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Comparing ethnic party regulation in East Africa
Abstract
Since 1990 the banning of ethnic and other identity-based parties has become the norm in sub-Saharan Africa. This article focuses on three East-African countries – Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda – which opted for different ways of dealing with such parties. The analysis shows that the laws have actually been enforced by the responsible regulatory institutions. However, they have only marginally influenced the character of the political parties in the three countries: a comparison of regional voting patterns suggests that bans on particularistic parties have not ensured the emergence of aggregative parties with a national following in Tanzania and Uganda. In Kenya on the other hand, where such a ban has been absent until 2008, parties proved not to be more regionally based. In all three countries governing parties were clearly more nationalized than opposition parties, while the overall level of party nationalization is lower than in other world regions.
... Even on the Africa continent, the constitutionalization of political parties took place. When reintroducing multiparty politics in the 1990s, most African countries decided to organize political parties in their constitutions [11]. ...
... Desde a introdução de eleições multipartidárias, a grande maioria dos países africanos adotaram uma legislação partidária autónoma ou regularam o funcionamento dos seus partidos políticos no seio das leis eleitorais ou das constituições. Recentemente, um número especial da revista Democratization (vol.17 (4), 2010) revelou que a vaga de democratização africana foi acompanhada pela proibição de partidos de base étnica e regional ou de fins particularistas (Bogaards, Basedau, & Hartmann, 2010) e, em alguns casos, pelo reforço da regulação partidária como forma de condicionar a proliferação de novos partidospor exemplo na Tanzânia, Quénia ou Uganda (Moroff, 2010). ...
Resumo:
Cabo Verde e São Tomé Príncipe apresentam semelhanças e diferenças que os tornam particularmente comparáveis. São dois arquipélagos com experiências de (des)colonização mais ou menos semelhantes e que acolhem sociedades crioulas, onde as diferenças de natureza étnica, religiosa ou territorial são muito ténues. No início dos anos 1990 fizeram parte do grupo de países na África subsaariana onde uma transição bem-sucedida para a democracia foi seguida de uma alternância política. Desde a transição, estes dois (micro)estados têm mantido eleições regulares e figuram entre as democracias com melhores desempenhos em termos de liberdades políticas e direitos cívicos. Todavia, existem diferenças importantes entre estes países: enquanto Cabo Verde desenvolveu um sistema bipartidário estável, São Tomé e Príncipe conhece um sistema multipartidário relativamente instável. Para explicar estas trajetórias divergentes analisamos as escolhas institucionais (tipo de sistema eleitoral e leis dos partidos) feitas pelos atores políticos chave durante a transição. O nosso argumento, devedor do novo institucionalismo histórico, é que as decisões estratégicas feitas nesta conjuntura crítica têm efeitos na longa duração, influenciando as diferentes trajetórias de desenvolvimento dos sistemas partidários.
Palavras-chave: Cabo Verde; São Tomé e Príncipe; sistemas partidários; escolhas institucionais; conjunturas críticas.
A comparative analysis of party system development in Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe (1991-2014)
Abstract
Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe feature similarities and contrasts that make them perfect to compare. They are two archipelagos with similar (de)colonization experiences, hosting creole societies framed by weak ethnic, religious and territorial cleavages. In the beginning of the 1990s, they were part of the group of sub-Saharan African countries where a successful democratic transition was followed by alternation in power. Since transition, these two (micro)states have conducted regular elections and reaching the level of the most advanced democracies in terms of political liberties and civil rights. However, these two cases reveal important differences: while Cape Verde has developed a stable two party system, São Tome and Príncipe is characterized by a quite instable multiparty system. To explain this variance we focus on the institutional choices (electoral system design and party laws) made by the key political actors during transition. Following the new historical institutionalism, we argue that strategic decisions made at this critical juncture have long lasting effects, shaping divergent paths of party system development.
Keywords: Cape Verde; São Tomé and Príncipe; party systems; institutional choices; critical junctures.
... Recently, a special issue of Democratization[Vol.17 (4), 2010] revealed that the wave of multiparty elections was accompanied by legal bans on ethnic and other particularistic parties(Bogaards et al. 2010). In cases like Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda there has been an enforcement of party regulation namely on party registration(Moroff 2010). Nevertheless, even if at formal level particularistic politics parties are being banned, religious, ethnic and territorial arguments are still used to mobilize electors. ...
This paper addresses the literature on parties and party systems in the Third Wave African democracies. It aims at: 1) describing the environment in which parties have emerged and; 2) identifying the components of interparty competition. From the 90s onwards several African countries adopted democratic institutions in result of both domestic (e.g. the economic and political breakdown of several one party states) and external pressures (e.g. the collapse of the soviet bloc). Concerning parties and party systems; evidence was that democracy had mainly originated dominant party systems (Bogaards 2004, Salih 2003, Carbone 2007) in what could constitute an obstacle to the quality of democracy as the absence of alternation and bi-polarism diminish the efficacy of vertical accountability (Morlino 2004, 18). African party systems were characterized as having high electoral volatility, low fragmentation (Mozaffar and Scarritt 2005) and low levels of institutionalization (Kuenzi e Lambright 2005). As in other Third Wave democracies (e.g. Latin America, Eastern and Southern Europe) the role of both elites and the state became increasingly important to explain the emergence and the development of new political parties (Mainwaring: 1999, van Biezen 2000). In the other hand, ethnic, territorial and religious cleavages replaced Lipset and Rokkan (1967) traditional cleavages as potential explanations for party system shape. Furthermore these cleavages seemed to undermine the emergence of political ideologies compatible with left-right scale (Manning 2005, Salih 2007). This framework will be the starting point for our conceptualization of parties and party systems in the African democracies, however we attempt to step further in this analysis and therefore a special focus will be given to the components of interparty competition. In fact, twenty years since the Third Wave arrived to the African continent it is important to assess how political institutions work.
Why has homegrown jihadi Salafism emerged as a major security challenge in some African countries, but not in others? This article draws attention to the organizational playing field in which Islamic activity manifests itself. It argues that states with institutional regulatory mechanisms in the Islamic sphere—state-led national Islamic associations—can counteract jihadi propaganda and recruitment. State-led national associations are organizational entities through which state elites delegate the authority to monitor religious practice to those Islamic leaders who are most accommodating of state authority. Cooperation with local Islamic leaders allows state elites to react to jihadi recruitment and mobilization at an early stage. It further enables state actors to target potential security challenges without alienating their Muslim community. States that fail to create steering capacity in the Islamic sphere instead react to jihadi Salafism with indiscriminate violence, thereby provoking the further radicalization of the Muslim faithful. Using a small to medium-N research design, this article provides empirical evidence supporting this claim from two East African countries and seven additional countries from across the African continent.
The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the origins of inter-ethnic hostility, which need to be
addressed if the centripetalism institutions are to function properly. Using intention of ethnic
voting as an indicator of inter-group discrimination, this paper tests several classic hypotheses
adapted from social psychology based on the surveys conducted in 14 urban areas from six sub-Saharan African countries. Results show, among others, that horizontal inequalities, when
perceived either advantageously or disadvantageously, actually increase the level of inter-group
hostility, but that the malicious effect is context-dependent: a greedy tendency in terms of
socio-economic group inequality is limited to non-minorities; minorities who think their own group is superior to others economically do not have stronger hostility towards others compared
to those who do not see any socio-economic gap; perceived horizontal inequalities matter chiefly
in the countries without any kind of political power mobility; hostility between groups is not
associated with perceived horizontal inequalities in countries where experience of power sharing
or change of government has convinced people that political change is not impossible.
Resumo: A literatura sobre os processos de mudança política nas cinco ex-colónias portuguesas em África é consensual em destacar o carácter distintivo dos casos cabo-verdiano e santomense (Chabal 2002; Seibert 2002; Meyens 2002; Cahen 1991, entre outros). Dimensões endógenas nomeadamente, o legado colonial (sem guerra armada), o tipo de transição para a independência (negociada), a fraca polarização e politização das clivagens de base étnica, religiosa ou territorial e a cultura política das elites, parecem estar na origem de uma história pós-colonial marcada pela alternância política, eleições regulares e expansão das liberdades e direitos políticos. Neste estudo comparamos Cabo Verde e São Tomé e Príncipe e analisamos o processo de institucionalização do sistema partidário que assume o formato bipartidário no primeiro caso e multipartidário no segundo. Num segundo momento, analisamos os efeitos do sistema eleitoral e das leis dos partidos nos sistemas partidários.
With the re-introduction of multiparty politics at the beginning of the 1990s most African countries started to regulate political parties extensively, especially ethnic and other particularistic parties. This article presents a new database on particularistic and other party bans in sub-Saharan Africa, drawing on a comprehensive collection of African party regulations and records of their implementation since 1990. After demonstrating the magnitude and complexity of party bans in Africa the article deals in depth with enforcement institutions and legal procedures. It shows that party bans are especially pervasive in less democratic countries and have often targeted politically relevant parties.
This chapter explores how electoral arrangements have been used and can be used in Sub-Saharan Africa to shape the political organization of ethnicity in the emerging party systems of the region. Electoral system is understood here in the broad sense, including not only the way votes are translated into seats, but also the regulations for party registration and candidate nomination. The analysis covers countries spread over most of the continent, in the present and past. In the process, the chapter will propose corrections to three prevailing conceptions about electoral engineering for conflict management.
Comparative scholarship suggests that democracy in ethnically-diverse societies is likely to be fostered by the development of broad-based, aggregative, and multi-ethnic political parties, rather than fragmented, personalised, or ethnically-based party systems. However, surprisingly little scholarly attention has been given to how party fragmentation can be addressed or how broad-based parties can be sustained, despite some remarkable recent experiments in conflict-prone societies such as Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria, Kenya, Thailand, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea aimed at influencing party system development. Drawing on these and other cases, this article identifies four strategies of ‘party engineering’ that have been used to promote broad-based, cross-regional, or multi-ethnic political parties in new democracies around the world.
The post-election crisis of January 2008 brought Kenya close to collapse and the status of a failed state. Following the abrupt proclamation of Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent president, as victor in a highly contentious presidential election, peace was disrupted by severe ethnic violence between supporters of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and the Party of National Unity (PNU). This saw up to 2,000 people killed and as many as 300,000 displaced from their homes. This analysis locates the origin of the crisis in, variously, a background of population growth and extensive poverty; and ethnic disputes relating to land going back to colonial times (notably between Kalenjin and Kikuyu in the Rift Valley). More immediately, what stoked the conflict is the construction of political coalitions around Kenya's 42 ethnic groups, although the 2007 election campaign was critically shaped by ODM's rhetoric of ‘41 against one’ (the Kikuyu); and not least, this survey records the diffusion of violence as a result of elite manipulation of armed militias which, since 1992, have steadily eroded the state's monopoly of violence. While summarising how external mediation and the elite interest in political stability prevented the country falling apart, and led to the formation of a power-sharing government, the analysis proposes that a reluctance by the Grand Coalition partners to undertake fundamental reform of the constitution means that Kenya remains a ‘democracy at risk’, and faces a real possibility of slipping into state failure.
This article addresses the process behind the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) decision to open for a reintroduction of multiparty politics. Why would a political movement that had been in power for two decades expose itself to competition, and at least theoretically, risk loosing the 2006 elections? Is this turnaround of the NRM leadership explained by external pressure from the international environment or should it be attributed to debates within the NRM? We seek to explain why the NRM opened for a transition to multiparty politics and how the NRM leadership sought to remain in control of the transition process. We do so by relating the case of Uganda to theoretical perspectives that explain under what circumstances political movements, organisations or parties decide to implement fundamental changes. We argue that the impetus for change is explained by decline of support for the NRM in the 2001 elections, where Museveni’s former ally, Col. K. Besigye, opposed him in the presidential election and received 29 per cent of the votes. How the NRM proceeded to implement the transition process is better explained by office seeking strategies: Through its control of the government, parliament, and the public sector, the NRM-O was able to tilt the playing field and minimise the possibility for the opposition to win in the 2006 elections
This paper analyzes the role of ethnicity in shaping the character of Kenya’s political parties and its party system since 1992. Drawing on a constructivist conception of ethnicity, it uses a framework of comparison derived from Donald Horowitz and distinguishes between three party types: the mono-ethnic party, the multi-ethnic alliance type and the multi-ethnic integrative type. It shows that although Kenyan parties have increasingly incorporated diverse communities, they have consistently failed to bridge the country’s dominant ethnic cleavages. Consequently, all of Kenya’s significant parties represent ethnic coalitions of convenience and commitment and, thus, ethnic parties. The paper further states that the country’s post-2007 political environment is a by-product of the omnipresence of this party type.
Das innenpolitische Geschehen dieses Jahres war maßgeblich von einer Debatte um weitgehende Verfassungsänderungen bestimmt. Zum einen betraf dies die von vielen Seiten lange geforderte Öffnung des politischen Systems und Zulassung eines Mehrparteiensystems, zum anderen die Ausweitung der Präsidentenamtszeit auf mehr als zwei Perioden. Beide Änderungsvorschläge wurden von weiten Kreisen des Movement unterstützt und zur weiteren Begutachtung der Constitutional Review Commission vorgelegt. Die Opposition hingegen wertete sie als beabsichtigte Maßnahmen zum Machterhalt sowohl des Movement als auch Musevenis und lehnte sie in der vorgeschlagenen Form ab. Das Movement ließ sich unter dem Namen National Resistance Movement Organisation (NRM-O) als Partei registrieren.
Acknowledging the growing attention being paid to constitutional engineering in post-conflict situations like Afghanistan, Iraq and the Sudan, among others, this article seeks to offer a new methodological framework through which to investigate the ability of democratic design to help manage conflict in fragile and divided societies. A theoretical construct rooted in theories of alignment and complementarities is outlined from which testable hypotheses can be drawn.The framework used to analyze the practice of constitutional design emerges from the lessons of medical diagnosis and treatment. (i) It is argued that designing a constitution to help stabilize a nation state is much like treating a sick patient -- and failed political settlements are often born of poor diagnosis or mistreatment. (ii) There is a temporal aspect to constitutional engineering which follows the medical continuum of triage, emergency medicine, convalescence, and longer term health management. Thus there is a pressing need for political institutions to be flexible enough to adapt to the differing needs of differing stages of democratic development. (iii) Within the constitutional framework political institutions need to be holistically integrated and compatible; i.e., that must be properly aligned. (iv) There has been a pattern of both rushing to surgery (elections) before the patient was stabilized and then compounding the danger by discharging the patient (donor's extrication) before the state is healthy enough for democracy to endure.
Why do opposition parties in Tanzania remain chronically weak a decade and a half after the country's democratic transition? Part of the absence of a vigorous political opposition is the result of little demand for it and its uninspiring leadership. This argument views the ruling CCM as a relatively benign hegemon acceptable to the vast majority of Tanzanians. Although this argument is based on a significant amount of truth, the main reason opposition parties remain weak is because the CCM suppresses those who contest its near-monopoly of power, including resorting to coercion when other methods of containing the opposition fail.
With the re-introduction of multiparty politics at the beginning of the 1990s most African countries started to regulate political parties extensively, especially ethnic and other particularistic parties. This article presents a new database on particularistic and other party bans in sub-Saharan Africa, drawing on a comprehensive collection of African party regulations and records of their implementation since 1990. After demonstrating the magnitude and complexity of party bans in Africa the article deals in depth with enforcement institutions and legal procedures. It shows that party bans are especially pervasive in less democratic countries and have often targeted politically relevant parties.
During the 1990s the number of African states allowing multiparty elections increased dramatically. Paradoxically, this has been accompanied in the majority of countries by legal bans on ethnic and other particularistic parties. The main official reason has been the aim of preventing the politicization of ethnicity as this is feared to lead to ethnic conflict and political instability. Despite the resurgent interest in institutional engineering, this phenomenon has received little scholarly attention. This contribution outlines the main research questions and preliminary answers of a collaborative research project which combines large and small N comparisons and case studies. Bans are relatively rarely enforced and the decision actually to ban parties is best explained by the interaction of an experience of ethnic violence in the past and hybrid regimes using these measures to restrict political party competition. Positive effects on democracy and conflict management seem generally limited and are context dependent.
Since 1990 the banning of ethnic and other identity‐based parties has become the norm in sub‐Saharan Africa. This article focuses on Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda as three East African countries that have opted for different ways of dealing with such parties. Using case studies, it traces the origins of the party bans in Tanzania and Uganda and explores the reasons for the absence of a ban in Kenya. The analysis shows that the laws on particularistic parties have actually been implemented by the appropriate institutions. However, these laws have only marginally influenced the character of the political parties in the three countries: A comparison of regional voting patterns suggests that bans on particularistic parties have not ensured the emergence of aggregative parties with a national following in Tanzania and Uganda. In Kenya on the other hand, where such a ban was nonexistent until 2008, parties have not proven to be more regional.
Der Beitrag analysiert die Nationalisierung von Parteien und Parteiensystemen in sieben jungen asiatischen Demokratien im
nationalen, regionalen und interregionalen Vergleich. Ein Ergebnis dieser Studie ist, dass der Nationalisierungsgrad der Parteiensysteme
unterschiedlich, im internationalen Vergleich jedoch überwiegend niedrig ist. Darauf aufbauend werden potenzielle Erklärungen
für die aufgezeigten Eigenschaften der Parteiensysteme diskutiert. Die Ausführungen legen die Annahme nahe, dass die Varianz
der territorialen Homogenität von Parteiensystemen in Asien auf territorial und nicht territorial manifeste Spaltungsstrukturen,
institutionelle sowie akteurbezogene Faktoren zurückgeführt werden kann.
This article analyzes the nationalization of political parties and party systems in seven young Asian democracies in national,
regional and interregional comparison. The article shows that the degree of territorial homogenization differs among these
nations, but is predominantly low compared to other non-Asian party systems. Building on these findings, the article discusses
potential explanations for the characteristics of the party systems described here. The empirical evidence suggests that the
variance of nationalization among Asian party systems predominantly reflects the importance of territorial and non-territorial
cleavage structures as well as of institutional and agency-related factors.
‘Organising Parties for the 2006 Elections
- Julius Kiiza
- Lars Svåsand
- Robert Tabaro
Oxford: International African Institute
- Patrick Chabal
- Jean-Pascal Daloz
Nairobi: Government Printer
- Kenya Republic
Determining the Pace of Change: The Law on Pluralism in Tanzania
- Chris Peter
- Maina
Entebbe: Government Printer
- Republic Of Uganda