Party Systems and Democracy in Africa

R. Doorenspleet, L. Nijzink, R. Doorenspleet, L. Nijzink

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137011701
• eBook ISBN: 9781137011718
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Do party systems help or hinder democracy in Africa? Drawing lessons from different types of party systems in six African countries, this volume shows that party systems affect democracy in Africa in ways that are unexpectedly different from the relation between party systems and democracy observed elsewhere.

1

Do Party Systems Matter for Democracy in Africa?

Renske Doorenspleet and Lia Nijzink

After a wave of democratization reached Africa in the early 1990s, regular multiparty elections have become the norm, and there are only a handful of countries where these are not a feature of the political landscape. Moreover, free and fair elections are now widely regarded as essential elements of democracy on the continent. Thus, when we think about democracy and democracy promotion in Africa, elections tend to be our first area of focus. Providing electoral assistance has become the cornerstone of democracy promotion, and election observation missions have become a fixed feature of elections across the continent, with international organizations, including African intergovernmental organizations like the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States and the Southern African Development Community, regularly sending delegations to observe electoral proceedings.

However, as some of these observation missions have documented, elections are sometimes flawed and, even if they are deemed to be free and fair, they do not always lead to democratization. As a consequence, not only policy-makers but also academics have begun to reconsider the role of elections and argue that democracy should not be equated with elections and that, if our aim is democracy promotion, we need to look to elections and beyond (see Sisk and Reynolds 1998: 149–153). Scholars of democratization warned us not to fall into the trap of the ‘electoralist fallacy’, which refers to ‘the faith that merely holding elections will channel political action into peaceful contests among elites and accord public legitimacy to the winners – no matter how they are conducted or what else constrains those who win them’ (Schmitter and Karl 1991: 78; see also Karl 1995, 2000; Diamond 1999; Carothers 2002). Others pointed out that we should not conclude that ‘elections are meaningless for democratization’, because that would lead to the ‘anti-electoralist’ fallacy (Seligson and Booth 1995: 16).

The debate has become somewhat polarized, with some scholars focusing on negative aspects of elections (Schaffer 2007; Alvarez et al. 2008) while others argue that elections have nonetheless had a positive impact on the democratization process (see Lindberg 2006, 2009). In Chapter 2 of this book, Matthijs Bogaards argues that the relationship between elections and democracy is in fact ambiguous, particularly in Africa. Bogaards shows that there is no common trend of democratization through elections on the African continent, but instead a variety of patterns of stability and change. The effect of elections on the development of democracy proves far from clear-cut as elections seem to strengthen both democratic and authoritarian patterns.

Elections on the continent can at best be seen as one of the steps in the process of democratization. As O’Donnell puts it, ‘fair elections are extremely important. This is not because such elections will necessarily lead to wonderful outcomes. It is because these elections [ . . . ] mark a crucial departure from authoritarian rule’ (O’Donnell 2001: 9). Hence, elections are a necessary but certainly not sufficient condition for democracy. Democracy is not only about organizing elections; a wide range of different ingredients is needed to develop democracy, increase its quality and avoid the breakdown of new or young democracies: a political culture that is open and tolerant of dissent, active and informed citizens, functional and accountable state institutions, a vibrant civil society including diverse media and a range of political parties. So, while initially elections were considered key indicators of successful transitions to democracy, they are increasingly seen as just one of several essential elements of democracy. These elements include political parties and party systems as well.

Political parties are seen as the key institutions occupying a central place in contemporary democracies (Schattschneider 1942; Stokes 1999; Lipset 2000; Van Biezen and Saward 2008). Strong parties may not be necessary to establish a democratic government, but they are certainly necessary for ‘the long-term consolidation of broad-based representative government’ (Dix 1992: 489), and they are seen as vital to representative democracy, because they are agents of political power which mediate between government and society. They articulate the diverse political interests existing in society which are subsequently translated into particular policies (Lipset 2000: 48–55). Parties are not only vehicles for political representation and participation, but also important channels for maintaining democratic accountability and government responsiveness. Hence, political parties are supposed to play an important role in the development of democracy by reinforcing crucial aspects of it: political competition, participation, representation, accountability and responsiveness. By contributing to various aspects of democracy, political parties can be catalysts in the process of democratization. On the other hand, if parties behave undemocratically or hinder the democratic process, they clearly fail to contribute to democratic development and may even facilitate authoritarian tendencies.

Individual political parties function in the context of a particular party system. As Eckstein (1968) already emphasized several decades ago, we need to understand party systems in order to have a good understanding of political parties. This is not just because, as Eckstein (1968) argued, party systems are merely sums of their parts, but also because ‘the factors which shape these party systems (such as electoral laws in new democracies) sometimes exist before the parties themselves become consolidated as organizations’ (Bardi and Mair 2008: 149). Together, the parties in a party system are the primary mechanism for political competition, and Sartori (1976: 44) provides a useful conceptual description:

A party system is precisely the system of interactions resulting from interparty competition. That is, the system in question bears on the relatedness of parties to each other, on how each party is a function (in the mathematical sense) of the other parties and reacts, competitively or otherwise, to the other parties.

Party systems and more specifically the way they relate to democracy is the central theme of this book. Because the link between party systems and democracy is under-researched, particularly in the African context, we investigate party systems and democracy in six African countries, and we present an analysis of the dynamics of party systems with one dominant party as well as other party system configurations. Our comparison of three democracies with one-party-dominant systems – South Africa, Namibia and Botswana – combined with insights from three country cases with different party system configurations – Benin, Ghana and Zambia – offers new insights into the question: do party systems help or hinder democracy in Africa?

What do we know about party systems in Africa?

The institutionalist trend in political science research has generated important studies of electoral systems, legislatures and executive–legislative relations on the continent, but comparative studies of parties and party systems in Africa have remained relatively rare, until recently. One important exception is Salih’s edited volume (2003) which was one of the first publications to focus on the functioning of political parties in Africa after the wave of democratization in the 1990s. Other recent studies deal with political parties and democratization in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria (Elischer 2008), analyse the development of different party systems in Benin, Ghana, Senegal and Zambia (Riedl 2014), aim to explain differences in the strength of opposition parties in Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Lebas 2011) and provide explanations for the different trajectories of one-party-dominant systems in six African democracies (Doorenspleet and Nijzink 2013).

Interesting work has also been published around the characteristics (Mozaffar and Scarritt 2005; Lindberg 2007) and classification (e.g. see Bogaards 2004; Erdmann and Basedau 2013) of party systems in Africa, but the bulk of the work so far has focused on important yet very specific aspects, such as the effects of ethnicity on African party politics (Basedau and Stroh 2012; Elischer 2013), the origins and effects of ethnic party bans (Bogaards et al. 2012) and international support for political parties in Africa (Rakner and Svasand 2012; Weissenbach 2010; Burnell and Gerrits 2012).

In any event, studies of the relation between party systems and democracy in Africa are scarce, and the few studies that do address this topic present contradictory findings. Some studies show that the competitiveness of a party system has a positive effect on democracy (Kuenzi and Lambright 2001, 2005)¹ but another study finds the opposite: that one-party dominance has a positive effect. The latter study concluded that by ‘providing for more effective government and being the least corrupt when compared to multi party systems and authoritarian regimes, dominant parties in democratic regimes are offering a set of advantages to their competitors’ (Lindberg and Jones 2010: 217).² Thus, further study is needed to clarify the link between party systems and democracy, especially in the African context.

Much of our current understanding of parties and party systems in Africa is heavily influenced by a body of literature dealing with political parties in advanced industrialized countries. However, African political parties differ in important ways from the predominantly European parties upon which models and theories of political parties and party systems are based. In this respect, relevant and thoughtful contributions have been made by scholars who question whether party systems in Africa can actually be conceptualized in line with the comparative literature (Salih 2003; Erdmann 2004; Manning 2005; Hydén 2006; Carbone 2007). Some have argued that in order to enhance our understanding of parties and party systems in Africa we need to take into account the particular historical context in which they emerged (Salih 2003; see also Doorenspleet and Nijzink 2013), which differs from the history of party systems elsewhere. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that current political parties in Africa embrace some if not most of the functions of their Western counterparts. Despite the apparent fragility of norms and practices of internal party democracy (Magolowondo 2012) and despite the emphasis placed on leaders rather than members, political parties in Africa have become essential in the electoral processes of their respective countries (see Salih 2003: 6) and are crucial elements in the political landscape.

When we study the role of parties and party systems, it is imperative that we take into account the various arenas – societal, parliamentary and governmental – in which political parties compete and relate to each other, that is, the different arenas in which a party system manifests itself. Bardi and Mair (2008), who presented an insightful overview of the literature on – predominantly Western – party systems, showed how studies in this field initially focused on the societal arena and subsequently moved to the parliamentary arena and finally to the governmental arena. They argued: ‘Initially, the understanding of party systems was driven primarily by a conception of parties as social actors, with the interactions between the parties being seen to derive from the patterns within the wider society’ (Bardi and Mair 2008: 162).³ In a later generation of scholarship (e.g. see Sartori 1976), the emphasis moved away from party systems as a reflection of societal divisions. In a new line of investigation, political parties were primarily regarded as actors in the parliamentary arena and the interactions within the legislature were seen as decisive to determine the character of a party system. In more recent works (Blondel and Cotta 1996; cf. Bardi and Mair 2008), the focus has shifted once again: instead of the interactions between parties in societal and parliamentary arenas, those in the governmental arena are thought to be crucial to understand party systems.

These developments in the literature mirror a shift in material circumstances, that is, the historical context in which the object of study (party systems) has developed. Thus, the shifts in the party system literature reflect a changing political reality. In Western Europe, party systems were initially shaped by broad societal forces and functioned as a reflection of social divisions which were then reproduced in the parliamentary arena. Thereafter, the emphasis shifted from the parliamentary dynamics between political parties to the competition and negotiations that characterize relations between political parties in the governmental arena.

This idea of party systems manifesting themselves in different arenas is useful in the context of our analysis, because it shows that history matters. As Bollen (1979) stated: ‘It is not the “time” per se that is important but the combination of variables characterizing a historical period.’ Clearly, the combination of variables shaping Africa’s current party systems differs from the main influences that determined the earlier emergence of Western party systems. Including a time dimension, taking moving pictures rather than snapshots and looking at party systems as trajectories enriches our understanding of party system dynamics (see also the work by Pierson 2004). It brings into focus the way in which parties and party systems in Africa differ from parties and party systems described in the literature, which is mainly based on Western experiences. Because African party systems developed at a different moment in time, they do not present themselves in the way the literature describes, across all three arenas.

In the beginning of the twentieth century when democracies started to emerge in parts of the Western world, the global context was obviously different from the more recent context in which African countries made tra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• 1. Do Party Systems Matter for Democracy in Africa?
• 2. Multiparty Elections in Africa: For Better or Worse
• Part I: One-Party-Dominant Systems
• Part II: Other Party Systems
• Part III: Conclusion
• Index