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Key Text Political Parties and Democratic Consolidation in Africa

Author: V Randall and L Svasand
Date: 2002
Size: 23 pages (86 KB)

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Summary

How can ‘weaknesses’ in African political parties be explained? What impact do these weaknesses have on the democratic process? What can be done to assist democratic consolidation with reference to political parties? While democratic consolidation in tropical Africa generally can be seen in some positive light, it is much more difficult to find positive accounts of the contributions of political parties. Political parties are regularly perceived to be a weak link in the chain of elements that comprise a democratic state, sometime charged with undermining democracy through the irresponsible and self-interested actions of their leaders.

This article, from the journal Democratization, considers aspects of the ‘performance’ of political parties in African states and the extent to which this performance falls short of what the relevant literature generally assumes that parties can contribute to democratisation. It then investigates the reasons for this under-performance, focussing on party system imbalance on the one hand, and factors contributing to the general weakness of parties on the other.

It is found that:

The most pertinent aspect of a party system in terms of its potential contribution to democracy lies in the degree of internal imbalance. The number of political parties is often impressive in African states. However, the ‘effective number of parties’ may actually only be one or two. This imbalance inhibits democratic consolidation
One-party dominance is not in itself contrary to democratic governance, but it is a structural feature of a party system that is not conducive to democratic consolidation – particularly where alternative channels of participation are absent, or where attitudes favourable to democracy are weakly institutionalised
A lack of resources, financial and otherwise, contributes to the weakness of political parties, even where state funding is available to support opposition parties.

The weaknesses in political parties can be linked to the strength of the dominant party. Beyond this party-system level explanation, six inter-related factors are identified: Economic context, parties and civil society, the salience of ethnicity, the party as an instrument of personal ambition, (neo- )patrimonialism and clientelism, and the structure of state and its political institutions. Key policy implications that can be drawn from the recognition of these sources of weakness include:

It is misleading to think of democratisation in Africa as simply a function of multi-party competition. The different context of African politics suggests that the democratic credentials of political parties should be set aside if they are contributing positively in some other sense
The vicious cycle of party imbalance, combined with the weakness of particular opposition parties, is a major problem in the realisation of sustained democracy
The limitations posed by a country’s economic context should not be underestimated
The prevailing situation could change substantially over the short to medium term as people, particularly opposition leaders, learn from experience, and as example cautions against facile determinism.

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Source: Randall, V. and Svasand, L. 2002, 'Political Parties and Democratic Consolidation in Africa', Democratization, Vol. 9 no. 3, pp. 30 – 52
Author: Lars Svasand , lars.svasand@isp.uib.no
Department of Government, Essex, http://www.essex.ac.uk/government/