci Burckhardt is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and a 2026-2027 Good Authority fellow.

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