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Electoral Systems, Party Systems, and Ethnicity in Africa
... There is a rich canvass of literature on dominant parties and one-party dominance in developed western democracies (Sartori 1976 andPempel 19900. Others, such as Taagepera (1997), van de Walle andButler (1999), Erdmann (2003), Bogaards (2007) and Southall (2005) have applied the dominant party concept to Africa. Clearly there are variations in conceptualising a dominant party, because of different levels of development of party systems and the character of African politics in general. ...
... At the core of this literature is a focus on mapping electoral systems and political party designs. These studies examine how such designs affect minority representation in states across a range of geographic areas, from Central and Eastern Europe (Shvetsova 1999;Friedman 2005;Bochsler 2010), to Asia (Chandra 2004;Raina 2014), to Africa (Posner 2005;Bogaards 2007), to South America (Van Cott 2005, to North America and Western Europe (Swain 1993;Saggar 2000;Bird 2005;Bloemraad & Schönwälder 2013). There are also a relatively smaller number of crossnational studies, which have sought to clarify the logic and forms of special representative mechanisms employed in practice (Reynolds 2005(Reynolds , 2006, examined the features of regional tendencies and patterns (Szekely & Horvath 2014;Htun 2016) and categorised models at a global scale with a view to understanding their drivers and consequences for minority presence in national legislatures (Htun 2004;Meier 2009;Ruedin 2009;Krook & O'Brien 2010;Lublin & Wright 2013;Bird 2014). ...
Measuring institutional mechanisms that facilitate ethno‐national representation is a difficult enterprise. Most studies examine the electoral system, while a set of other indices focus on designs and policies related to minority recognition. This article addresses a number of gaps in the existing literature by taking a wide view that considers a breadth of institutional designs that facilitate representation in a political system. The goal is to recalibrate our theoretical and empirical approach to measuring ethno‐national representation – to move beyond narrower assessments based solely on the electoral system, while also providing additional depth and breadth to existing indices and studies of related aspects of institutional design. To achieve this goal, the article (1) constructs an analytical framework that accounts for the institutional mechanisms that facilitate the direct and indirect representation of ethno‐national minorities across both macro‐level and micro‐level institutional designs in a state and (2) applies this framework to map institutional designs in twelve states to provide an indication of the usefulness of a new measurement tool (a representation index). The argument is that this framework and tool provide a corrective to the limitations of current approaches, advancing our ability to measure the institutional mechanisms of minority representation.
... This requirement, which fits with the general preference for proportional representation after violent conflict (Bogaards 2013), has limited the options for electoral reform (cf. Bogaards 2007). Non-proportional electoral systems are ruled out from the start and among proportional electoral systems, those that rely on preferential voting are considered too complicated. ...
In the transition to an inclusive democracy, South Africa changed its electoral system for the national parliament to proportional representation. Ever since, there have been suggestions of electoral reform. So far, the debate has rarely involved ordinary citizens. This article presents the results of a Deliberation Day on Electoral Reform in South Africa at the University of Cape Town. This campus experiment in deliberative democracy was part of a project-based course for MA students in Political Studies. The outcomes are as predicted in the literature: the knowledge of the 47 student participants increased and their opinions became more coherent. The student participants were highly critical about South Africa’s political system and demanded more accountability through the electoral system. The most striking, and encouraging, outcome was the unanimous support for more deliberation on campus. The findings presented here suggest the potential of deliberative democracy for organising the national debate on electoral reform as well as for communication inside South Africa’s universities.
... Notes * Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden * * Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa ‡ Centre for Africa Studies, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Email: Henning.Melber@ dhf.uu.se (1996, 23), Bogaards (2007, 187) reminds us that 'bans on particularistic parties violate one of the nine features of liberal democracy'. 13. http://www.ecn.na/Pages/home.aspx. ...
Namibia is praised as one of the most laudable democratic societies in Sub-Saharan Africa. But it also displays strong tendencies of autocratic political rule and intolerance with regard to views dissenting from the official ‘patriotic history’ under the former liberation movement, the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO of Namibia), since Independence transformed into SWAPO Party. This article summarises and seeks to explain the underlying social currents for this situation. By doing so, it also illustrates that a formally intact democratic system does neither produce a fully democratic political culture—nor democrats, for that matter. A truly democratic breakthrough for a pluralist society based on mutual respect despite different political opinions seems, under the given circumstances of the Namibian society, an unlikely development in the near future, notwithstanding the good marks the political system receives in international rankings for African democracies.
... Interestingly, within the broad literature of 'institutional engineering' and even within more specific literature on how to strengthen political parties and party systems by institutional arrangements, the potential role of floor-crossing regulations has not been systematically explored. Most attention so far has been paid on electoral systems (Bogaards 2003(Bogaards , 2007Hartmann 2007) and more recently on party ban provisions (Bogaards et al. 2010). 3 However, is the increased number of legal restrictions to prohibit party switching in new democracies (Janda 2009) indeed leading to more institutionalised and stronger party systems in the emerging democracies? ...
The article presents a complete overview of existing regulations of party switching in Africa since the reintroduction of multiparty politics in the early 1990s. While most established democracies do not see any reason for sanctioning with legal restrictions the decision of members of parliament to change their party affiliation, in Africa many countries take a critical stance towards party switching. Frequent party switching is considered to weaken political parties, to hinder the institutionalisation of party systems, and to endanger the stability of government and the legitimacy of democracy. The article distinguishes legal regulations of party switching conceptually by what is prohibited and its enforcement. A preliminary analysis shows that anti-defection laws indeed matter for party system institutionalisation in Africa's emerging democracies.
This study attempts to answer the question of how demographic changes shape what a country’s party system is, as little research has been done on youth wing and youth quota. In particular, party system changes and party system stability literature never studied loyalty of young voters and perceived activities of youth wing “Zhastar Rukhy” and youth quota and vice versa. Therefore, this study looks at whether and how youth wing and youth quota, party system stability and party system change relate to one another.
Empirical evidence has been gathered using mixed-method research to study the issue of youth voting in Kazakhstan.
Africa has always blamed external colonisation for its Catch-22s such as violent ethnic conflicts for the struggle for resource control, perpetual exploitation, poverty, and general underdevelopment all tacked to its past, which is a fact, logical, and the right to pour out vials of ire based perpetual victimhood it has clung to, and maintained, and lost a golden chance of addressing another type of colonialism, specifically internal colonisation presided over by black traitors or black betrayers or blats or blabes.
Basically, internalised internal colonisation is but a mimesis of Africa’s nemesis, namely external colonisation as another major side of the jigsaw-cum-story all those supposed to either clinically address or take it on, have, by far, never done so for their perpetual peril. In addressing internal colonisation, this corpus explores and interrogates the narratives and nuances of the terms it uses. The untold story of Africa is about internal colonisation that has eluded many for many years up until now simply because it made Africans wrongly believe that it is only external colonisation their big and only enemy.
Chinese FDI in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries has grown rapidly since the new century, and the variance in the distribution of Chinese FDI among different countries has drawn researchers' attention. The existing literature has tried to explain host country's ability to attract FDI from the perspective of economic and political institutions, particularly in terms of regime type. However, the discussion in the literature neither explored the sub-regime political institutions that may attract FDI, nor specified their effects on drawing in Chinese FDI. This dissertation integrates existing theories with political practices of party systems and electoral rules in SSA countries and suggests two theoretical hypotheses. It claims that Chinese FDI prefers countries where parties have higher control over legislative members and executive head in the elections. Specifically with regards to democratic or transitional countries, electoral rules that encourage the decrease of party numbers in parliament also attract more Chinese FDI. The hypotheses are supported with the empirical evidence from 46 Sub-Saharan countries during the period of 2005-2012.
Consociational interpretations of the European Union (EU) are well established and help to explain the political stability of the 27-member state system. In contrast, the increasingly common centripetal elements have not yet received systematic attention. Using a framework originally designed to map the choices for divided societies, this article highlights centripetalism in EU party regulation and proposals for electoral reform. Going beyond the spatial distribution requirements that play such a central role in aggregative institutions in the EU, the article suggests that cross-national districts rather than a supra-national district provide the strongest incentive for European parties to organise EU-wide campaigns on European issues, fielding candidates with cross-national appeal. The article concludes with a reflection on the relationship between consociational and centripetal elements in the EU. It shows that consociationalism and centripetalism in the EU can continue to co-exist, though the balance is likely to change.
Centripetal approaches to democracy in divided societies seek to promote inter-ethnic accommodation and moderation by making politicians dependent on the electoral support of groups other than their own base. Such cross-ethnic voting stands in contrast to situations where politicians need only the support of their own co-ethnics to win elections. This distinction can be used to evaluate the utility of centripetal electoral systems in promoting voting across ethnic divides. To do so, this article begins by considering some critiques of centripetalism, showing that cross-ethnic voting is more common in both institutional design and actual practice than some critics believe. It then moves on to examine cases of cross-ethnic voting via ethnically designated party lists, cross-regional party formation rules, at-large communal or sectoral seat reservations, and uni-directional vote-pooling, using these cases to construct an index of strong, moderate and weak centripetal electoral systems.
The economic geography of foreign investment into African countries and cities. Exploration of the structures, trends, forecasts, competition, specialization, diversification, determinants, impacts and impact.
In theory, plurality electoral systems do not favour the development of minor parties. Scholarly analysis of minor political parties has focused on their electoral performance in national elections, and very little is known about their candidate nomination behaviour at grassroots level. Why minor parties should compete in national elections within a plurality system is a puzzle explained in this paper by an examination of candidate nomination by minor parties in Ghana's plurality system. Ghana's minor parties compete in constituencies they know they cannot win. Drawing on poll data, the paper argues that these minor parties use the candidate nomination process not to win parliamentary seats but as a strategy to make their party platforms visible in the political landscape. It reaches three conclusions on candidate nomination: that it is used by minor parties to make their presence felt in the country; that it allows the parties to give the appearance of being strong; and that it is a strategy to boost the campaign of presidential candidates.
In this dissertation the author hypothesizes that (H1): In Africa, countries that use majoritarian electoral systems are more likely to experience post-election conflicts than are countries that use proportional electoral systems, (H2): In Africa, countries that use majoritarian electoral systems are more likely to experience post-election conflicts than are countries that use mixed electoral systems, and (H3): In Africa, countries that use mixed electoral systems are more likely to experience post-election conflicts than are countries that use proportional electoral systems. These hypotheses are tested by using both primary qualitative and secondary quantitative data analyses in order to answer the research question: "In Africa, why do some countries tend to experience post-election conflict while others do not?" This dissertation focuses on the first twenty years (1990-2010) of the move to democracy in Africa. With elections as the unit of analysis, and using the dataset on African electoral violence and the Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights dataset, this dissertation uses a most different systems design on six countries included in the Afrobarometer studies: Benin, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Togo, and Senegal. Among these six countries, Ghana and Togo use a majoritarian electoral system, Benin and Guinea-Bissau use a proportional representation electoral system, and Guinea and Senegal use a mixed electoral system. The findings indicate that reforming the electoral system to accommodate the needs of the populace in countries with frequent electoral conflicts is the one way not only to cope with current post-election conflicts, but also to help prevent future ones. To be more specific, the author recommends that proportional representation systems are the best tools to help prevent and mitigate post-election conflicts in Africa. Other implications include, but are not limited to, identifying ways to help promote substantive and representative democracies in Africa based on the findings of both the quantitative and qualitative phases of the study.
Party system nationalization is often viewed as critical to national unity, the production of public goods, and may have implications for democratic success. This paper assesses the impact of ethnic diversity and electoral rules in 74 economically developing democracies. Contrary to past studies, majoritarian electoral systems heighten the tendency of ethnic diversity to reduce nationalization while proportional representation greatly reduces its impact. Presidential systems produce higher levels of nationalization than parliamentary systems but the effect reverses as the number of presidential candidates increases. Though ethnic party bans may increase nationalization, ballot access requirements, the level of freedom, and relative prosperity have no effect.
This article examines a perennial factor in Kenyan politics, that of communal identity, and how it was mobilised in the context of the March 2013 elections. Using survey data it tracks attitudes regarding a unique feature of these elections: the (still-expected, if bitterly challenged) International Criminal Court (ICC) cases of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, of the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities, respectively, for their alleged roles in the widespread violence that followed the disputed 2007 election. Remarkably, notwithstanding this ethnic divide at the time, their 'defendant' status provided, first, the personal, and subsequently, the communal foundation for their political union and ultimate triumph over then prime minister Raila Odinga, becoming Kenya's new president and deputy-president, respectively. In exploring this success, the paper uses nationally-random survey data which also reveal the degree to which Kenyans became increasingly polarised as the elections drew nearer. In addition, qualitative material from media coverage and personal interviews suggests just how such polarisation occurred. The conclusion raises several questions about the way various possible scenarios involving the ICC issue could yet reconfigure the ethnic alliances evidenced in this recent and controversial election, and about the salience of ethnic identity in Kenya's electoral politics more generally.
democracy is a system of government greatly supported by the vast majority of nigerians and they are willing to sustain it. it is believed that the system guarantees security and promotes prosperity. it is considered a solution to most problems faced by the country. however, recent security challenges are reflections and continuation of political trends and the prospects of Democracy thriving in nigeria. the focus of this article is to understand why democratic governments in nigeria have failed in their effort to contain terrorism in the country as manifested by boko haram and other islamist movements. Some elements of democracy as practised in nigeria are observed in relations to the emergence of boko haram terrorism. it is submitted that, even when it does not equate to a counter-terrorism strategy, democracy still has some mechanisms that could be used to contain some factors that trigger or manifest terrorism.
This article contributes to a critical assessment of the concept of democracy and consensus decision-making of the Bemba matrilineal governance system as a basis for a democratic model of engagement in African politics from an African theological perspective. It is of the opinion that assessing the concept of democracy by consensus decision-making of the Bemba provides a dialogue between the African traditional governance systems as a viable form of political governance ideal for multi-ethnic countries such as Zambia. This is a pinnacle of the 21st century debate which elaborates the important task of African Christian Theology in the rehabilitation, or renovation process of politics of identity for an authentic governance system with authentic African flavour for African governance systems.
This book examines the effects of ethnicity on party politics in sub-Saharan Africa. Sebastian Elischer analyzes political parties in Ghana, Kenya, and Namibia in detail, and provides a preliminary analysis of parties in seven other countries including Tanzania, Botswana, Senegal, Zambia, Malawi, Burkina Faso, and Benin. Elischer finds that five party types exist: the mono-ethnic, the ethnic alliance, the catch-all, the programmatic, and the personalistic party. He uses these party types to show that the African political landscape is considerably more diverse than conventionally assumed. Whereas ethnic parties dominate in some countries, non-ethnic parties have become the norm in others. This study also finds a correlation between a country's ethnic make-up and the salience of political ethnicity: countries with a core ethnic group are prone to form non-ethnic parties. In countries lacking a core ethnic group, ethnic parties constitute the norm.
Since the sweeping (re)introduction of multiparty systems in the early 1990s, almost all sub-Saharan countries have introduced legal provisions to ban ethnic or other identity-based particularistic parties. Altogether, 12 countries have actually banned political parties on these grounds. In theoretical terms, such bans can exclude particularism from politics but - contrary to public discourse - also run the risk of forcing groups to resort to violent means or of becoming an object of conflict themselves. Empirically speaking, hardly any general patterns in the effects of bans can be detected. A closer look at 12 politically relevant bans in six countries reveals an initially stabilizing impact in one case (Rwanda in 1994). A ban on a religious party in Kenya in 1993 triggered violent conflict. In cases such as Equatorial Guinea (1994) and Rwanda (2001, 2003), this regulatory measure, allegedly designed to promote peace, seems to be part of the 'menu of manipulation' and is abused to suppress the opposition.
This article analyses the ways in which African countries are grappling with the problem of electoral violence. It argues that, although electoral violence has posed a serious challenge to democratic consolidation and peace in Africa, knowledge of how to prevent and or manage it is largely inadequate. Much of the academic interest in electoral violence has focused on defining the phenomenon, particularly analysing its causes, scope, patterns and consequences. This article examines the measures adopted by Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria to manage electoral violence. The specific measures analysed in this study include: (1) establishment of commissions of inquiry; (2) mediation in high-tension situations; and (3) regulation of political activities. While these measures represent significant efforts to curb electoral violence in Africa, they do not, of course, directly address the underlying causes of the problem. Electoral violence will continue to pose serious challenges to democracy and peace in Africa until the lingering socio-economic and political tensions and the lack of credibility of the electoral process in many African countries are addressed; however, in the meantime, to save lives, it is worth putting into place effective deterrents to election violence wherever it threatens.
After a civil war, there is a keen interest in ‘getting the institutions right’. This article summarizes our knowledge of one particular institution, the electoral system, through a review of the literature on power sharing and electoral systems in post-conflict societies. Surprisingly, there is little statistical support for the conviction that proportional representation (PR) contributes to inclusive political institutions and thereby to peace and democracy. More positively, a closer look at electoral system design as integral part of peace agreements reveals that PR is the standard choice, that it works as intended, and has a good record in securing peace, though less so of democracy. Future research should look at electoral system design as part of the peace process to explain these findings and draw lessons.
This study investigates elite-mass partisan congruence in African dominant party systems. I argue that dominant party systems with stable opposition parties provide more capacity for programmatic is-sue congruence between voters and their political representatives than dominant party systems with volatile opposition parties. To test this argument I compare Lesotho and Botswana. Both countries feature regular and fairly free elections, which so far resulted in dominant party systems where the same party holds more than 50 percent of the lower house seats in subsequent elections. However, in Botswana, a stable opposition embodied in the Botswana National Front (BNF) confronts the dominant Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). In Lesotho, on the other hand, the dominant Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) faces a fluid and fragmented opposition. Accordingly, I expect to find more congruence on partisan policy preferences between political elites and voters in Botswana than in Lesotho. I measure the extent of elite-mass partisan congruence by combining an original elite dataset and survey data.
Dominant party systems are prevalent on the African continent al-though to date most of the countries are formally democratized and hold regular and rather fair elections. A majority of scholars consider dominant party systems to be inimical for a democratic consolidation. Yet, a minority observes a stabilizing effect of dominant party systems which in turn is considered to be important for democratic consolida-tion. In this paper, I show that both notions can be wrong and at the same time right: I present evidence that there exist different kinds of dominant party systems which are explained by different structural characteristics of the countries they belong to. I consider the differ-ent kinds of dominant party systems to exert different effects on the process of democratic consolidation.
This article suggests that in most semi-democracies, the same solution might not be that favourable to minorities. Many semi-democratic countries either restrict party competition or limit parties of ethnic minorities, including: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgistan, Cameron, Equatorial Guinea, Tanzania, Gabon, Kenya, Mauritania, and Congo (Brazzaville). This article highlights the impact of the electoral system and the importance of political plurality and electoral district design in such contexts. The article argues that the interests of minorities are best protected if they can elect their representatives in small, ethnically homogeneous electoral districts. Plurality or majority voting systems offer minorities the possibility to run with independent candidates. The case study in this article elections to municipal councils in Georgia in 2006 under a mixed electoral system seem to reflect the hypothesized pattern.
This contribution proposes a general framework to explain why political parties fail to mobilize citizens along substantive issues in West Africa. We argue that many political issues exist, which could potentially mobilize African voters, but that most political parties struggle to capture these issues. Due to the youth of the electoral process and inexperience of opposition parties, as well as the shared profile of the political elite, candidates and parties struggle to differentiate and establish themselves as credible ‘issue-owners’. When parties discuss issues, they focus on establishing their own competence in an issue-area, rather than claiming ownership of ideological space. Drawing on patterns we observed in six Francophone countries, we offer a typology of issues, as valence or unclaimed, to predict the likelihood that opposition parties engage with them in their electoral campaigns.
Nigeria is the African country that implemented ethnic party bans most systematically. At different points in time, a total of at least 64 parties has been denied registration for failing to demonstrate ‘national presence’. Nigeria is also the African country with the longest record in institutional engineering. Ethnic party bans are one instrument in a broader repertoire of incentives for the creation of national parties that transcend the manifold socio-cultural differences. This article provides an overview of the often highly innovative ways in which successive Nigerian leaders, especially military, have sought to control the political organization of ethnicity in the process of democratization.
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.
Following the introduction of multiparty systems, almost all sub-Saharan countries have introduced wide-ranging measures of party regulation, particularly bans on ethnic or – in more general terms – particularistic parties, in order, it is claimed, to prevent intercommunal conflict and to promote democracy. While this restrictive type of party regulation has become a dominant political feature in Africa, little is known about the efficacy of such measures. This article engages in an analysis of the possible effects on democracy and peace of different types of party regulation and implemented party bans and shows that party bans are apparently less suited to alleviating conflict than has been claimed. It also finds that implemented bans seem to be negatively related to democracy as ethnic bans are frequently abused to suppress the political opposition or to silence ethnic or religious minorities.
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.
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