Renske Doorenspleet, Lia Nijzink - Party Systems and Democracy in Africa-Palgrave Macmillan (2014) PDF

Party Systems and Democracy in Africa
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Party Systems and
Democracy in Africa
Edited by
Renske Doorenspleet and Lia Nijzink

Selection and Editorial Matter © Renske Doorenspleet and Lia Nijzink 2014
Individual chapters © Respective authors 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Party systems and democracy in Africa / [edited by] Renske Doorenspleet,
associate professor of Comparative Politics, Department of Politics and
International Studies, University of Warwick, UK, Lia Nijzink, senior
researcher, Law, Race and Gender Unit, University of South Africa.
pages cm
Summary: “Do party systems help or hinder democracy in Africa? This
collection offers important new insights into the relation between party
systems and democracy on the African continent. It presents a comparative
analysis of how African party systems influence procedural aspects of
democracy such as accountability and government responsiveness and also
shows how party systems affect citizens’ satisfaction. It paints a vivid
picture of the one-party dominant systems in Botswana, Namibia and South
Africa and how these impede the deepening of democracy. Drawing lessons
from Benin, Ghana and Zambia, it also portrays the fluidity of African party
systems and draw attention to the importance of party system change. The
insightful contributions show that African party systems affect democracy
in ways that are different from the relation between party systems and
democracy observed elsewhere” — Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978–1–137–01170–1 (hardback)
1. Political parties—Africa, Sub-Saharan. 2. Democracy—Africa,
Sub-Saharan. 3. Africa, Sub-Saharan—Politics and government—1960–
I. Doorenspleet, Renske, 1973– II. Nijzink, Lia.
JQ1879.A795P37 2014
324.20967—dc23 2014029174
Contents
List of Tables and Figures vii
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on Contributors ix
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xiii
1 Do Party Systems Matter for Democracy in Africa? 1

2 Multiparty Elections in Africa: For Better or Worse 22

Matthijs Bogaards
Part I One-Party-Dominant Systems
3 South Africa: Electoral Dominance, Identity Politics and

Democracy 47
Steven Friedman
4 Botswana: Presidential Ambitions, Party Factions and the

Durability of a Dominant Party 69
Christian John Makgala and Shane Mac Giollabhuí
5 Namibia: From Liberation to Domination 87

Henning Melber
Part II Other Party Systems
6 Ghana: The African Exemplar of an Institutionalized

Two-Party System? 107
Cyril K. Daddieh and George M. Bob-Milliar
7 Benin: A Pulverized Party System in Transition 129

Rachel M. Gisselquist
8 Zambia: Dominance Won and Lost 148

Dan Paget
v
vi Contents
Part III Conclusion

9 Do Party Systems Help or Hinder Democracy in Africa? 171
Index 188
Tables and Figures
Tables
1.1 Results of parliamentary and presidential elections in six

selected countries 10
2.1 Freedom House combined ratings after consecutive
elections in Africa 31
2.2 Regime change and stability over successive elections in
Africa 32
2.3 Stability and change in authoritarian regimes in Africa 36
7.1 Number of parliamentary groups in Benin since 1991 135
7.2 Results of parliamentary and presidential elections in
Benin since 1991 136
8.1 Results of parliamentary and presidential elections in
Zambia 149
Figure
9.1 Public opinion about democracy in six African countries

(In your opinion how much of a democracy is your
country today?) 177
vii
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the Development Partnerships in Higher Educa-

tion (DelPHE) Programme of the British Council and the Department
for International Development (UK). This programme has funded the
Accountable Government in Africa Project, a South–North partnership of
the University of Cape Town’s Department of Public Law (South Africa)
with the Universities of Warwick (UK) and Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania).
The partnership project provided financial assistance to us to organize
an international conference that brought together many of the con-
tributors to this book. Additional assistance for this conference came
from the Institute for Advanced Studies (University of Warwick) and
the Department of Politics and International Studies (University of
Warwick). We are grateful for their support.
The conference Party Systems and the Future of Democracy in Sub-
Saharan Africa was held from 22 to 24 September 2011 and hosted by
the Centre for Studies in Democratisation of the University of Warwick.
We would like to extend our gratitude to everyone who contributed to
the success of our conference. We especially appreciate the enthusiasm
with which all conference delegates participated in the proceedings and
gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Prof. Lars Svasand (Uni-
versity of Bergen, Norway), Prof. Peter Burnell (Warwick University,
UK) and Prof. Vicky Randall (University of Essex, UK) who served as
discussants.
Our special thanks go to the chapter authors of this book who
promptly attended to our queries and requests during the editing
process and to everyone at Palgrave Macmillan for their professional
assistance.
With special appreciation, we remember Prof. Gero Erdmann, a kind
and committed colleague. His death is a great loss to our community of
scholars working on parties and party systems in Africa.
And finally, to Martin, Jinte, Marijn, Chris and Zara: thank you &
bedankt & dankie!
viii
Contributors
Editors
Renske Doorenspleet is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics

at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of
Warwick, UK. She is also Director of the Centre for Studies in Democrati-
sation. Her research interests include democracy and democratization,
political institutions, comparative politics and Africa. Her work has been
published in World Politics, the European Journal of Political Research, Acta
Politica, Democratization and the International Political Science Review. She
is the author of Democratic Transitions: Exploring the Structural Sources of
the Fourth Wave (2005) and the co-editor, with Lia Nijzink, of One-Party
Dominance in African Democracies (2013).
Lia Nijzink is a political scientist based in Cape Town, South Africa.

She has extensive experience in capacity building, teaching and research
with various South African and African organizations, including the
University of Cape Town, the National Assembly of Nigeria and the
Netherlands Institute for Multi-Party Democracy. Her publications
include Accountable Government in Africa (2012), Electoral Politics in
South Africa: Assessing the First Democratic Decade (2005) and Building
Representative Democracy: South Africa’s Legislatures and the Constitution
(2002). With Renske Doorenspleet, she has edited One-Party Dominance
in African Democracies (2013).
Contributors
George M. Bob-Milliar received his PhD from the University of Ghana

in 2012. He currently lectures at the Department of History and Polit-
ical Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology,
Kumasi, Ghana. His research interests include democratic studies, politi-
cal economy of development, qualitative methods and African diaspora.
His articles have appeared in leading journals including African Affairs,
Journal of Modern African Studies, Democratization, Journal of Asian and
African Studies, Africa and International Journal of African Historical Stud-
ies. He has received prizes both for his published work (African Author
Prize 2010) and for his contribution to research on African policy
ix
x Notes on Contributors
issues (Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) 2012,

Waterloo).
Matthijs Bogaards is Professor of Political Science at the Jacobs Univer-

sity Bremen, Germany. He obtained his PhD in Political Science from
the European University Institute in Florence in 2000. His research
interests include democracy in divided societies, institutional design,
democratization, electoral systems and political parties. His most recent
publication is a book with Palgrave Macmillan on consociational parties,
comparing the representation and accommodation of ethnic diversity in
seven dominant parties around the world.
Cyril K. Daddieh (PhD Dalhousie) is Professor of Political Science

and Director of Graduate Studies at Miami University, USA. He is
also a Senior Research Associate at the Ghana Center for Democratic
Development (CDD-Ghana). His research interests include conflict man-
agement, governance and social accountability, gender issues in African
higher education, parties and political campaigns, elections and demo-
cratic consolidation in Africa. He has written extensively on the political
economies and foreign policies of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
Steven Friedman is Director of the Centre for the Study of Democ-

racy at Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg, South
Africa. He researched and wrote widely on the South African transition
to democracy and is the editor of The Long Journey and The Small Miracle
(with Doreen Atkinson), which presented the outcome of two research
projects on the South African transition. His current work focuses on
the theory and practice of democracy. His study of South African radi-
cal thought Race, Class and Power: Harold Wolpe and the Radical Critique
of Apartheid will be published in 2014. He is also a media commentator
on the development of South African democracy and the author of a
weekly newspaper column.
Rachel M. Gisselquist is a political scientist and is currently a Research

Fellow with the United Nations University’s World Institute for Devel-
opment Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). She works on the politics
of the developing world, with particular interest in ethnic politics
and inequality, democratization, state fragility and governance in sub-
Saharan Africa. She has conducted fieldwork in multiple locations,
including dissertation fieldwork in Benin on why and how political par-
ties mobilize along ethnic and class lines in elections. She holds a PhD in
Notes on Contributors xi
Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT,

Boston, USA).
Shane Mac Giollabhuí is Departmental Lecturer in the Politics of Africa

at St Peter’s College, University of Oxford, UK. Over the past years,
he has held lectureships at University College Cork and Dublin City
University, as well as a postdoctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Law,
University of Oxford. Mac Giollabhuí has a broad interest in the the-
ory and methodology of the social sciences, though he specializes in the
comparative politics of African democracies. He is the author of ‘Things
Fall Apart: Candidate Selection and the Cohesion of Parties in South
Africa and Namibia’, which appeared in the July issue of Party Politics
(2013).
Christian John Makgala is Associate Professor of History at the Uni-

versity of Botswana. He has published on work ethics, race relations
in Botswana and South Africa, Botswana’s economic diversification
effort, monetary history of Botswana, refugees and illegal immigrants
in Botswana and South Africa, witchcraft and magic in Botswana. He is
the author/editor of Elite Conflict in Botswana: A History (2006), History of
Botswana Manual Workers Union (2007) and History of the Bakgatla-baga-
Kgafela in Botswana & South Africa (2009) and has co-authored History of
Botswana Public Employees Union (2010) and The 2011 BOFEPUSU Strike
(2014). Makgala is also an historical novelist and literary critic. His lit-
erary works are The Dixie Medicine Man (2010) and The Paroled Pastor
(2014).
Henning Melber is a political scientist and sociologist and Direc-

tor Emeritus/Senior Advisor of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in
Uppsala, Sweden, where he was the Research Director at the Nordic
Africa Institute earlier (2000–2006). Between 1992 and 2000, he was the
Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research United (NEPRU) in
Windhoek. He is Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Political
Sciences at the University of Pretoria and at the Centre for Africa Studies
of the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He is
editor-in-chief of the Strategic Review for Southern Africa, managing co-
editor of Africa Spectrum and co-editor of the Africa Yearbook (published
since 2005). His latest book is Understanding Namibia (2014).
Dan Paget studies political parties in sub-Saharan Africa. He currently

conducts research in Tanzania and Botswana for his doctorate in Politics
xii Notes on Contributors
at St Cross College, University of Oxford. His primary interests are politi-

cal party campaigns, and he hopes that by examining them, he will shed
light on parties’ resources and comparative advantages in political mobi-
lization. In the past, Paget has worked on political party messages in
developing countries, and his published work has connected politiciza-
tion of civil society groups and the formation of programmatic parties.
He cut his teeth studying political parties in Zambia, where he studied
populism in the opposition and factionalism in the government.
Acronyms and Abbreviations
AFRC Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (Ghana)

AFU Strength in Unity Alliance (Benin)
ANC African National Congress (South Africa)
AU African Union
BDP Botswana Democratic Party (Botswana)
BMD Botswana Movement for Democracy (Botswana)
BNF Botswana National Front (Botswana)
CERD Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial
Discrimination
CoD Congress of Democrats (Namibia)
COPE Congress of the People (South Africa)
CPP Convention People’s Party (Ghana)
DA Democratic Alliance (South Africa)
DFP Democratic Freedom Party (Ghana)
DPP Democratic People’s Party (Ghana)
EC Electoral Commission
ECN Election Commission of Namibia
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
ENEP Effective Number of Electoral Parties
ENLP Effective Number of Legislative Parties
FARD-Alafia Action Front for Renewal and Development-Alafia
(Benin)
FCBE Cauri Forces for an Emerging Benin (Benin)
FDD Forum for Democracy and Development (Zambia)
FPTP First Past The Post
GBA Ghana Bar Association (Ghana)
GCP Ghana Congress Party (Ghana)
GDP Gross Domestic Product
HP Heritage Party (Zambia)
ID Identity Document
IFP Inkatha Freedom Party (South Africa)
IPAC Inter-Party Advisory Committee (Ghana)
MAP Muslim Association Party (Ghana)
MMD Movement for Multiparty Democracy (Zambia)
MP Member of Parliament
xiii
xiv List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
NCBWA National Congress of British West Africa (Ghana)

NDC National Democratic Congress (Ghana)
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
NIP National Independence Party (Ghana)
NLC National Liberation Council (Ghana)
NLM National Liberation Movement (Ghana)
NPP New Patriotic Party (Ghana)
NRC National Redemption Council (Ghana)
NUNW National Union of Namibian Workers (Namibia)
OPO Ovamboland People’s Organisation (Namibia)
PF Patriotic Front (Zambia)
PHP People’s Heritage Party (Ghana)
PNC People’s National Convention (Ghana)
PNDC Provisional National Defence Council (Ghana)
PNP People’s National Party (Ghana)
PR Proportional Representation
PRB Renaissance Party of Benin (Benin)
PP Progress Party (Ghana)
PRD Democratic Renewal Party (Benin)
PSD Social Democratic Party (Benin)
RDP Rally or Democracy and Progress (Namibia)
RP Republican Party (Zambia)
RPD Reformed Patriotic Democrats (Ghana)
SADC Southern African Development Community
SDP Social Democratic Party (Sweden)
SOE State Owned Enterprise
SWAPO South West African People’s Organisation (Namibia)
TC Togoland Congress (Ghana)
UB Union for Benin (Benin)
UBF Union for the Benin of the Future (Benin)
UGCC United Gold Coast Convention (Ghana)
UN United Nations
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNIP United National Independence Party (Zambia)
UP United Party (Ghana)
UPND United Party for National Development (Zambia)
UTRD Union for the Triumph of Democratic Renewal (Benin)
ZCTU Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (Zambia)
1
Do Party Systems Matter
for Democracy in Africa?
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 mis-
sions 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 ‘electoral-
ist 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
1
2 Party Systems and Democracy in Africa
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 posi-
tive impact on the democratization process (see Lindberg 2006, 2009).
In Chapter 2 of this book, Matthijs Bogaards argues that the relation-
ship between elections and democracy is in fact ambiguous, particularly
in Africa. Bogaards shows that there is no common trend of democrati-
zation through elections on the African continent, but instead a variety
of patterns of stability and change. The effect of elections on the devel-
opment 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 nec-
essarily 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 condi-
tion 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 democ-
racies: 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 par-
ticular 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 responsive-
ness. Hence, political parties are supposed to play an important role
Renske Doorenspleet and Lia Nijzink 3
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, polit-
ical 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 under-
standing 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 politi-
cal 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 func-
tion (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 com-
parison 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 polit-
ical 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 explana-
tions 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 par-
ties 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 oppo-
site: 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 authoritar-
ian 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 politi-
cal 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 liter-
ature (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 cur-
rent 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 mani-
fests 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 gov-
ernmental 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 cir-
cumstances, that is, the historical context in which the object of study
(party systems) has developed. Thus, the shifts in the party system lit-
erature 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 parlia-
mentary 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 are-
nas 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 impor-
tant 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, tak-
ing 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 experi-
ences. 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 obvi-
ously different from the more recent context in which African countries
made transitions from authoritarianism to democracy. In the older
democracies, mass political parties emerged as part of the desire to attain
suffrage extensions for certain groups in society. Thus, political parties
were important for the mobilization of large sections of society and for
their inclusion into the political system. In contrast, when democracies
started to arise on the African continent, universal suffrage had become
the international norm (Schmitter 2001) and the era of mass parties was
over. With politicians making increasing use of mass media, political
party organizations had become less important as a tool to mobilize
and communicate with voters. As a consequence, the role which soci-
etal divisions play in the formation of party systems in more recently
democratized African countries differs from their effect on party system
formation in the older democracies of Western Europe.
Generally, political parties and party systems in Africa are not in
the first instance reflections of underlying social cleavages,4 but they
are created by elites, who ‘capitalize effectively on existing social
cleavages – particularly ethnic, regional, linguistic or religious lines – to
gain competitive advantages’ (Manning 2005: 721). Hence, Lipset and
Rokkan’s (1967) classic argument about the effect of societal cleavages
on the formation of party systems needs modification before it can be
applied to the African context. While party systems in older democracies
followed the path from societal to parliamentary arena and then to the
governmental arena, the parties and party systems in newer democra-

cies followed a different trajectory. As Salih (2003: 5–6) convincingly
pointed out:
Whereas the emergence of Western parties was contingent on the

emergence of parliamentary institutions, the result of suffrage, ideo-
logical movements, union, church as well as civil society and social
movements, African political parties were in some instances created
instantaneously by a small group of political elite to contest elections
in preparation for independence.
Generally, political parties on the continent cannot be regarded as

societal forces being driven by the main social cleavages in their respec-
tive countries, nor are they particularly ideological in nature.5 They also
do not manifest themselves primarily in the parliamentary arena. Given
the general weakness of African parliaments (cf. Salih 2006; Barkan
2009), political parties are first and foremost vehicles for the selection
and election of political leaders. Because coalition governments are rare
and presidents are generally very powerful and in full control of cab-
inet formation, the governmental arena is also not the main platform
for the manifestation of the party system. Thus, in order to understand
party systems on the continent, we need to look beyond the frameworks
inspired by Western developments, and be fully cognizant of the spe-
cific historical context on the continent. Parties and party systems in
Africa are shaped by the fact that Africa’s democracies emerged through
a different sequence of events, and at a different moment in world his-
tory. This means they might very well have different consequences for
democracy.
Party systems in Africa: Our case selection
Before we further explore the link between party systems and democ-
racy, we need to find out what the current party system configurations
in Africa are. It is important not to overlook the variation across the con-
tinent. Africa is rich in diversity: there are many different types of parties
and party systems. Particularly, party systems with one dominant party
flourish on the African continent, as several authors have already noted
(e.g. see Doorenspleet 2003; Bogaards 2004; Doorenspleet and Nijzink
2013), but other types of party systems also exist (see also Erdmann and
Basedau 2013).
Studying party systems in Africa, both Bogaards (2004) and Erdmann
and Basedau (2013) have already observed that Sartori’s (1976) seminal
work on parties and party systems is still the best starting point to
identify party system configurations on the continent. In his classifi-
cation of African party systems, Bogaards (2004:182) applies Sartori’s
typology as well as three other party system typologies and concludes:
‘Sartori’s typology and criteria yield what would appear to be the
most informative and defensible classification.’ While Sartori’s party
system typology distinguishes between party systems in stable versus
those in fluid polities, it is the typology of fluid party systems that
Bogaards (2004) used for his own classification of African party sys-
tems. In fluid political systems, party systems are unstructured and
can be divided into four types: the dominant-authoritarian party sys-
tem which operates in an authoritarian setting and the pulverized,
non-dominant and dominant party systems operating in a multiparty
setting. Although Bogaards acknowledges that Sartori’s typology also
includes different types of structured party systems occurring in stable
political systems, he does not apply the full typology in his clas-
sification. Instead, Bogaards assumes that all African party systems
are fluid and can be classified using only the four types mentioned
above.
Where Bogaards (2004) assumes there are no structured or stable party
systems in Africa, Erdmann and Basedau (2013) put this assumption to
the test. Like Bogaards, Erdmann and Basedau regard Sartori’s approach
as the most useful to classify party systems in Africa.6 Including only
those countries that have held at least three consecutive multiparty elec-
tions,7 the results of Erdmann and Basedau’s classification are as follows:
18 party systems are considered fluid. Only one of these is a pulverized
party system (Benin), four are dominant-authoritarian party systems
and one is a dominant party system.8 Twenty party systems in Africa
can be considered stable party systems. Of these, 13 operate in a non-
democratic context and therefore need to be classified as hegemonic
party systems (Sartori’s terminology for dominant-authoritarian systems
in structured circumstances). Of the remaining seven, there are two
cases of moderate pluralism and two two-party systems (one of which is
Ghana), while three systems are considered predominant party systems:
Sartori’s terminology for party systems with one dominant party oper-
ating in a democratic context. These are Botswana, Namibia and South
Africa. As the authors point out, while not everyone may agree with
how individual countries are classified, this tally leads to two impor-
tant observations. A variety of party systems have emerged in Africa.
At the same time, there is a prevalence of one-party dominance on the
continent.9
Sartori’s typology not only distinguishes between party systems in sta-

ble versus those in fluid polities, but also distinguishes between party
systems in a democratic versus authoritarian context. When analysing
party system developments in Africa, this distinction between party sys-
tems in an authoritarian or democratic context is particularly important.
Especially if we want to investigate the consequences of one-party dom-
inance and other party system configurations for the development of
democracy, we need to adhere to a rigorous comparative design and
analyse democracies separately from authoritarian regimes.10 Thus, our
first step is to exclude authoritarian regimes from our analysis,11 and we
will focus on analysing party systems in a relatively democratic context
and explore the link between different types of party systems and the
further development of democracy in these African countries.
Our second step is to select six countries for inclusion in our anal-
ysis, on the basis of a classification of their respective party systems.12
Because of the relative prevalence of one-party dominance on the con-
tinent, we wanted to select a number of one-party-dominant systems
and examine the way in which party systems with one dominant polit-
ical party contribute or pose a threat to the development of democracy.
While selecting the cases, Sartori’s distinction between dominant and
dominant-authoritarian party systems is crucial; as Bogaards (2004: 179)
puts it, this distinction ‘encourages the identification of the nature
of dominance and a distinction between different kinds of one-party
dominance’. Thus, having excluded authoritarian regimes with one
dominant party, we included in our analysis all one-party-dominant
systems in African democracies. Using Erdmann and Basedau’s (2013)
classification of African party systems, the three countries with party
systems dominated by one political party operating in a democratic con-
text are South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. These countries are the
main focus of the first part of our analysis. They are the country cases
discussed in chapters 3, 4 and 5 of this book.
Table 1.1 shows that Botswana, Namibia and South Africa all have
one-party-dominant systems as defined by Sartori: party systems in
which the same party wins 50 per cent or more of the seats in
parliament in three consecutive elections. Interestingly, the one-party-
dominant systems in these three countries not only meet the criteria
of Sartori’s definition but far exceed them. Since their transitions to
multiparty democracy, the three countries have all held four or more
multiparty elections (Botswana as many as ten) in which the same polit-
ical party gained more than 50 per cent of the parliamentary seats.
In Botswana, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has been in power
10
Table 1.1 Results of parliamentary and presidential elections in six selected

countries
Country Year Winning party Vote share winner, Seat share winner, Seat share runner-up,
presidential parliamentary parliamentary
elections elections elections
Botswana 1965 BDP – 90.3 9.7

1969 BDP – 77.4 9.7
1974 BDP – 84.4 6.3
1979 BDP – 90.6 6.3
1984 BDP – 85.3 11.8
1989 BDP – 91.2 8.8
1994 BDP – 67.5 32.5
1999 BDP – 82.5 15.0
2004 BDP – 77.2 21.1
2009 BDP – 78.9 10.5
Namibia 1989 SWAPO – 56.9 29.2
1994 SWAPO 76.3 73.6 20.8
1999 SWAPO 76.8 76.4 9.7
2004 SWAPO 76.4 76.4 6.9
2009 SWAPO 76.4 75.0 11.1
South Africa 1994 ANC – 63.0 20.5
1999 ANC – 66.5 9.5
2004 ANC – 69.8 12.5
2009 ANC – 66.0 16.8
Benin 1991 UTRD 36.3∗ 18.8 14.1
1995 PRB – 25.3 22.9
1996 Independent 33.9∗ – –
1999 PRB – 32.5 13.3
2001 FARD – Alafia 45.4∗ – –
2003 UBF – 37.3 18.1
2007 FCBE – 42.2 24.1
2011 Independent – FCBE 53.1 49.4 36.1
Ghana 1992 NDC 58.4 94.5 4.0
1996 NDC 57.4 66.5 30.0
2000 NPP 48.2∗ 49.5 46.0
2004 NPP 52.5 55.7 40.9
2008 NDC 47.9∗ 49.6 46.5
2012 NDC 50.7 53.8 44.7
Zambia 1991 MMD 75.8 83.3 16.7
1996 MMD 72.6 87.3 3.3
2001 MMD 29.2 46.0 32.7
2006 MMD 43.0 48.0 29.3
2008 MMD 40.6 – –
2011 PF 42.9 40.0 36.7
Notes: – indicates that only parliamentary elections or only presidential elections were held
in that year. In Botswana and South Africa, there are no presidential elections because these
are parliamentary systems. In Namibia, the first presidential elections were held in 1994.
In Benin, members of parliament serve a four-year term, while the president is elected for a
five-year term, thus the variation in the years of election. In Zambia, due to the death of the
sitting president only presidential and no parliamentary elections were held in 2008.
∗ In some presidential elections, a second round was needed for a presidential candidate to
gain more than 50 per cent of the votes. The vote shares of the winner of the second round
were as follows: Benin 1991 67.7 per cent; Benin 1996 52.5 per cent; Benin 2001 83.6 per
cent; Benin 2006 74.6 per cent; Ghana 2000 presidential elections, 56.9 per cent; Ghana
2008 presidential elections, 50.2 per cent.
Source: African Elections Database.
since independence in 1965 with seat shares ranging from 67.5 per cent
(in 1994) to 91.2 per cent (in 1989). In Namibia, the seat share of the
South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) has consistently been
around 75 per cent with only the transitional elections in 1989, when
SWAPO gained 56.9 per cent of the seats, being an exception. In South
Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) has an equally consistent
but slightly lower seat share of around two-thirds of the seats in the
National Assembly. Thus, the dominant parties that have emerged in
these three African democracies seem to outperform dominant parties
in other parts of the world with seat shares consistently reaching a two-
thirds threshold. In Part I of this book, we seek to understand what this
means for the development of democracy. Do one-party-dominant sys-
tems like these impede the development of democracy or do they also
offer opportunities for the deepening of democracy? In which ways do
they contribute or pose a threat to democracy?
In order to strengthen our comparative framework and our investi-
gation of the link between party systems and democracy, we have also
included three other country cases in our analysis which have very dif-
ferent party system configurations: Ghana, Benin and Zambia.13 These
countries are the focus of the second part of our analysis and are the
country cases discussed in chapters 6, 7 and 8 of this book.
We selected Benin because it has been identified as the only country
on the continent with a pulverized party system. Despite the extreme
fragmentation of the party system, Benin has enjoyed three success-
ful alternations of executive power and avoided the ethnic divisions
and conflict that have characterized politics in many of its neighbour-
ing countries. Benin’s party system is still in transition. The seat shares
of both the largest party and the runner-up have been rising steadily.
Recently, a significant move away from party system fractionalization
occurred, when no second voting round was needed to elect Presi-
dent Boni and the main party supporting him, the Cauri Forces for
an Emerging Benin (FCBE), gained almost 50 per cent of the seats in
parliament.
Ghana is another exceptional case. Ghana is the only African country
with a two-party system,14 which is the reason we included this country
in our analysis. The first multiparty elections after the end of military
rule in 1992 were boycotted by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), but the
party gradually started to rival Rawlings’ National Democratic Congress
(NDC) both in vote share during presidential elections and in its share
of parliamentary seats. Since 2000, when the NPP replaced the NDC as
the ruling party, the relative strengths of the two parties indicate that
the country’s party system has evolved into a classical two-party system.
Thus, Ghana is an exception on the continent, even more so after 2008
when the elections resulted in a second democratic alternation of the
party in power.
Finally, we selected Zambia because it is an outlier in a different way.
Not only does Zambia have lower levels of political rights and civil liber-
ties than the other five country cases,15 it also shows how difficult it can
be to classify party systems in emerging democracies. Zambia’s party sys-
tem configuration cannot be classified as a one-party-dominant system,
despite the fact that the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD)
managed to win successive parliamentary and presidential elections and
dominated Zambia’s political system from 1991 to 2011. Interestingly,
since 2001 the MMD held on to power with only a plurality of votes
and parliamentary seats, forcing it to achieve its continued dominance
by less democratic means. In the 2011 elections, Michael Sata won
the presidential race, and his party, the Patriotic Front (PF), replaced
MMD as the largest party in parliament, thus affecting an alternation
of power. While this brought the MMD’s dominance to an end, the fact
that the PF also failed to gain an outright majority at the ballot box
makes it difficult to ascertain whether the PF is the new dominant force
in Zambian politics. Thus, the case of Zambia shows us how difficult
it sometimes is to classify political developments in Africa’s emerging
democracies.16
Do party systems matter for democracy?
Party systems are configurations of political parties. Different types

of party systems signify different types of relations between parties
and have varying consequences for democracy (see also Bardi and
Mair 2008). Unfortunately, the existing literature on party systems and
democracy is only of limited assistance in exploring the consequences of
party systems in the African context, because most studies deal with the
advantages and disadvantages of two-party versus multiparty systems.
There is no description or comparison of the pros and cons of different
party systems that include one-party-dominant systems.
Traditionally, political scientists have debated the merits and flaws
of multiparty systems versus two-party systems and tried to tackle
the question of which type of party system is best for democracy.
In the 1940s and 1950s, various scholars argued that multiparty systems
were unstable and two-party systems were better for democracy (e.g.
Hermens 1941; Duverger 1954: 206–280). These empirical observations
and theoretical conclusions are best understood within their historical

context. They were made during and shortly after World War II, when
scholars were still shocked by the ruthless regimes, agonizing atrocities
and the complete failure of democracy in countries such as Germany
and Italy which had multiparty systems before the war. At the same
time, scholars seemed impressed by the stability of democracy in Britain
and the United States, which had (and still have) two-party systems.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the direction of the debate changed partic-
ularly because of the work of Lijphart (1968; 1977), who noted that
scholars had not paid much attention to the smaller European democra-
cies, where multiparty systems had achieved democracy and stability for
a long period of time. Lijphart pointed out that in countries with cru-
cial ethnic, religious or linguistic cleavages, multiparty systems actually
strengthened democracy because minorities had a voice, were repre-
sented and were willing to participate in coalition governments after
elections. Lijphart also argued that in two-party systems significant
minorities were hardly represented in parliament and were left out of
government, which resulted in the pattern that minorities living in
countries with two-party systems were less willing to participate and
to follow the rules of the democratic game compared to multiparty sys-
tems, thus weakening democracy. Later, other scholars also defended
multiparty systems in the context of Latin America emphasizing that –
particularly in ideologically polarized political systems – a two-party sys-
tem held the risk of reduced legitimacy, not only for the political parties,
but also for democracy in general.
Since the late 1980s, there has been growing support for the idea
that two-party systems, which tend to lead to single-party governments,
are better at governing (e.g. see Lardeyret 1991) and do excel in clear
government accountability (Powell 2000). Voters know that the gov-
erning party is responsible for government performance, and that they
can return the ruling party to power or replace it with another party.
However, greater accountability does not directly translate into greater
responsiveness to citizens’ interests, and there is ‘no evidence that coali-
tion cabinets in multi-party systems are less responsive than one-party
majority cabinets’ (Lijphart 1994: 144). Moreover, while multiparty sys-
tems are not as good as two-party systems with regard to accountability,
they are better at representation and promoting political participation
(Jackman 1987; Blais and Carty 1990; Lijphart 1999, 2012). In addition,
scholars have shown that the conventional assumption that two-party
systems make for more stable democracies than multiparty systems is
not valid. On the contrary, particularly multiparty systems that result in
multiple parties governing together in a coalition government promote

democratic stability (e.g. Lijphart 1999; Cheibub et al. 2004).17
In short, the current consensus in the literature seems to tell a
nuanced story of multiparty systems and two-party systems having
different strengths and weaknesses in relation to various aspects of
democracy such as participation, representation, accountability and
responsiveness. However, this narrative has obscured some important
phenomena related to African party systems and, more specifically, does
not contribute to our understanding of the link between one-party-
dominant systems and democracy.
On the one hand, one could argue that a one-party-dominant sys-
tem can be expected to be good at governing (perhaps even better than
a two-party system) and fairly good at representation, given the often
broad character of the dominant party. One-party-dominant systems
might even have a fair degree of political competition, albeit within the
dominant party, between different party factions and/or between dif-
ferent smaller parties of the opposition. A one-party-dominant system
might also be more suitable for developing African democracies than
a two-party or multiparty system, because one-party-dominant systems
seem to be better in preserving stability and promoting much needed
socio-economic development (cf. Giliomee 1998: 132).
On the other hand, political competition in one-party-dominant sys-
tems is constrained and limited, and in the small body of literature
on one-party dominance, several negative consequences are mentioned
(e.g. see Arian and Barnes 1974; Giliomee and Simkins 1999; Butler
2003; Doorenspleet 2003; Southall 2005; Schlemmer 2006; Lindberg and
Jones 2010). In a democracy with a two-party or multiparty system,
alternative preferences for policy and leadership can be pursued in the
electoral and parliamentary arenas; the opposition plays an important
role in holding the government to account; and there is a possibility of
the opposition taking over government power. In a democracy with a
one-party-dominant system, however, the opposition is small and often
fragmented and toothless, which limits the strength of political compe-
tition and makes an alternation of the party in power highly unlikely.
This in turn weakens government accountability and responsiveness.
In the first part of this book, we will revisit these assumptions and
theoretical expectations and describe in which ways the one-party-
dominant systems in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa help or
hinder democracy. In the second part, we take a closer look at other
party system configurations to see whether they show the relation
between party systems and democracy as described in the literature.
Outline of the book
In Chapter 2, Matthijs Bogaards investigates the claim that Africa dis-

plays a trend of democratization through elections. Bogaards confirms
the idea that elections, although often the first area of focus when
studying democracy, do not always lead to democratization; he finds
that multiparty elections have far less democratizing power in Africa
than previously argued. In fact, Bogaards’ findings indicate that on the
African continent multiparty elections are not only a driver of democ-
racy, but also an attribute of authoritarianism, thus confirming the
importance of the alternation of power and political institutions such
as party systems for the deepening of democracy on the continent.
The authors of the six subsequent chapters describe the party sys-
tems in six African countries, and discuss how these party system
configurations contribute to or impede democratization.
In Part I, the authors address the ways in which one-party-dominant
systems influence democracy. In Chapter 3, Steven Friedman describes
how South Africa’s one-party-dominant system is characterized by elec-
toral dominance that operates to silence important majority voices.
Friedman also argues that increased electoral competition might be in
the interests of both majority and minority groups, because it may
prove the key to greater government responsiveness and effectiveness.
Chapter 4 is focused on the entrenched position of Botswana’s domi-
nant party, which is, according to Christian John Makgala and Shane
Mac Giollabhuí, increasingly plagued by factional competition but
shows no sign of releasing its grip on power. In Chapter 5, Henning
Melber paints a similar picture of persisting one-party dominance in
Namibia, where the dominant party defends its continued hold on
power by increasingly relying on a political culture and rhetoric that
show signs of authoritarianism.
In Part II, the authors look at different party system configurations
and their consequences on democracy. In Chapter 6, Cyril K. Daddieh
and George M. Bob-Milliar discuss interesting features of Ghana’s two-
party system and describe how its historical roots have contributed
to Ghana’s democratic success. In Chapter 7, Rachel M. Gisselquist
describes how Benin’s pulverized party system has evolved since 1991.
Gisselquist also highlights the way in which Benin’s democratic out-
comes depend heavily on factors other than the country’s fragmented
party system. In Chapter 8, Dan Paget highlights how the dominant
party in Zambia lost its majority and achieved continued dominance by
less democratic means. Paget also describes how these tactics influenced
the strategies of the opposition party and Zambia’s democratic track

record.
In the final chapter, the editors discuss important new insights derived
from the analyses in the country-chapters and draw conclusions about
the link between party systems and democracy in Africa. Looking at
the lessons learnt from different party system configurations, Renske
Doorenspleet and Lia Nijzink show that African party systems affect
democracy in ways that are unexpectedly different from the relation
between party systems and democracy observed elsewhere.
Notes
1. Kuenzi and Lambright (2001, 2005) show that in Africa both party system
stability (measured by the average age of parties) and party system compet-
itiveness (measured by the effective number of parties (ENP)) have positive
associations with democracy (measured by the 21-point scale of the Polity IV
project). Their measure of ENP is a rather superficial measure, which cannot
capture the situation in one-party-dominant systems, because it is unable to
measure the competitiveness in such systems in an accurate way. Moreover,
the authors focus on democratic consolidation in the theoretical part, while
they focus on levels of democracy and democratization in their empirical
part, which is quite confusing. In the end, they do not explain democratic
consolidation or democratic quality, but different levels of democracy mea-
sured by the Polity IV scales. Nevertheless, their cross-national statistical
findings are useful and a good starting point for our own analysis. In this
book, we also focus on the link between party systems and democracy in
Africa, but we study this topic in a different way: instead of testing hypothe-
ses in a statistical study, we take a more explorative approach based on six
case studies of African democracies.
2. Lindberg and Jones’ (2010) cross-national statistical findings are interesting,
but their findings can be questioned as the number of cases (N) in their
statistical analyses is extremely low. Moreover, the findings in our book
are based on qualitative case studies and give a more nuanced and com-
plex picture of the relationship between party systems and democracy in
Africa.
3. This concept of party systems as reflections of societal divisions was, for
example, emphasized by Lipset (1960: 220) who stated that ‘in every modern
democracy conflict among different groups is expressed through politi-
cal parties which basically represent a democratic translation of the class
struggle’.
4. Since the 1960s, and based on the seminal work by Lipset and Rokkan, schol-
ars tend to focus on the effect of society and its cleavages on the formation of
party systems. ‘The party systems of the 1960s’, wrote Lipset and Rokkan in
1967, ‘reflect, with few but significant exceptions, the cleavage structures of
the 1920s . . . [T]he party alternatives, and in remarkably many cases the party
organizations, are older than the majorities of the national electorates.’ For
a long time, the impact of cleavages in society has played a vital role in the
literature on the formation of European party systems (Lipset and Rokkan

1967) and more recently, it has also been used in accounts of party system
development in new democracies, but the relevance and validity of such
efforts can be questioned.
5. As will become clear in Chapter 6, Ghana is an important exception in this
regard.
6. One of the reasons to favour Sartori’s party system typology is that it enables
comparisons between party systems in Africa and elsewhere, and Erdmann
and Basedau argue that one needs to refrain from using definitions and cri-
teria that can only be applied to party systems on the continent. Thus, they
use Sartori’s full typology and apply it to African party systems.
7. By the end of 2010.
8. Lesotho is in Erdmann and Basedau’s classification the only other country
that is non-authoritarian and has a dominant party. According to Erdmann
and Basedau, Lesotho’s party system is fluid, that is, not institutionalized.
We have excluded it from our analysis because of its size, which makes it less
comparable.
9. Erdmann and Basedau did not simply assume that all African party sys-
tems are fluid. Instead, they made a distinction between structured and
unstructured party systems. Sartori’s own distinction between structured and
unstructured party systems was based on only one measure of institution-
alization: the existence of a ‘solidly entrenched mass party’ (1976: 244).
Erdmann has already pointed out that this is misleading (Erdmann 2004:
64, 75–76), while Bogaards (2004: 178) observes that ‘by all accounts, mass
parties are conspicuous by their absence in Africa’. Therefore, Erdmann and
Basedau decided to apply a broader concept of party system institutional-
ization to distinguish between structured and unstructured party systems in
Africa. However, for the purposes of our study of party systems and their rela-
tion to democracy this distinction does not seem to be particularly helpful
or necessary for our case selection.
10. In The Theory of Democracy Revisited (1987), Sartori gives convincing argu-
ments to follow this approach to distinguish rigorously the democracies on
the one hand, from non-democracies on the other hand. He opposes the idea
of including all types of political systems in one study as ‘what is completely
missed by this kind of degreeism, or continuism, is that political systems are
systems, that is, bounded wholes characterized by constitutive mechanisms
and principles which are either present (albeit imperfectly) or absent (albeit
imperfectly)’ (1987: 18).
11. This means we exclude countries like Zimbabwe, Somalia, Sudan, the
Gambia, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Cameroon and all countries which cannot
be classified as relatively democratic (e.g. see the measurements of Polity IV
and Freedom House).
12. None of these countries is authoritarian. Five have been identified as free
(see Freedom House 2012; see also Doorenspleet and Nijzink 2013: 7), which
means they are operating in a democratic context, while one, Zambia, is
classified as partly free, indicating that it has somewhat lower levels of
political rights and civil liberties.
13. In other words, we use a Most Similar Systems Design, see Lijphart (1971)
and Przeworski and Teune (1970).
14. Erdmann and Basedau also classify Cape Verde as a two-party system but
since the elections of 2011 Cape Verde’s party system has become a one-
party-dominant system. We have not taken it into account here because of
its character as an island state.
15. Although Erdmann and Basedau classify Zambia as ‘Non-dominant Author-
itarian’, we have nevertheless decided to include it in our case selection, as
Zambia is partly free so not outright authoritarian.
16. We have excluded the two moderate pluralist cases – Mauritius and Sao Tome
& Principe – from our analysis on the grounds that they are island states and
therefore less comparable to the other cases.
17. Moreover, two-party systems do not seem to have a better record with regard
to macroeconomic management, economic growth, control of inflation and
unemployment (see Lijphart 1999).
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2
Multiparty Elections in Africa:
For Better or Worse
Matthijs Bogaards
Most regimes around the world conduct multiparty elections on a regu-

lar basis.1 In contrast with the growing literature on electoral authoritar-
ianism (Levitsky and Way 2002, 2010; Schedler 2006a, 2013), Lindberg
(2004, 2006a, 2006b, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2009d, 2009e, 2012) has
argued that in Africa, elections are a new mode of democratic transi-
tion. While Lindberg’s claim about the democratizing power of elections
has since been tested for other regions and from a global perspective
(Bunce and Wolchik 2009; McCoy and Hartlyn 2009; Lindberg 2009a;
Brownlee 2009b; Roessler and Howard 2009; Teorell and Hadenius 2009;
Donno 2013; Kaya and Bernhard 2013), no systematic re-examination
of the African evidence exists. This chapter seeks to fill that gap by re-
evaluating the trend of democratization through elections that Lindberg
observed for Africa.
My analysis shows that instead of one common trajectory of democra-
tization through elections, Africa displays a variety of patterns of stabil-
ity and change. The main trajectories are as follows: Free countries tend
to remain free and electoral autocracies tend to remain autocratic, while
electoral democracies are vulnerable to reversal and breakdown. Out
of 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have organized multiparty
elections, only five have gone through a process of democratization
over consecutive election cycles (Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal
and Tanzania) and of these two reverted back to electoral authoritari-
anism. The common distinction between competitive and hegemonic
subtypes of electoral authoritarianism has less explanatory power in
Africa than elsewhere and current coding schemes are problematic.
This means that much of our existing knowledge about the relation
between democratization and elections in Africa needs to be revised
22
Matthijs Bogaards 23
and our policy recommendations reconsidered. If the aim is to promote

democratization through elections, both the quality of elections and the
reform of political institutions, including political parties, deserve more
attention.
Elections and democratization: Lindberg’s analysis
In a series of publications, Lindberg (2004, 2006a, 2006b, 2009a, 2009b,

2009c, 2009d, 2009e, 2012; Lindberg and Meerow 2011) has sought
to demonstrate that in Africa and beyond, multiparty elections act as
the midwives of democracy. In contrast with the conventional view
that democratic transitions generally culminate in the organization of
free, fair and competitive elections (the so-called founding elections),
Lindberg posits that in Africa after the end of the Cold War multiparty
elections were in fact the catalysts of a drawn-out process of democ-
ratization. He concludes that ‘Repeated elections – regardless of their
relative freeness or fairness – appear to have a positive impact on human
freedom and democratic values’ (Lindberg 2006b: 139). Lindberg has
labelled this process ‘democratization by elections’ and has presented it
as a new mode of democratic transition, distinct from the revolutions,
pacts and managed transitions identified by Huntington (1991).
To account for the ‘self-reinforcing power of elections’, Lindberg
(2006a: 99–118) identifies seven ‘causal links’, centring on the expec-
tations, attitudes and behaviour of citizens, the activities of associations
and the independence of the judiciary and the media. The idea is that
the causal effects become stronger the longer the uninterrupted series
of elections, resulting in a cumulative effect. Lindberg (2006a: 115) has-
tens to add that the list of causal effects is ‘not exhaustive’, that the
hypotheses are ‘severely simplified’ and that they should be ‘evaluated
empirically in a large-N study’. This still remains to be done.
Lindberg’s work has acted as a powerful corrective to the ‘demo-
pessimism’ that was growing at the time, and his positive message in
Democracy and Elections in Africa (Lindberg 2006a) was well received
(e.g. see Quinn 2006; Abraham 2007; Cheeseman 2007; Heilbrunn 2007;
Jua 2007; Scarritt 2007; van de Walle 2007; Zuern 2007; Basedau 2008;
Nasong’o 2008). Criticism focused on three points. First, while most of
the evidence presented by Lindberg (2006a) supports his argument, not
all of it does. The trajectory of Zimbabwe, where the quality of elections
deteriorated over time, comes to mind. Thus, it is not clear under what
conditions elections lead to more democracy and when elections have
the opposite effect (Zuern 2007). Second, the causal mechanisms are as
24 Multiparty Elections in Africa
yet underdeveloped, thus increasing the risk of theoretical inconsistency

and inconclusiveness. For example, if the democratizing power of elec-
tions occurs because elections open up the political space, then the
effect should be less strong in countries where the opposition cannot
effectively organize and campaign (Cheeseman 2007). Also, the relation-
ship between elections and democratization might be spurious, that is,
caused by a third variable (e.g. Basedau 2008). Third, Lindberg’s com-
parative analysis of aggregated data does not speak to the trajectories of
individual countries, leading to the question whether his conclusions
are valid at the national level (Nasong’o 2008).2
Lindberg’s initial analysis of the democratizing power of elections
(2006a) covers the period 1989–2003 and includes 232 multiparty
elections (97 presidential elections, 135 parliamentary elections). His
subsequent work (2009b) includes about 50 additional cases up to the
end of 2006. The unit of analysis is the election cycle. However, presi-
dential and parliamentary terms are often different, resulting over time
in a growing discrepancy. Benin provides a useful illustration. In 1991
and 2011, the country held parliamentary and presidential elections in
the same year. But because the legislature sits four years and the pres-
ident is in office for five years, in the meantime there have been six
parliamentary elections versus five presidential. How many iterations
of the electoral process have there been in Benin by 2011: five or six?
Another consequence of the different length of parliamentary and presi-
dential election cycles is that elections within the same ‘generation’ can
be years apart. Returning to the case of Benin, the fourth parliamentary
election took place in 2003 while the fourth presidential election came
three years later. In three years’ time a lot can happen and important
differences may get lost when we average any score on the dependent
variables of interest for this ‘fourth’ generation.
Lindberg uses four dependent variables: (1) Freedom House scores
for political rights; (2) Freedom House scores for civil liberties; (3) his
own classification of elections as free and fair; (4) and a list of ten
democratic qualities. The political rights and civil liberties scores come
from Freedom House’s annual survey of freedom around the world.3
Whether elections are free and fair is determined by Lindberg himself on
the basis of reports by election observers (Lindberg 2006a: 48–49). The
democratic qualities of elections are grouped under three headings or
dimensions: participation (voter turnout, opposition participation, pres-
ence of the autocratic old guard), competition (winner’s share of votes,
largest party’s share of seats, second party’s share of seats, alternation of
power) and legitimacy (losers’ acceptance of results, peaceful elections,
regime survival). These three dimensions and ten indicators seem to

constitute an operational definition of democracy and serve as a mea-
sure of the level of democracy, or more specifically the democratic
quality of elections. In other words, the more participation, competition
and legitimacy, the more democracy. Unfortunately, there are reasons to
question this operationalization of democracy.4
While a high voter turnout might be desirable, it is rarely used
as a measure of the level of democracy (see Bogaards 2007a, 2007b).
Instead, scholars tend to focus on voting rights (e.g. Huntington 1991;
Doorenspleet 2005). And, while opposition participation might be good
for democracy, the opposition may decide to boycott elections for a
variety of reasons, not all of which relate to the level or quality of
democracy.5 Moreover, the indicators of the competition dimension
(winner’s vote share, seat share of largest party and the second party’s
seat share) are useful as measures of the level of competitiveness of elec-
tions, but not of competition as such. While competitiveness can be
measured through election outcomes, competition cannot (see Hyde
and Marinov 2012).6 Similarly, whether losers accept the results may
indicate ‘the extent to which political elites view elections as legit-
imate’ (Lindberg 2006a: 43) but it can also be an indication of the
extent to which parties are pleased with their performance at the polls.7
Finally, although ‘systematic and/or widespread politically related vio-
lence’ (Lindberg 2006a: 44) would seem intricately related to a free and
fair electoral process, only 33 per cent of free and fair elections were
peaceful (Lindberg 2006a: 85).8
Most importantly, although Lindberg’s argument focuses on the
democratizing power of elections, his operationalization does not
include measures of democratization in the sense of a change from an
authoritarian to a democratic regime (cf. Brownlee 2009b: 134–135).
Regime survival refers, as the label suggests, to the survival of any type
of regime, whether democratic or authoritarian in nature. Similarly,
alternation of power may reflect a victory of the democratic opposi-
tion over the authoritarian incumbent, as, for example, in 1991 in
Zambia, but also a change from one democratic party in government
to another, as happened twice in Ghana. The absence of turnover,
on the other hand, may mean the continuation of an authoritarian
government or it could signify the continuing electoral success of a
dominant ruling party, as is the case in South Africa, Namibia and
Botswana. Likewise, whether politicians associated with the previous
authoritarian regime participate in the elections is interesting informa-
tion, but does not identify the democratic or autocratic nature of current
regime.9 A country like Benin, where the former authoritarian leader

lost the founding elections but then won the next two presidential elec-
tions, receives the same score on this indicator as Cameroon, whose
authoritarian president never left power (cf. Scarritt 2007: 848).
Do elections have democratizing power?
Setting aside the questions surrounding the operationalization of

democracy, do the scores on Lindberg’s ten qualities of democracy
improve over successive election cycles? Lindberg (2006a: 71) detects
a pattern of ‘increasingly democratic elections’ and observes that six
out of ten indicators show a statistically significant improvement over
time. Lindberg (2006a: 71) also claims that ‘third elections mark a cut-
off point at which the democratic qualities tend to improve radically’
and that when cases are grouped according to the number of elections
countries have had (two, three or four and more) ‘both the direction of
change and the magnitude of the changes are analogous across panels
on almost all of the indicators’ (Lindberg 2006a: 89).
However, these claims are not apparent from Lindberg’s tables and
not backed up by statistical analysis. For example, for countries that
had experienced only two consecutive elections, performance actually
deteriorated on six of the indicators (Lindberg 2006a: 90). Also, look-
ing at the percentage of free and fair elections as a dependent variable,
there is little difference between the first and third elections, while the
second elections actually perform worse and the combined category of
fourth plus more elections much better (Lindberg 2009b: 30). We see a
similar pattern for political rights as the dependent variable (Lindberg
2009b: 28).
Civil liberties significantly improve over time and they improve most
strongly around election time (Lindberg 2006a: 121–129). The first
elections clearly have the biggest, positive effect. The impact of first
elections is confirmed when looking at the amount of change or the per-
centage of elections with change (Lindberg 2006a: 166). However, these
results also show how rapidly the positive effects wane with successive
elections; for the fourth elections, the little change that does occur is
even negative.
Shifting the unit of analysis from elections to countries, Lindberg
(2006a: 130) claims ‘at least two-thirds of all countries corroborates the
main thesis of this book’. However, the overview of change by country
(Lindberg 2006a: 168–169) again indicates that after the second elec-
tions, not much progress has been made.10 Rather than demonstrating
the cumulative effect of consecutive elections, these data point to the

importance of founding elections as a mode of transition in Africa.11
The democratizing power of elections: Evidence from

around the world
In 2009, Lindberg (2009a) published an edited volume with contribu-

tions that test the argument of the democratizing power of elections
for other parts of the world. The results are mostly negative and
instead of demonstrating the global validity of Lindberg’s thesis, they
indicate that ‘Lindberg’s theory is a case of African exceptionalism’
(Kaya and Bernhard 2013: 736). For Latin America, McCoy and Hartlyn
(2009) note the ‘relative powerlessness of elections’ in the Cold War
period and afterwards. They observe how ‘many authoritarian regimes
held undemocratic elections regularly for decades, without making any
progress towards democracy’ (McCoy and Hartlyn 2009: 53). Looking at
the record of civil liberties over successive cycles of elections, McCoy and
Hartlyn (2009: 59) find that only Mexico, and to some extent Panama,
corresponds to Lindberg’s logic. However, when using a broader measure
of the quality of democracy the situation in Mexico actually deterio-
rated since the early 1980s. Furthermore, two of the three long-standing
democracies on the continent – Colombia and Venezuela – have seen a
decline in civil liberties and human rights over the last decades (McCoy
and Hartlyn 2009: 68).
Bunce and Wolchik (2009) look at Eastern Europe and Central Asia
and compare eight post-communist countries where elections resulted
in the defeat of authoritarian leaders with three countries where the
opposition failed. They focus on regime vulnerability and opposition
strength and aim to explain the countries’ different trajectories. Bunce
and Wolchik (2009: 268) conclude that ‘the wave of electoral change
may have ended in the post-Communist region, at least for the time
being’.
Writing about the Middle East and North Africa, Lust-Okar (2009: 245)
notes that ‘elections in hegemonic authoritarian regimes are unlikely to
serve as a potential mechanism for democratization’. She argues that
the Middle East, together with North Africa, is the least democratic
region in the world. Apart from some states around the Gulf, all of them
have held parliamentary elections and many also presidential elections,
but this has not resulted in democratization. The reason, according to
Lust-Okar (2009: 231), is that elections here ‘are best thought of as com-
petitions over access to state resources’. Such elections based on the logic
of competitive clientelism actually ‘foster public disillusionment with

democratic institutions’ (Lust-Okar 2009: 242), ‘weaken political par-
ties and undermine opposition leaders’ (Lust-Okar 2009: 243) instead
of opening up political space and bolstering the opposition.
Teorell and Hadenius (2009: 90) test the effect of elections on democ-
racy using a global data set going back to 1919. Although they write
that they ‘find support for the notion that democratization is furthered
by the historical legacy of elections’ (Teorell and Hadenius 2009: 96–97),
their own evidence contradicts this conclusion. According to Teorell and
Hadenius (2009: 96), ‘the average marginal effect of 0.061 implies that it
would take roughly 269 multiparty elections to raise the civil liberties by
one point (on the 0–10 scale)’. Even if multiparty elections are deemed
democratic, it still takes 43 elections to increase the civil liberties score
by one point. To say then that ‘the effects that we register are not very
large in substantial terms’ and that ‘no democratizing miracles should
thus be expected from the electoral experience’ (Teorell and Hadenius
2009: 100) seems like an understatement.
Roessler and Howard (2009; see also Howard and Roessler 2006)
investigate when and where elections matter. They distinguish between
three types of authoritarian regime (closed, hegemonic and competi-
tive) and two types of democracy (electoral and liberal). They examine
all political regimes in countries with a population of over 500,000
people between 1987 and 2006. According to Roessler and Howard
(2009: 104) ‘the data suggest that elections in hegemonic authori-
tarian regimes and electoral democracies have little effect on greater
liberalization’. From the mid-1990s, democratic transitions are more
common in competitive authoritarian than in closed and hegemonic
authoritarian regimes. This is not because competitive authoritarian
regimes became more vulnerable to opposition victory, but because
closed and hegemonic authoritarian regimes became more resistant to
change (Roessler and Howard 2009: 118–119). Although Roessler and
Howard (2009) never make this explicit, it could hence be concluded
that the democratization force of elections is limited to competitive
authoritarian regimes.
Brownlee (2009b; see also 2009a) examines the importance of prior
regime type in his analysis of 88 cases of regime breakdown between
1975 and 2004. His conclusion is that ‘the simple holding of elec-
tions is at best weakly correlated to the replacement of autocracy by
democracy’ (Brownlee 2009b: 143). Corroborating Roessler and Howard,
Brownlee (2009b: 144) finds that elections are ‘a mode of transition in
competitive, but not hegemonic authoritarian regimes’. This pattern,

Brownlee suggests, might explain Lindberg’s findings for Africa, but nei-
ther he nor the other contributors to Lindberg’s edited volume (2009a)
test the relationship between the type of authoritarianism and demo-
cratic transition in Africa. Nor do the contributions by Roessler and
Howard and by Brownlee look at the cumulative impact of elections.
Recent quantitative studies on the democratizing force of elections
have further undermined confidence in Lindberg’s thesis. Kaya and
Bernhard (2013: 738) find that ‘repeated elections in post-communist
Eurasia do not have a democratizing effect’. Donno (2013: 710), in a
multivariate study of elections and democratization in authoritarian
regimes around the world, concludes that ‘the idea that the repeated
holding of elections helps produce democracy is not supported’. Peiffer
and Englebert (2012: 374–376) are ambivalent. While the number of
elections is statistically significant in their multivariate model of democ-
ratization in Africa, they warn about endogeneity and note that the
variable loses statistical significance when Freedom House’s scores of
civil liberties are used instead of Freedom House’s combined score. The
number of elections also loses statistical significance when the analyses
control for the prior degree of democratization in a country.
Elections and democratization in Africa: A new test
Different from most scholars working on comparative democratiza-

tion, Lindberg has not explicitly looked at regimes or regime change.
Lindberg (2013: 163) recently stated that his theory was never about
democratic transitions and admitted to a very broad understanding of
democratization as any positive change on the Freedom House scale,
explicitly treating an improvement of six to five as ‘a move toward
democracy’ and hence ‘democratization’.12 This is what Sartori (1991:
248) has called ‘degreeism’: the ‘abuse (uncritical use) of the maxim that
differences in kind are best conceived of as differences of degree’.
In his studies of opposition behaviour and democratization in Africa,
however, Lindberg (2006c/d) classified African regimes as liberal democ-
racies, electoral democracies or electoral autocracies.13 What happens
if we use his own classification for a first test of the democratizing
power of elections with regime change as the dependent variable? Of the
32 cases that organized multiple elections and started out as electoral
authoritarian regimes, 11 were democratic by the end of 2003. Eight of
these transitions already occurred by the time of the second elections.
In fact, on closer examination, all eight already were democracies at the

time of their founding election.14 Two regimes democratized over time
but broke down again (the Central African Republic and the Gambia).
Only the trajectories of Ghana, Madagascar and Senegal conform to
Lindberg’s theory of a cumulative effect of elections over time.
The rest of this chapter reexamines the democratizing power of elec-
tions in Africa with regime change as the dependent variable.15 It tests
Lindberg’s (2009b: 38) claim that ‘[ . . . ] gradually and unevenly but
surely, countries tend to move from obvious electoral authoritarianism,
to an ambiguous gray zone, to electoral and in some cases liberal democ-
racy’. Information on the type and timing of elections, the vote/seat
share of the winner and regime breakdown until 2006 comes from the
data sets available on Lindberg’s website.16 Information on the com-
bined score of political rights and civil liberties, and the designation as
electoral democracy, comes from Freedom House. The data set contains
a total of 324 multiparty elections, 181 parliamentary and 143 presi-
dential elections, in 43 sub-Saharan African countries up to the end of
2011. As my chapter focuses on the cumulative effect of elections, the
data set only contains countries with at least two successive multiparty
elections. It therefore places a case like Angola, where the 1992 pres-
idential and parliamentary elections were followed by a return to civil
war and the parliamentary elections of 2008 were only repeated in 2012,
beyond the scope of this chapter. Five countries appear twice, because
counting started anew after a regime breakdown.17
As we have seen earlier, several studies have highlighted the
importance of a distinction between competitive and hegemonic
authoritarian regimes when explaining and predicting democratiza-
tion. Unfortunately, there is no consensus in the literature on how to
empirically identify these subtypes of electoral authoritarianism, and
all existing approaches have their problems. The most comprehensive
treatment of competitive authoritarianism comes from Levitsky and
Way (2010), but they only have data for the 35 regimes that became
competitive authoritarian in the first half of the 1990s. The quantitative
literature relies on election outcomes to distinguish between hegemonic
and competitive authoritarianism (Hadenius and Teorell 2007; Brownlee
2009; Roessler and Howard 2009).
This chapter uses Freedom House to identify liberal democracies (free
countries), electoral democracies (countries that are minimally demo-
cratic according to Freedom House but not free) and non-democratic
countries (partly free countries that are not an electoral democracy
plus all countries that are not free).18 Following Roessler and Howard
(2009), electoral autocracies are further subdivided into hegemonic and

competitive, using the threshold of 70 per cent of votes (presidential
elections) and seats (parliamentary elections).
What are the results?
There are three ways to test Lindberg’s argument about democratization

by elections in Africa. The first test examines whether freedom increases
over successive elections. The second test examines regime change and
durability over successive elections. The third test examines whether
subtypes of electoral authoritarianism make a difference.
Is it true that ‘successive cycles of elections are likely, with time, to
lead to democratic improvements’ (Lindberg 2006b: 149)? Table 2.1
shows that progress over the first four election cycles is not impressive.
The difference between first and second elections and between third and
fourth elections is very small. The gains in freedom from the fifth elec-
tions onwards should be treated with caution as the number of cases is
much lower and democracies are overrepresented among countries that
have organized five elections or more.19 Looking at individual country
cases and comparing the Freedom House combined score of political
rights and civil liberties for the first elections with the score from 2011,
it turns out that 22 countries improved their scores, 17 became less free
over time and four remained the same.
Table 2.2 presents an overview of regime change and stability in 43
countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The overall impression is one of diver-
sity. At the top of the table are the four cases that seem to conform to
Lindberg’s expectations of democratization over consecutive elections:
Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania and the Comoros. These countries were not
democratic when they organized their first multiparty elections but they
are now. It is difficult to detect a cumulative effect of elections in the
Comoros, as they were already partly free at the time of the presidential
Table 2.1 Freedom House combined ratings after consecutive elections in Africa
First Second Third Fourth Fifth Sixth Seventh Eighth
Rating 4.3 4.2 3.91 3.78 2.97 3.21 2 1.5

Cases 47 47 35 29 11 7 3 2
Note: The Freedom House combined rating is the average of the political rights and civil
liberties ratings on a scale from seven to one, where seven is worst and one is best.
Source: Own compilation, based on Freedom House (2012).
Table 2.2 Regime change and stability over successive elections in Africa
32
Trajectory Country Year started Elections
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th
Democratic Transition (N = 4) Senegal 1978 EA EA EA EA EA/ED ED/Free Free

Ghana 1992 EA ED Free Free
Tanzania 1995 EA EA EA ED
Comoros 2 2002 EA/ED ED ED
Breakdown after Democratic Madagascar 1982 EA EA ED ED ED ED X
Transition (N = 2) Guinea Bissau 2004 EA/ED ED X
Democratic Stability (N = 10) Botswana 1969 Dem Dem Free Free Free Free Free Free Free
Mauritius 1976 Free Free Free Free Free Free Free Free
Benin 1991 Free Free Free Free Free Free
Cape Verde 1991 Free Free Free Free Free
Seychelles 1993 ED ED ED ED ED
Namibia 1994 Free Free Free Free
Sao Tome & Principe 2 1996 Free Free Free Free
South Africa 1994 Free Free Free Free
Lesotho 2002 Free Free
Sierra Leone 2002 ED ED
Democratic Erosion Malawi 1994 Free ED ED ED
Democratic Reversal (N = 6) Zimbabwe 1980 Dem EA EA EA EA EA
Mozambique 1994 ED ED ED EA
Nigeria 1999 ED ED EA EA
Niger 2 1999 ED ED EA X
Burundi 2005 ED EA
CAR 2 2005 ED EA
Democratic Breakdown Mali 1992 Free Free Free Free Free X
(N = 5) Gambia 1 1982 Dem Dem Free X
Niger 1 1993 ED ED X
CAR 1 1993 ED ED X
Sao Tome & Principe 1 1991 Free Free X
Authoritarian Stability Burkina Fasi 1991 EA EA EA EA
(N = 12) Cameroon 1992 EA EA EA EA
Chad 1996 EA EA EA EA
Equatorial Guinea 1993 EA EA EA EA
Ethiopia 1995 EA EA EA EA
Gabon 1990 EA EA EA EA
Togo 1993 EA EA EA EA
Uganda 1996 EA EA EA EA
Sudan 1996 EA EA EA
Congo (Brazzaville) 2002 EA EA
Rwanda 2003 EA EA
Congo (Kinshasa) 2006 EA EA
Authoritarian Breakdown Mauritania 1992 EA EA EA X
(N = 4) Guinea 1993 EA EA EA X
Comoros 1 1990 EA EA X
Ivory Coast 1990 EA EA X
Fluctuation (N = 4) Zambia 1991 Free EA EA ED ED ED
Djibouti 1992 EA EA/ED EA EA
Gambia 2 1997 EA ED/EA EA EA
Kenya 1992 EA EA ED EA
Legend: EA = electoral authoritarian, ED = electoral democracy, Dem = democracy, X = regime breakdown.
33
Source: Own compilation.
elections of 2002 and became an electoral democracy with the 2004

parliamentary elections.
Ghana and Senegal are the two main examples of democratization
by elections in Africa. Senegal’s single-party regime introduced party
pluralism and held its first multiparty elections in 1978, long before
the third wave of democratization reached Africa. The subsequent dom-
inance of the ruling Parti Socialiste ended in 2000/2001, when Wade and
his opposition coalition won the presidential and parliamentary elec-
tions (Hartmann 2013). Senegal was classified as an electoral democracy
and was even rated free by the time of the next election cycle, although
it subsequently lost that status again.20 This deterioration would not
have come as a surprise to Levitsky and Way (2010: 273), who regard
Senegal as a case of ‘turnover but not democratization’ and classify
it as an unstable competitive authoritarian regime. After the opposi-
tion victory of 2012, which led to a second turnover, there are still
doubts about democracy’s prospects in Senegal (Kelly 2012). Neverthe-
less, Senegal since 1978 shows signs of the democratizing force of regular
elections.
Ghana seems a typical example of democratization through elections.
The country organized its first multiparty elections in 1992 and became
an electoral democracy at the time of the second elections, which
were still won decisively by former strong man Rawlings and his party.
Ghana has been rated free since the opposition victory in 2000. How-
ever, Ghana’s trajectory is very much an exception (see Chapter 6 in
this book). Compared to Mexico, for example, which needed decades
of multiparty elections to make the transition to democracy, Ghana
achieved regime change after one election cycle.
In Ghana and Senegal democratization was triggered by a strong
opposition. The situation is different in Tanzania, which has been clas-
sified as an electoral democracy since 2010, and is on the threshold
of becoming a free country with an average score of three according
to Freedom House. Analysed as a competitive authoritarian regime by
Levitsky and Way (2010: 251–254), the resounding presidential and
parliamentary victories of the ruling CCM certainly indicate the domi-
nance of the ruling party. By all accounts, opposition parties are weak
in Tanzania (Hoffman and Robinson 2009; O’Gorman 2012; Bakari and
Whitehead 2013). Democratization in Tanzania, therefore, seems to be
driven more by the ruling party than by the opposition. This is in con-
trast with a number of accounts of democratization in Africa (Rakner
and van de Walle 2009; Lindberg 2009c/d) that point to the central role
of the opposition.
If four country cases exhibit democratization over successive elec-

tions, what about the other 44 trajectories? There are two countries that
became democratic after organizing at least one election but reverted
back to (electoral) authoritarianism (Madagascar and Guinea Bissau).
Three other countries started out as electoral authoritarian regimes, had
a brief spell as electoral democracies, but were then downgraded again.
The democratic interlude in these countries varies from one year in the
Gambia, to three years in Djibouti and six in Kenya.
One glance at Table 2.2 is sufficient to see that the most common
pattern is one of stability, whether of the democratic or the authori-
tarian variety. Ten countries started out as democracies and remained
democratic. Countries that were rated free at the time of their found-
ing elections not only have a tendency to remain free, many even
became freer. Two initially free countries, Malawi and Zambia, experi-
enced democratic erosion and ended up as electoral democracies, the
latter even showing a spell of electoral authoritarianism.21
Three free countries experienced military coups. While Sao Tome and
Principe seems to have recovered from the military takeover, the recent
coup in Mali interrupted one of the most encouraging democratic suc-
cess stories in Africa (see Van Vliet 2013), while the 1994 coup in Gambia
ended one of only three democracies in Africa that had persisted since
independence.
In direct contradiction to Lindberg’s theory about the democratizing
effect of elections, the most populous category is that of stable electoral
authoritarian regimes. These are regimes that started out as autocracies
and remained autocracies. My analysis shows that their average Free-
dom House score, which was already at a very low 5.4 at the time of
the first multiparty elections, has deteriorated further. Four electoral
authoritarian regimes suffered a breakdown in the form of a civil war
or military coup.
The only cases of democratic deepening are Ghana and Senegal,
which went through a brief period of being electoral democracies
before becoming liberal democracies, as did the Gambia. For elec-
toral democracies the trend seems to be in the opposite direction.
Of the nine cases that started out as electoral democracies, five slid
back to authoritarianism and another two were terminated by military
coups.
Thus, we have to conclude that democratization by elections is
not the dominant mode of transition in Africa. Of the 17 democra-
cies in 2011, 13 were democratic from their first multiparty elections
onwards. Democratization in these countries followed the logic of
founding elections. Only three countries (Ghana, Senegal and Tanzania)

experienced a lasting transition to democracy after repeated elections.
Democratization by election, therefore, is very much the exception, also
in Africa.
Hegemonic and competitive authoritarianism
Recent research on electoral authoritarianism has stressed the impor-

tance of subtypes of authoritarianism for understanding regime conti-
nuity and change. In this data set, 88 elections qualify as hegemonic
authoritarian and 74 as competitive authoritarian. Table 2.3 shows that
hegemonic authoritarian regimes in Africa have a tendency to remain
hegemonic from one election to the next; and if they change, it is over-
whelmingly to competitive authoritarianism. Competitive authoritarian
regimes are less stable than hegemonic authoritarian regimes. When
they change, it is usually to become even more authoritarian.22 Roessler
and Howard (2009: 121) report that 32 per cent of competitive author-
itarian elections were followed by democratic elections. The figures in
Table 2.3 are lower, even much lower if one looks at legislative instead of
presidential elections. Thus, there are at least two reasons why electoral
authoritarianism is unlikely to result in democratization in Africa. First,
most authoritarian regimes in Africa are hegemonic authoritarian, the
subtype least likely to experience a democratic transition. Second, while
competitive authoritarian regimes in Africa, as elsewhere, have a higher
likelihood of democratizing than hegemonic authoritarian regimes, this
likelihood is still below the global average.
The practice of identifying subtypes of authoritarian regimes on the
basis of election results can lead to inconclusive and awkward results.23
Table 2.3 Stability and change in authoritarian regimes in Africa
Hegemonic Competitive Electoral

authoritarian authoritarian democracy/
liberal
democracy
Hegemonic authoritarian 58% (65%) 38% (26%) 4% (9%)

Competitive authoritarian 26% (42%) 48% (42%) 26% (15%)
Note: Stability and change in authoritarian regimes from one presidential election to the next.
In parentheses: percentages for parliamentary elections. Total number of paired elections
is 113.
Source: Own compilation.
In six cases, presidential and parliamentary elections held on the same

date led to different regime classifications. For example, in the Sudan
in 2010, the presidential elections were won with 68 per cent of the
vote and the parliamentary elections with 72 per cent of the seats.
The first result indicates competitive authoritarianism while the latter
signals hegemonic authoritarianism. In nine cases, presidential and par-
liamentary elections that took place within the same year had outcomes
triggering different classifications. For example, Uganda ‘changed’ from
hegemonic to competitive authoritarianism between May and June
1996, while it ‘changed’ from competitive to hegemonic authoritarian-
ism between March and June 2001. To avoid these problems, I paired
legislative with legislative elections and presidential with presidential
elections.
Conclusion
According to Lindberg (2009b: 2), the ‘electoral mode of transition’ is ‘a

new empirical phenomenon in need of a theory’. In a series of publica-
tions, Lindberg observed a trend of democratization through elections
in Africa, but the contributions to Lindberg’s edited volume (2009a)
failed to replicate his results in other parts of the world. In addition,
this chapter has questioned the evidence for Africa, a continent where,
‘despite the near-universal adoption of elections and 20 years of democ-
racy promotion, most states still lean toward autocracy’ (Ochieng’ Opalo
2012: 90).24
In their review article on elections under authoritarianism, Gandhi
and Lust-Okar (2009: 406) note how ‘scholars have tended to make uni-
versal claims based on a subset of cases’. The theory of democratization
through elections in Africa seems to suffer from the same problem. Tak-
ing regime change as the dependent variable, I have shown that only
three countries (Ghana, Senegal and Tanzania) have experienced lasting
democratization through repeated election cycles.
Most electoral autocracies do not only remain autocratic, but also
become more autocratic over repeated elections. Most liberal democra-
cies do not only stay free but become freer over time. Electoral democra-
cies, in contrast, appear vulnerable to regression and breakdown. These
are the main trends in Africa. They indicate that multiparty elections
are both a driver of democracy and an attribute of authoritarianism.
Instead of reviving the debate between demo-optimists and demo-
pessimists, future research should address the diversity of trajectories
found in Africa.
If the emerging consensus is that ‘the impact of elections is highly

contingent’ (Morse 2012: 173), it is important to explain the variation.
The distinction between competitive and hegemonic authoritarianism
that has been highlighted in recent research on democratization does
not seem to carry the same weight in Africa. Levitsky and Way (2010: 22)
find that ‘multiparty elections are not by themselves an independent
cause of democratization’ and their theory of leverage and linkage pro-
vides an explanation of why some competitive authoritarian regimes
democratize while others do not. However, their prediction of author-
itarian resilience in Africa’s competitive authoritarian regimes cannot
account for the few democratic success stories (Levitsky and Way 2010:
306).25
Are we too impatient? Will the democratizing force of elections only
reveal itself in the future? Barkan (2000: 241) already cautioned that
Africa’s ‘protracted transitions’ could take one or two decades. Lindberg
(2012: 247) echoes this with his reminder that ‘transitions to democracy
often take a generation or more’. So should donors continue to pro-
vide aid and support for elections in developing countries in the hope
that one day this will pay a democratic dividend, even if these elections
are organized by authoritarian regimes? Lindberg (2006a: 158) shows
no doubt, arguing eloquently that ‘support is most needed in coun-
tries where opposing forces are still fighting over the rules of the game,
where election results are disputed, elections are sometimes flawed,
where opposition groups operate under less than free and fair conditions
and the communications media are constrained, and where authoritar-
ian tendencies are still strong but elections are being held’. But what
if the outcome of such support is not a transition to democracy but at
best improved ‘democratic qualities’ in countries that remain electoral
autocracies?
Recent studies in democratic change have highlighted the importance
of an alternation in power and noted how alternation can be encour-
aged by institutional features such as term limits (Maltz 2007; Posner
and Young 2007; Moehler and Lindberg 2009; Cheeseman 2010a). Some
even argue that turnover is not enough and that only a reform of polit-
ical institutions can bring about democratization (Nasong’o 2007; Kelly
2012; Wahman, 2014). Others have emphasized the quality of elections
as a crucial intervening variable, arguing that ‘elections lead in multiple
directions depending on their quality’ (Bratton 2013: 37; Greenberg and
Mattes 2013). All in all, this suggests that if the aim is to foster democ-
ratization through elections, democrats should insist on both free and
fair elections and institutional reform.
Notes
1. A shorter version of this chapter has been published as an article in
the Journal of Democracy (Bogaards 2013). Previous versions of the argu-
ment contained here were presented at meetings of the International
Studies Association in San Francisco, April 2013, the American Politi-
cal Science Association in Chicago, September 2013, and the Sektion
Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft of the Deutsche Vereinigung für Politische
Wissenschaft in Leipzig, October 2013. I would like to thank the par-
ticipants for their helpful comments and Courtney Adams for research
assistance.
2. The edited volume on Democratization by Elections: A New Mode of Transi-
tion (Lindberg 2009a) revisited Lindberg’s argument in the context of the
African continent, extended and tested it for other regions and further
developed the theoretical framework. While this volume has received less
attention (Cheeseman 2010b; Gurses 2011; Morse 2012), Lindberg’s con-
cluding chapter (2009d) presents a new theory of elections as a mode of
democratic transition, relying heavily on the work of Dahl (1971) and
Schedler (2006b, 2009a, 2009b). The focus of this new theory is on the
strategic interaction of the (authoritarian) government and (democratic)
opposition in the explicit understanding that ‘there are potentially a large
number of factors that can influence the regime transition and reproduction
metagame that results in various modes of transition’ (Lindberg 2009d: 327).
Unfortunately, these insights are not tested empirically.
3. See: http://www.freedomhouse.org.
4. Elischer (2008) uses some of Lindberg’s (2004) indicators to assess the
democratic quality of political parties in selected African countries.
5. According to Lindberg’s (2006d: 155) own data, 8 per cent of democratic
elections suffered from an opposition boycott.
6. For a critique of measures of democracy that use election outcomes, see
Bogaards (2007a/b).
7. Worryingly, losers fail to accept election results in 43 per cent of free and fair
elections (Lindberg 2006a: 68).
8. In fact, in Africa, ‘elections, on average, are not becoming less violent’ in the
period 1990–2008 (Straus and Taylor 2012: 28).
9. Please note how Lindberg’s (2006a: 39) use of the terms ‘previous author-
itarian rulers’ and ‘former authoritarian regime’ implies a regime change,
whereas in many African countries multiparty elections are organized by
regimes that remained non-democratic but within the category of authoritar-
ianism moved from ‘closed authoritarianism’ to ‘electoral authoritarianism’.
10. Even countries like Cameroon, where ‘democratization’ was limited to a
one-point improvement in civil liberties at the time of the first multiparty
elections, later undone, are counted as confirming cases.
11. Lindberg’s thesis is also mentioned in African case studies, both positively
(Odion Akhaine 2011) and critically (Omotola 2010; Vandeginste 2011).
12. Freedom House rates countries on a scale from free (1), to not free (7).
13. Please note that because Lindberg uses Freedom House scores but deviates
from its categories (Bogaards 2010: 480), his classification can be inconsistent
with Freedom House’s.
14. In the case of Mozambique, one year after the founding elections.
15. Lindberg (2013) confuses a reexamination with a replication, despite the title
of Bogaards (2013).
16. See: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/sil/downloads.html.
17. These are the Central African Republic, Comoros, Gambia, Niger and Sao
Tome and Principe.
18. No Freedom House scores are available for the first two elections in
Botswana. Following Doorenspleet (2005), the country is coded as a democ-
racy (‘Dem’ in Table 2.2). No Freedom House information on electoral
democracies is available before 1989. For the first two elections in the
Gambia, when the country was partially free, I follow Doorenspleet’s (2005)
classification of democracy.
19. Lindberg (2006a, 2009b) combines fourth and subsequent elections into one
category of ‘four or more’, thereby giving greater weight to the democratic
experience.
20. Table 2.2 does not register whether there is a change in Freedom House
average scores between elections; therefore, Senegal is not listed as a case
of democratic erosion.
21. Lindberg (2013: 166) asks: ‘What made Bogaards decide that Malawi should
be “Free” in 1994 and only an “ED” thereafter [ . . . ]?’ The answer is Freedom
House, which gave Malawi a combined score of 2.5 and hence the designa-
tion as free at the time of the 1994 elections, but lowered the score to three
by the time of the 1999 elections, classifying it as an electoral democracy in
a partially free country. Huntington (1996: 8) warned that ‘with third-wave
democracies, the problem is not overthrow but erosion: the intermittent or
gradual weakening of democracy by those elected to lead it’.
22. Whether this constitutes ‘autocratization by elections’ (Lindberg 2009b: 13)
depends on the causal importance of elections in the process.
23. This experience echoes the complaint that the distinction between
hegemonic and competitive authoritarian regimes ‘is neither consistently
used nor clear’ (Morse 2012: 171).
24. Adetula (2011: 18) and Matlosa and Zounmenou (2011: 144–145) make
similar observations.
25. See the special issue on ‘Competitive Authoritarianism and Democratization
in Africa’ of the Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft (2014).
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K. Ochieng’ Opalo (2012) ‘African Elections: Two Divergent Trends’, Journal of
Democracy 23 (3), 80–92.
S. Odion Akhaine (2011) ‘Nigeria’s 2011 Elections: The “Crippled Giant” Learns
to Walk?’ African Affairs 110 (441), 649–655.
S. Omotola (2010) ‘Elections and Democratic Transition in Nigeria under the
Fourth Republic’, African Affairs 109 (437), 535–353.
C. Peiffer and P. Englebert (2012) ‘Extraversion, Vulnerability to Donors, and
Political Liberalization in Africa’, African Affairs 111 (444), 355–378.
D. Posner and D. Young (2007) ‘The Institutionalization of Political Power in
Africa’, Journal of Democracy 18 (3), 126–140.
J.J. Quinn (2006) Book Review of Lindberg (2006a), Taiwan Journal of Democracy
2 (2), 183–188.
L. Rakner and N. van de Walle (2009) ‘Opposition Parties and Incumbent Presi-
dents: The New Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Africa’, in S. Lindberg
Ph. Roessler and M. Howard (2009) ‘Post-Cold War Political Regimes: When
Do Elections Matter?’ in S. Lindberg (ed.) (2009a) Democratization by Elections:
pp. 101–227.
G. Sartori (1991) ‘Comparing and Miscomparing’, Journal of Theoretical Politics 3
(3), 243–257.
J. Scarritt (2007) Book Review of Lindberg (2006a), Perspectives on Politics 5 (4),
848–849.
A. Schedler (ed.) (2006a) Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree
Competition (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).
A. Schedler (2006b) ‘The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism’, in A. Schedler (ed.)
(2006a) Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition (Boulder,
CO: Lynne Rienner), pp. 1–23.
A. Schedler (2009a) ‘Sources of Competition under Electoral Authoritarianism’, in
A. Schedler (2009b) ‘The Contingent Power of Authoritarian Elections’, in
A. Schedler (2013) The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral
Authoritarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
S. Straus and Ch. Taylor (2012) ‘Democratization and Electoral Violence in Sub-
Saharan Africa, 1990–2008’, in D. Bekoe (ed.) Voting in Fear: Electoral Violence
in Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press),
pp. 15–38.
J. Teorell and A. Hadenius (2009) ‘Elections as Levers of Democratization:
A Global Inquiry’, in S. Lindberg (ed.) (2009a) Democratization by Elections:
pp. 77–100.
N. van de Walle (2007) Book Review of Lindberg (2006a), Foreign Affairs 86 (1),
177–178.
M. Van Vliet (2013) ‘Mali: From Dominant Party to Platform of Unity’, in
R. Doorenspleet and L. Nijzink (eds.) One-Party Dominance in African Democ-
racies (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers), pp. 143–168.
S. Vandeginste (2011) ‘Power-Sharing as a Fragile Safety Valve in Times of Elec-
toral Turmoil: The Costs and Benefits of Burundi’s Second Elections’, Journal of
Modern African Studies 49 (2), 315–335.
M. Wahman (2014) ‘Democratization and Electoral Turnovers in Sub-Saharan
Africa and Beyond’, Democratization, 21 (2), 220–243.
E. Zuern (2007) Book Review of Lindberg (2006a), Canadian Journal of African
Studies 41 (3), 619–621.
Part I
One-Party-Dominant Systems
3
South Africa: Electoral Dominance,
Identity Politics and Democracy
Steven Friedman
Most understandings of electoral politics in South Africa’s 20-year-old

democracy are shaped by a great irony – those who are most dismayed
by the electoral dominance of the ruling African National Congress
(ANC) are those who have benefitted most from this reality. Those
who seem least concerned are those whose political options it has
constrained.
South Africa became a democracy in April 1994. Since then, including
the founding elections which were held in that month, the country has
now experienced five national and provincial elections (which are held
on the same day) and three municipal elections. In all, the ANC, which
led the fight against the apartheid system that preceded democracy, has
emerged comfortably as the party with the largest share of the national
vote. Its share has never dropped below 62 per cent – in 2004, its most
successful year, it stopped just short of 70 per cent (Independent Elec-
toral Commission 2013). It has governed seven of the nine provinces
continuously during this period and, between 2004 and 2009, governed
all. At present, it rules in eight of the nine. At local level, the ANC dom-
inates in eight of the nine metropolitan councils and governs in 198 of
the 234 local governments (Eyewitness News 2011).
The ANC has, therefore, enjoyed almost total electoral dominance.
Voter preferences in South Africa are shaped primarily by identities – as
they are in many countries, despite the unconvincing attempts by ratio-
nal choice theory to demonstrate the contrary (Friedman 1999a). Race
is the most important but not the only identity – language, region and
loyalty to traditional authority also play a role. The ANC celebrated its
centenary in 2012 and has, over the century, established itself as the
vehicle of the political identities of a substantial majority of voters. Nor
is there robust evidence that this pattern is likely to change soon. The
47
48 South Africa
ANC has, over the past seven years, faced severe internal ructions, a
breakaway and the formation of two new parties by some of its for-
mer leaders and an energetic and strategically sophisticated attempt by
the largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), to capitalize
on these setbacks by making substantial inroads into the ANC’s over-
whelmingly black support base. Despite that, the ANC vote remains
comfortably above 60 per cent.1
Given that South Africa emerges from a past of racial minority rule
which ensures that race is still society’s chief cleavage, that the ANC led
the fight against the apartheid system and that it draws its support pri-
marily from the black majority, we might expect it to use its electoral
dominance to address the concerns of that majority and to reduce the
white minority to political powerlessness. Much white opinion seems to
believe that this is precisely what the ANC has done. White-run media,
and many white participants in the national debate, complain cease-
lessly that apartheid – white minority rule – has been replaced by an
order in which whites in general and white men in particular have been
reduced to jobless and voiceless victims of affirmative action and other
forms of racial preference. Most whites tend to assume that, although
they are still permitted to vote, they lost their voice in 1994 and that
their prospect of regaining it will begin only if the ANC’s electoral
dominance ends.
Reality differs starkly from these perceptions. Economically, whites are
the prime beneficiaries of 20 years of majority rule, followed by the two
racial minorities, many of whose members now support the parliamen-
tary opposition (Bhorat et al. 2009). The areas in which whites live – the
suburbs of the major metropolitan areas – enjoy higher qualities of pub-
lic service than those which house the black majority; as a result white
residents express greater satisfaction with their urban environment than
do the black supporters of the majority party (South African Cities Net-
work 2004). Whites effectively use civil society organizations – business
associations, professional organizations, urban ratepayers’ associations –
to express themselves in the national debate while grass-roots black
organizations are largely ignored or are subject to repression.2 One fea-
ture of this is the continued ability of AfriForum, an organization which
champions the interests of white Afrikaners, to enjoy an influence out
of all proportion to its numbers and its presumed legitimacy (Friedman
and McKaiser 2010).
How does all this come to be? In this chapter I will attempt to
answer this question. I will begin by elaborating on my previous work
(Friedman 1999b) and argue that a distinction must be drawn between
Steven Friedman 49
an electorally dominant party and one which is socially dominant.

I will argue that the ANC, while clearly electorally dominant, is not
socially dominant because, unlike many of the dominant parties dis-
cussed in the literature on the topic (Duverger 1959; Pempel 1990),
its control of elected positions does not allow it to dominate the
economy and society and set the agenda for either. I will then show
that the ANC’s electoral dominance is, in unintended ways, helpful
to minority interests both because it acts as a buffer to populist pres-
sures which might otherwise threaten affluent minorities and because
it directs politics into a framework in which dealing with minority
interests is the chief preoccupation of government. This sometimes
expresses itself in hostility to minorities but never to indifference and
so minorities in general and whites in particular remain at the centre
of attention. I will then show how electoral dominance ironically oper-
ates to silence important majority voices by severely constraining the
options of the poor. Finally, I will examine prospects for and the likely
consequences of an end to electoral dominance. I seek to show that,
while this opens up opportunities for majority interests and poses
threats to minorities, electoral competition might be in the interests
of both groups because it may prove the key to greater government
effectiveness which might offer benefits to the minority as well as the
majority.
Electoral and social dominance: In office but not in power?3
To win elections repeatedly is not necessarily sufficient to become a

dominant party, for dominance means more than electoral success
alone.
Maurice Duverger categorized a dominant party as one which is ‘iden-
tified with an epoch’ (Duverger 1959: 308). This implies that dominance
stems from the dominant party’s ability to establish itself in the minds of
the electorate as the ‘natural’ party of government. As Duverger (1959:
308) notes, dominant parties are able to convince not only their own
supporters of this reality, but the opposition too: ‘Even [ . . . ] citizens
who refuse to give it their vote, acknowledge its superior status and its
influence; they deplore it, but admit it.’ This stems from the reality that
dominant parties are dominant not only in the polity but also in soci-
ety. ‘The dominant party ensures its continued success by effectively
spreading out among many social strata rather than concentrating on
only one; it mobilises support from all sectors of society [ . . . ]’ (Arian
and Barnes 1974: 603).
50 South Africa
Socially dominant parties, then, do more than monopolize executive

positions. Dominance requires that the dominant party dominate the
polity in general and the public policy debate in particular. Sweden’s
Social Democratic Party, for example, maintained dominance even
while in opposition during the mid-1970s, since the government which
replaced it largely pursued its programme (Pempel 1990: 18). The domi-
nant party ‘sets the mood of the political scene’ (Arian and Barnes 1974:
611) and is able to ensure that policy inputs ‘are filtered through struc-
tures dominated by the party and are thereby softened, purified and
domesticated’ (Arian and Barnes 1974: 601). To do this, the party needs
to assemble a dominant coalition in society’s key institutions and in civil
society. Whatever the size of its electoral majority, a governing party will
face organized interests who are able to exert independent influence on
decision-making. The party enjoys social dominance only if it is able
to shape society’s agenda despite that. This means that it must either
enjoy the loyalty of society’s powerful interests or enough broad social
support to force those interests to accept its social dominance: Swedish
business leaders might not vote for the Social Democratic Party but,
for decades, they have recognized the need to calculate their interests
within a framework defined by that party.
It is hard to see the ANC as a socially dominant party – despite the
daily complaints of white opinion formers who, in the main, insist that
the majority party has placed its stamp firmly on society and its agenda.
On the contrary, the ANC often behaves, after 20 years in government,
as if it were still a resistance movement fighting white minority rule.
And, while explicit or implied claims that whites still dominate the
economy and society may be a convenient way of shifting blame away
from governing politicians and officials, they reflect an important facet
of social reality. Economically, socially and culturally, racial minorities
in general, and whites in particular, maintain a strong and arguably
dominant position. The ANC is not powerless in the face of this real-
ity (although some of its activists like to imply that it is4 ) but must
take it into account and this severely erodes its aspirations to social
dominance.
The most obvious obstacle to ANC dominance is economic. It was
noted earlier that whites have been the key economic beneficiaries of
apartheid’s demise. Despite an official Black Economic Empowerment
policy which seeks to ensure that the racial composition of the upper
echelons of business reflect that of society, and a set of affirmative action
programmes and policies, whites continue to occupy the upper rungs
of business and the professions. Thus, according to the Johannesburg
Steven Friedman 51
Stock Exchange (2010), black South African investors own only 18 per
cent of the available share capital in the top 100 companies listed on the
exchange. Some estimates calculate an even lower black share of prime
economic assets. Whites continue to dominate the highest corporate
and professional jobs. By 2009, the percentage of black professionals
in the accounting, engineering and legal professions remained at 12,
24 and 21 per cent, respectively (Development Network Africa 2009).
This obviously gives members of racial minorities, most of whom do
not support the ANC, significant bargaining power.
Nor does the ANC dominate either the media or public debate. While
its control of government allows it to influence the national public
broadcaster, much of the media remain outside its control. They are
not only critical of but often hostile to the governing party (Cinman
2010). And so the majority party has a limited role in framing the pub-
lic debate – indeed, one public commentator suggests that ‘White people
remain a cultural majority. And it is their world view that continues
to dominate the shaping of social and economic relations’ (Matshiqi
2011). And, while a significant section of civil society does share the
ANC’s values and approach, significant interests groups remain outside
its control – business and professional associations are obvious exam-
ples given the economic realities sketched here as are residents’ and
ratepayers’ associations in the still predominantly white suburbs of the
major cities. Often, government initiatives aimed at providing enhanced
opportunities for citizens to engage with government are used dis-
proportionately by better organized, better connected, white interests
rather than by the grass-roots citizens they are meant to serve. And that
section of civil society which shares the ANC’s perspective is often at
loggerheads with it despite a shared political past (Friedman 2010a).
These examples serve to underline the degree to which the ANC’s
domination of government has not enabled it to achieve social
dominance – the levers of economic, social and cultural power remain
outside its grasp. Politics is often framed by deep-seated white assump-
tions that black people are incapable of governing which induce defen-
siveness among black people in government (Friedman 2010b). This
makes effective governance more difficult in a variety of ways – but
it does ensure that the ANC, in its dealings with private social and
economic interests, often behaves more like a movement still battling
to achieve power than one which has already attained it. While it
may sometimes suit ANC politicians to exaggerate this dynamic, it cer-
tainly renders implausible any claim that the ANC has achieved social
dominance.
52 South Africa
With oppressors like these . . .: The ANC’s electoral

dominance and inherited privilege
While it is de rigueur for white opinion-makers to portray the ANC as a

predatory hegemon, dominating all of society and reducing whites to
passive bystanders, whites do rather better out of the ANC’s electoral
dominance than those who presume to speak for them would care to
admit.
We would expect electoral dominance to weaken severe pressures on
the governing party to account to citizens. We should expect even more
that it would eliminate entirely the need to account to whites and other
racial minorities who clearly do not vote for the ANC in any great
numbers. As the previous section has already suggested, however, South
African realities do not conform to these expectations. One reason is
the racial dynamic mentioned above. Apartheid, the system of legally
enforced white domination which governed South Africa until 1994,
was underpinned by a set of attitudes which, inevitably, did not disap-
pear the moment South Africa became a formally non-racial democracy
in 1994. They have not shown any sign of disappearing yet, which is
hardly surprising since the norm in societies which have experienced
racial domination is that the attendant attitudes survive the end of legal-
ized discrimination by decades. It took the United States more than
140 years after the Civil War to elect a black president and even that
has not signalled the ‘post-racial society’ which some heralded when
Barack Obama was elected. An American newspaper which publishes
a continuing chronicle of race in America introduces it thus: ‘For the
first time in U.S. history, a black man has won the highest office in
the land. Yet racial tensions and misunderstandings remain the abid-
ing subtexts of many of our national conversations’ (Chicago Tribune
2009). That much the same can be said of South Africa 20 years after
the end of apartheid is, therefore, not surprising. And one of its less
obvious consequences is to introduce a significant element of govern-
ment accountability to the white minority despite the ANC’s electoral
dominance.
As the previous section noted, apartheid left many – in all probability
most – whites convinced that black people are incapable of perform-
ing complex tasks such as governing society. Majority government is
assumed to be incompetent unless the contrary is proven and some-
times even then. These assumptions are ubiquitous but they are perhaps
nowhere more starkly expressed than in the claim by a white newspaper
editor that the flight of affluent whites from public schools and hospitals
Steven Friedman 53
to expensive private facilities is not a lifestyle choice but almost a form

of oppression: ‘Our houses are mortgaged and we’re in debt to our eye-
balls trying to avoid catastrophic state schools and hospitals and paying
outrageous prices for the things the state [ . . . ] administers’ (Bruce 2011).
This picture of deep suffering among the affluent bears no resemblance
to recorded reality – data show that white incomes have increased much
faster than those of other races since democracy was established (Bhorat
et al. 2009: 4).
They show too that the areas in which whites live continue to enjoy
higher levels of public service than traditionally black areas – to name
but one example, public schools which serve white areas still substan-
tially outperform those in black areas (National Planning Commission
2011: 25). But it does reflect the deeply held perception that a gov-
ernment dominated by the black majority is incapable of governing
effectively. Black politicians are acutely aware of these attitudes and the
role they have historically played in underpinning white domination
and so the chief preoccupation of the ANC administration, at least since
1999 when the second president elected by universal franchise, Thabo
Mbeki, took office, has been to demonstrate that these prejudices are
unfounded. This clearly cannot be achieved unless the attitudes of the
minority are taken extremely seriously. And so the desire to demon-
strate to sceptical whites that black people can govern efficiently serves
to ensure that white opinion matters far more than electoral arithmetic
suggests.5
A second reason why the ANC’s electoral dominance does not reduce
minorities to the margins is that electoral outcomes, while they matter,
do not matter as much as logic suggests. Organization and access – the
capacity to engage in those routine forms of collective action which
ensures that government is pressed to account and to respond – are also
crucial determinants of whether citizens can ensure that public office
holders listen to them. And affluent white citizens are better able to do
this than the millions of poorer black voters who support the governing
party both because they have substantially more resources and because
decades of enfranchisement have habituated them to expecting public
figures to be accountable. Inherited notions of racial superiority may
also prompt whites to assume that predominantly black politicians and
officials ought to account to them.
At the national level, it was noted earlier that major business and
professional associations are largely dominated by white people; their
organization and ability to access public decision-makers give them a
capacity to influence public debate which is greatly in excess of their
54 South Africa
importance to the ANC’s electoral prospects. In the suburbs, affluent,

predominantly white, citizens can respond to inadequacies in public
service provision by immediately calling officials and, in many cases,
pestering them until the problem is remedied. Much of this is routine in
the suburbs – municipalities are expected to make it possible for citizens
to contact them and the almost instinctive response to public service
problems is to use those channels. By contrast, the millions of ANC vot-
ers who still live in ‘townships’ – low-income suburbs which were once
reserved for blacks only – often lack the means to hold public officials
to account. Routine collective action is not instinctive to people used to
seeing themselves as powerless.6 The disparities in the quality of public
schools discussed earlier are largely a consequence of the much greater
capacity of well-organized suburban parents to ensure that public facili-
ties work for them – by contrast parents in low-income township schools
are often at the mercy of better-organized and better-connected teachers
unions (Kihato et al. 1998).
The ANC’s electoral dominance, then, does not prevent affluent cit-
izens, most of whom vote for opposition parties, from ensuring that
government takes note of their interests and accounts to them. And,
despite incessant complaints by white citizens that the ANC’s electoral
dominance is both oppressive and ruinous, its effect is to protect them
from pressures which would almost certainly be felt far more keenly in
a more competitive electoral system. South Africa since 1994 has not,
for example, experienced ‘political business cycles’ (Nordhaus 1975) –
sharp increases in government spending as elections approach and the
governing party seeks to enhance or at least retain its share of the
vote. The National Treasury has been able to maintain fiscal discipline
despite high levels of poverty and inequality and despite the fact that
most of those at the wrong end of the Gini coefficient are ANC voters,
because electoral dominance has largely insulated the majority party
from redistributive pressures. If elections were more competitive, there
is a strong chance that parties competing for the votes of the major-
ity would seek to mobilize voters by promising a much more rapid
redistribution of wealth – conceivably forcing the governing party to
outbid them.
Minority voters, particularly the more affluent, would clearly prefer
another party to dominate elections. Most seem unaware of the irony
that the majority party dominance which they resent so deeply has
almost certainly been an important part of the reason why they have
done so well economically out of the majority rule which so many resent
or distrust.
Steven Friedman 55
Restrictive choice: The ANC’s electoral dominance and the

interests of the poor
If the ANC’s electoral dominance is helpful to the minorities who

oppose the majority party, it is distinctly unhelpful to much of the
majority which maintain the party in power.
This statement must be qualified. The ANC is a broad ‘national libera-
tion movement’ which brings together a range of interests in a common
loyalty to its past and hoped for future role in freeing the black majority
from minority domination. While this broad melange of interests unites
enthusiastically at election time, it spends much of the time between
campaigns jockeying for influence. And, given the importance of orga-
nization in shaping who exerts influence, it is no surprise that the black
professional and business interests within the majority party wield the
most influence and that the unorganized poor exert the least (Friedman
2005a). The more affluent interests compete for the ear of government
decision-makers with trade unions, who represent working people but
not the poor who are unable to enter the formal labour market, and civil
society organizations who may seek to speak for the grass-roots poor but
have very weak roots among those for whom they purport to speak. And
so the largest section of ANC voters, the grass-roots poor, has no voice
in its decision-making processes. The ANC’s electoral dominance works
well for the organized and connected interests who are able to ensure
that the ANC in government takes their needs seriously. It does not work
for the poor who have no say in its policy processes.
That the grass-roots poor are aware that they do not have a say and
want to change this is graphically illustrated by the fact that, for the
past ten years, South Africa has experienced continuing and widespread
social protest by citizens of low-income townships and shack settle-
ments demanding more responsive government more attuned to their
concerns. The protests are initiated not by mass social movements but,
often, by ambitious politicians seeking to mobilize citizens in their
attempts to win local ANC nominations for elected office.7 Local power-
seekers are able to mobilize local citizens precisely because the sense
that politicians are indifferent to the concerns of those who voted
them into office is widespread among the urban poor. Impressionistic
evidence suggests that discontent in the ANC’s core constituency has
increased markedly in the past seven years. This is a response to devel-
opments within the majority party which illustrate the way in which
the ANC’s electoral dominance weakens the capacity of the poor to force
government to account and respond.
56 South Africa
The spur to the discontent was a watershed moment in the ANC’s

post-apartheid development.8 Prior to December, 2007, it was widely
assumed not only that the ANC was guaranteed repeated re-election but
that its leadership was similarly insulated from pressures which threat-
ened their ability to remain in office. The ANC was a legal organization
until 1960 and was then banned and forced underground until 1990.
The intervening three decades were not conducive to internal democ-
racy and leadership contests were settled by bargaining between party
leaders, not democratic elections. The pattern continued after the ANC
was again permitted to operate legally and, by the time it met at the
end of 2007 to elect a new president, it had last experienced a contested
election for the post in 1949 (Roux 1972). It was thus widely assumed
that whoever led the ANC could continue to do so for as long as they
chose. This expectation was shattered when the then president of the
ANC and state president, Thabo Mbeki, was defeated in his bid to win
a third term as ANC president – the slate of pro-Mbeki candidates who
sought the other leadership posts and contested at the conference were
similarly defeated. This had a profound effect on the ANC. Not only
did it send a clear signal to leaders that their positions were not at all
guaranteed, it moved the party in a very short time from an organiza-
tion in which few posts were contested to one in which just about all of
them were, often in hotly contested races which were fought with such
ferocity and such disregard for the rules of electoral competition that
they threatened to tear the ANC apart. One important consequence is
that it created for ANC leaders a very strong incentive to account and
respond to the then 600,000 plus citizens who were paid-up members
of the majority party.9
These pressures for accountability within the ANC were not paralleled
by similarly strong pressures in the society. Mbeki’s defeat was followed
by an ANC decision in September 2008 to replace him as president of the
Republic, a step which prompted a breakaway by some Mbeki support-
ers who formed an opposition party, the Congress of the People (COPE),
which contested the 2009 general election. This ensured the first drop in
ANC electoral support since 1994 – its share of the vote declined from
nearly 70 to 65.9 per cent (Independent Electoral Commission 2013).
The trend was maintained in the local elections of 2011 when the ANC
share of the vote dropped to 62.9 per cent (Independent Electoral Com-
mission 2011a). But this decline in support was not enough to shake the
expectations of most ANC politicians that it would remain in power for
the foreseeable future. Inevitably, perhaps, this has created an environ-
ment in which ANC leaders are far more accountable to each other than
Steven Friedman 57
they are to the millions who vote for it. To name but one example, the
majority party disbanded a specialist investigative unit, which is deeply
unpopular among ANC politicians, without consulting a public worried
about high crime rates. While the constitution mandates that the public
must be consulted on legislation through parliamentary hearings, ANC
legislators made it clear before the first hearings that they would be vot-
ing to abolish the unit,10 thus signalling, of course, that public opinion
on this issue was irrelevant to them.
Perhaps a far more pervasive – and potentially damaging – effect of
this change is that it has substantially strengthened a trend, which
began within a few years of the ANC becoming the governing party,
towards a self-seeking and sometimes corrupt politics in which politi-
cal position is seen as a route to wealth which is then used as a source
of political patronage within the ANC to ensure continued access to
political office and to the wealth it brings. That this has become an
increasing feature of politics within the ANC is acknowledged by the
organization itself which has been trying for over a decade to address
the problem, albeit without success. Thus, a document tabled at the
September 2010 meeting of the ANC’s national general council identifies
these attitudes and behaviours as symptoms of the ‘sins of incumbency’.
‘Leadership in the ANC is seen as stepping-stones to positions of power
and material reward in government and business [ . . . ]. Disturbing trends
of “careerism, corruption and opportunism,” alien to a revolutionary
movement, taking roots at various levels, eating at our soul and with
potential to denude our society of an agent of real change [ . . . ]. Divisive
leadership battles over access to resources and patronage becoming the
norm and allegations about corruption and business interests of leader-
ship and deployed cadres abounding.’ This, it says, has prompted ‘The
emergence of social distance between ANC cadres in positions of power
from the motive forces which the ANC represent, with the potential to
render elements in the movement “progressively lethargic to the condi-
tions of the poor” ’ (African National Congress 2010: 3).11 The frankness
with which these problems are identified reveals that the trend towards
self-seeking politics is contested within the ANC. The fact that the doc-
ument points out that every complaint quoted is drawn from ANC
documents published since 1997 shows that those who contest the trend
have been unable to reverse it in more than a decade.
Electoral dominance plays an important – perhaps decisive – role in
sustaining these trends. Because the ANC is the most obvious vehi-
cle to gain access to elected and unelected government posts, it is the
most attractive option to politicians seeking access to wealth as well
58 South Africa
as power. At the municipal level, particularly in poorer provinces, high

levels of poverty and inequality mean that an ANC nomination and sub-
sequent election can be the difference between a middle-class lifestyle
and poverty.12 And at the provincial and national levels, posts in the
majority party can bring significant wealth and status not only because
it opens access to public resources but because some largely white-owned
businesses find it convenient to purchase the loyalty of politicians. It is
possible to become an ANC member simply by paying a very modest
annual subscription and so ambitious politicians have an incentive to
recruit members who are loyal to or dependent on them in order to
assemble vote banks – it has been claimed that members have been
enrolled purely to ensure support for particular politicians. While this
obviously swells membership, it equally obviously makes the patterns
decried by the documents quoted here more likely. Dominance at the
polls also insulates political actors against the negative consequences
of infighting and jockeying for positions by making it much less likely
that the resulting neglect of public priorities will be punished at the
polls. The better the ANC does at the polls, the more likely are the inter-
nal tensions which ANC documents have been lamenting. It may well
be that the only antidote to this insider politics would be a realization
by governing party politicians that, unless they begin worrying more
about voters than each other, the electorate will deprive them of the
posts which are so important to them.
The current insulation of elected representatives from the needs of
the electorate has not escaped the notice of ANC voters. While accurate
survey evidence on voter attitudes is hard to come by in South Africa,
there is substantial impressionistic evidence of a widespread concern
among grass-roots ANC voters that the movement’s active politicians
care a great deal about themselves and each other but little or nothing
about those who vote them into their posts. This is partly confirmed
by internal ANC opinion polls which showed a significant fall in sup-
port in the period after the change of leadership.13 There are indications
that this has endured. For example, the broadcast media are a popular
source of debate among a section of the citizenry and it is the practice
of some current affairs TV debate shows to invite viewers to vote on
the issues of the day. Audiences composed primarily of the ANC’s core
constituency regularly vote overwhelmingly for tougher controls on cor-
ruption and routinely express dismay that not enough is being done to
fight it (Friedman 2010c). As noted earlier, the grass-roots protests which
have become an endemic feature of life in the townships and shack set-
tlements which house the urban poor are motivated by a pervasive sense
Steven Friedman 59
that politicians do not care about citizens and that the only way they
can be made to listen to voters is through street demonstrations.14
However, while the grass-roots poor who provide the ANC with most
of its votes are free to talk about their misgivings, there is little they
can do about them. Unlike the middle-class, the affluent and the formal
sector workers, they are not organized: The protests, which invariably
revolve around very local issues, have not generated an organized move-
ment which could press effectively for the interests of the poor. They
do, of course, have the vote but turning that into influence is diffi-
cult because most voters do not yet have an alternative to the ANC.
The official opposition, the DA, emerges from the white suburbs and
became the largest opposition party by convincing whites and other
racial minorities that it was an effective articulator of their frustrations
with the ANC. While the DA has tried over the past five years to reach
out to black voters, it has made only small dents in the ANC vote: South
African party loyalties are, as noted earlier, shaped primarily by iden-
tities and the DA’s provenance ensures that it cannot win substantial
support from the majority identity. COPE, the breakaway from the ANC
mentioned earlier, initially had a much better prospect of winning sup-
port because, since it emerged from within the ANC, it did appeal to the
majority identity – this enabled it to win 1.3 million votes or 7.42 per
cent despite the fact that it was formed only months before the 2009
election and that its leaders had not been senior enough in the ANC to
attract the allegiance of most of its voters.
It seems unlikely that ANC voters will migrate to a rival party under
current conditions. However unhappy they may feel, forming a polit-
ical party requires substantial resources and assertiveness – it is not a
task for people battling to get by on meagre incomes. And so unhap-
piness will not acquire an electoral vehicle until the better resourced
elites currently within the majority party decide that the time has come
to abandon it and to establish an alternative. Until then, the absence
of that alternative prompts most unhappy ANC voters to insist that
they are disenchanted not with the ANC but with a leadership group
which is straying from the traditional values of the movement – they
continue to support the movement even as they denounce those who
lead it. Given the depth of South Africa’s historical divisions, the influ-
ence of identities on voter behaviour is very strong. This dynamic may
well have been illustrated in the 2011 local election. Before the poll,
it was widely predicted that the evidence of disenchantment discussed
here would ensure that many ANC voters stayed home in protest, signif-
icantly reducing its share of the vote. In the event, the turnout, 57.6 per
60 South Africa
cent of eligible voters (Independent Electoral Commission 2011b), was

not only the highest recorded in a post-1994 South African local elec-
tion, but extremely high for municipal elections internationally. The
reason for this may well have been the fact that the DA made an ener-
getic attempt to woo black voters away from the ANC which was widely
publicized – both the official opposition and the media which supported
it predicted that it would win a substantial share of the black vote for
the first time. This may well have persuaded hesitant ANC voters to
cast their ballot after all ‘to keep the DA out’, ensuring not only the
high percentage poll but a drop in the ANC vote of only 2.7 percentage
points.
This is a serious constraint to accountable and responsive govern-
ment at the grass roots – and not only in the obvious sense that
local politicians who have reason to fear losing the next election are
more likely to respond to citizens than those who need not fear the
electorate. It entrenches an existing pattern in which the vigorous
pluralism of national politics with its array of competing voices ema-
nating from competing parties and civil society organizations is not
duplicated at the grass roots where local party bosses monopolize the
political and social terrain, working with local police if necessary to
repress civil society activity which threatens their monopoly (Pithouse
2011b). This obviously severely constrains independent organization
by the grass-roots poor. It also deprives those who are able to orga-
nize of an important lever over local power holders – the ability to
play competing parties off against each other. Partha Chatterjee (2004)
has shown how shack dweller organizations in Kolkata are able to give
their members a voice, turning citizenship from a formal promise to
a substantive reality, by making deals with political parties who are
competing for their members’ votes. This demonstrates an important
truth – that party competition can create opportunities for voice and
influence for the poor even where parties do not directly represent their
interests.
The reality of social power which denies the weak and the powerless
the effective exercise of citizenship even where they have full formal
rights is not necessarily changed by the franchise – the poor are unlikely
to be able to use the vote to alter the realities which imprison them
unless a variety of other favourable conditions exist. These may well
have been present in the heyday of the mass production factory, which
produced mass labour unions and the workers’ and social democratic
parties which were built from them (Przeworski 1987). They are not
necessarily available in the circumstances analysed by Chatterjee, in
Steven Friedman 61
which most citizens are unable to gain access to the formal labour
market – conditions which are the current reality for South Africa’s
poor. But even in these circumstances, a competitive electoral democ-
racy provides opportunities for organization and thus for the exercise
of citizenship. These options are currently unavailable to most of South
Africa’s poor because the ANC’s electoral dominance precludes them.
The ANC’s electoral dominance, then, may do much less damage to
the interests of the affluent who support the opposition than popular
wisdom suggests. But it does far more to the leverage of those who
continue, in the main, to support the majority party because it makes
government much less accountable and responsive to them, ensuring
that the quality of public service available to most ANC voters is con-
siderably less than that available to most opposition supporters. At the
grass roots it ensures that the promise of citizenship remains unfulfilled
to most voters who experience less accountable politicians and officials,
reduced opportunities for voice and at times very direct constraints on
their freedom to speak, organize and choose.
In many cases, grass-roots South Africans share the plight of
Patherjee’s Indian shack dwellers. While formally all Indians enjoy equal
rights and a share in popular sovereignty, in practice, he argues, most cit-
izens ‘are only tenuously, and even then ambiguously and contextually,
rights-bearing citizens in the sense imagined by the constitution. They
are not, therefore, proper members of civil society and are not regarded
as such by the institutions of the state’ (Chatterjee 2004: 38). This is
so because, juridically, they live in ‘illegal’ settlements and make ‘ille-
gal’ use of public services. The state cannot treat their claims as rights
because this would ‘only invite further violation of public property and
civic laws’ (Chatterjee 2004: 40). Despite their formal rights, power does
not grant them the respect which would enable them to exercise their
rights. They are not represented by government; they are, rather, ‘looked
after’ and ‘controlled’ by it. They are not citizens but planning problems.
So too in South Africa – the poor are often spoken for and planned for
and many of the protests mentioned here are driven not by demands
for more or better public services but by a desire to avoid the preda-
tions of government planners who decide for people where they should
live or trade (Pithouse 2011a). The ANC’s electoral dominance is not
the sole cause of this reality, the roots of which lie in historic inequali-
ties of power and wealth. But it is buttressed by that dominance which
removes much of the incentive for officials to regard poor people as
rights-bearing citizens and many of the opportunities for organization
which might compel them to do this.
62 South Africa
Prospects for change: Electoral dominance and the pressures

against it
If the bad news which accompanies electoral dominance is that it

removes opportunities for citizen voice and accountable government
at the grass roots, the good news is that dominance does not last for-
ever. The defining feature of one-party dominance, whether it is purely
the ability to win elections or the capacity to dominate society as well, is
that it occurs under democratic conditions – if these cease to exist we are
dealing not with a dominant party but with a single party which elimi-
nates competition (Friedman 1999b). And, because we are dealing with
democratic conditions, at some point political realities shift and domi-
nant parties have to cede their electoral dominance, if not their social
dominance. All the parties discussed in the studies of dominant parties
cited here have had to cede electoral victory to opponents even if some,
such as Sweden’s Social Democrats and Japan’s Liberal Democrats, may
arguably remain socially dominant. Under what circumstances may the
ANC’s electoral dominance disappear?
Before answering, it may be as well to say something about what an
end to electoral dominance would mean if our concern is not electoral
outcomes as an end in themselves but the accountability and respon-
siveness which electoral competition should bring. While scholars such
as Huntington (1991: 267) insist that electoral alternation is the key to
democratic deepening, they do not say why this should be so. In reality,
it is not necessary for the governing party to lose an election; it is nec-
essary only that there be a reasonable prospect that this may happen.
In other words, the governing party must look across the aisles at its
opposition and see rivals who could successfully compete for the alle-
giance of its voters. This provides an obvious incentive to account and
respond which is absent if the opposition is assumed to have no hope
of winning over governing party voters.
This is not currently the South African reality despite COPE’s emer-
gence and the small gains the DA has made in the ANC’s electoral
base. Up to the last couple of years, electoral competition in South
Africa has largely been an illusion. Voter allegiances are, as we have
already noted, shaped by identities of which race is important, if not
the only determinant. Despite two decades of democracy, the racial
residential patterns created by apartheid have not disappeared – they
have been eroded as the black middle class has moved into white sub-
urbs but the trend is relative and the former black areas remain almost
entirely black. Add to this the fact that some smaller parties derive their
Steven Friedman 63
support from traditional authorities who hold sway over geographical

areas and the result is an electoral politics in which parties dominate
specific geographical areas. This gives a peculiarly South African twist to
electoral dominance – the ANC may be the dominant party nationally
but the DA dominates in the suburbs where affluent whites live and,
until recently, traditionalist parties such as the Inkatha Freedom Party
dominated particular areas governed by traditional authorities. In the
founding election of 1994, many of these were in effect ‘no go areas’ for
rivals (Friedman and Stack 1995). By the next election, parties were no
longer using force to keep their rivals out but they did not need to – their
electoral support in the area made a contest pointless and, therefore,
rival parties usually did not bother, offering at most a token presence
in areas where their rivals dominated. Parties thus achieved lop-sided
majorities in their strongholds and faced absolutely no prospect of elec-
toral defeat in their areas. Pressures for accountability stemmed from
national political realities – minority parties might seek to serve their
constituents well to convince them to continue to vote despite the
ANC’s dominance – or from the realities described above, the ability of
the affluent to be heard regardless of electoral realities. They were rarely
a consequence of direct competition for votes.15
Two recent developments have, to a degree, altered this reality. The
first was the emergence of COPE, which meant that the ANC, for the
first time, faced significant competition for its support base. It seems
likely that this had some impact on the ANC but COPE’s star has waned
since 2009 – intense infighting and its failure to position itself clearly
as a contender for the ANC’s constituency reduced it to 2.33 per cent
of the vote in the 2011 local elections (Independent Electoral Commis-
sion 2011a). While it seems likely that just about all of COPE’s votes
were drawn from the ANC’s constituency, it is clearly not enough to
convince the majority party that it needs to work hard to prevent its
support base decamping to its rival. The second is the DA’s attempt to
compete for the ANC vote. While this received media coverage to the
point of saturation, partly because it was such a sharp departure from
the past, its actual impact on the ANC base was not that much greater
than COPE’s: An analysis of the vote in the township areas which are
still almost exclusively black shows that in most major areas the ANC
lost about 2.5 per cent of its voters to the DA – in some townships, this
rose significantly but almost always into the higher single digits only.16
Of course, in many electoral democracies, a swing of this magnitude can
decide elections, but when the majority party was previously winning
80 per cent or more, it has little impact – it did not, of course, make a
64 South Africa
dramatic difference to the parties’ share of the vote nationally and it did
not prevent the ANC winning the overwhelming majority of councils.
While the ANC has certainly noticed that a section of its support base is
available to the opposition, the percentage is nowhere near significant
enough to cause it much worry about maintaining its hold on govern-
ment. This may change to some degree in the 2014 election: Enhanced
attempts by the DA to win support in ANC areas and the emergence of
new parties competing for ANC votes may ensure enhanced competi-
tion for votes. Whether it will make a significant dent in ANC support
remains untested.
Given the salience of identity politics in influencing voting patterns,
it remains highly unlikely that the DA will ever seriously threaten the
ANC’s hold on its support base while COPE is unlikely to recover from
its self-inflicted blows to mount a credible challenge. While the media
has devoted much attention to new parties seeking the ANC vote, none
have contested an election thus far and so their support is, as noted
above, untested. Since, as noted earlier, dissatisfied voters lack the capac-
ity to form alternative parties, the ANC’s electoral dominance is likely
to remain until the majority party experiences a breakaway more signif-
icant than that which prompted COPE’s formation. This would ensure
that the majority of voters, whose political identity remains firmly
rooted in the ANC, its traditions and its symbols, would be able to
choose between rival parties both appealing to that identity. It would
mean a profound change in South African politics regardless of whether
or not the result was an electoral defeat for the majority party – a context
in which the opposition was clearly competing for the electoral base of
the largest party would introduce a very different dynamic whether or
not government changed hands; government actions would have likely
electoral consequences, a prospect which has not been a political reality
thus far.
This split is not only likely – it is almost inevitable. The tensions
within the ANC described earlier are unlikely to disappear and it seems
highly probable that jockeying for power between rival factions will
remain a reality until one emerges triumphant. This may be a possibility
sooner than many expect. At the ANC’s 2012 conference, a faction that
challenged the current president, Jacob Zuma, received 25 per cent of
the vote. Initially, politicians in this group retained their posts in gov-
ernment even as they were removed from ANC positions. During 2013,
however, some were removed from government posts too. It seems likely
that, after the 2014 election, Zuma will find it very difficult to retain the
Steven Friedman 65
losers in government posts because the winners will face pressures from
politicians who supported them and now expect posts. This could cre-
ate a situation in which the losers have no prospect of positions and
no reason to remain in the ANC. They may stay in the hope of win-
ning future battles but this is hardly inevitable. If the ANC does split
then, enhanced electoral competition which will offer potential lever-
age to the grass-roots poor is not guaranteed since whoever would then
be in charge of the ANC could respond by resorting to authoritarianism
rather than competing for public support – the most obvious precedent
would be Zimbabwe, whose governing party reacted in exactly this way
when its electoral dominance was threatened. But it is equally possible
that it could prompt vigorous electoral contestation, as it has in another
Southern African country, Zambia, which has experienced a transition
from one-party rule to a competitive electoral system.
What is clear is that a further split in the ANC is a necessary con-
dition if electoral politics is to begin offering opportunities rather than
constraints for grass-roots citizens whose disaffection with political lead-
ership is palpable but who are still denied an effective political vehicle.
And, while this may primarily benefit the poor, it may well prove to
be in the longer term interests of all of society. One likely consequence
of greater electoral competition is an increase in government account-
ability which might, in the short term, harm the interests of affluent
minorities by ensuring that limited government capacity is devoted to
the majority rather than them. But a government which largely serves a
minority while drawing its electoral support from the majority is unsus-
tainable and an administration more accountable and responsive to
the majority would be more legitimate and so better able to address
the needs of all of society. In the longer term, government must be
more attuned to the needs of the poor if it is to meet the needs of the
more affluent too. And that requires enhanced electoral contest and the
greater accountability and responsiveness it is likely to bring.
Notes
1. Several new parties will be fighting an election for the first time in 2014.
They include Agang SA, the Economic Freedom Fighters and the National
Freedom Party. While the last-named party, a breakaway from the Inkatha
Freedom Party, has shown enough support in local elections in KwaZulu
Natal to suggest that it has become a significant presence in the province,
the new parties have not fought any local or national elections and so it is
not yet possible to assess their support.
66 South Africa
2. One example is that of Abahlali base Mjondolo, a shack dwellers’ move-

ment in Durban, which has been subjected to violent attack by local power
holders. See, for example, Abahlali base Mjondolo (2013).
3. As suggested above, this discussion repeats but elaborates on arguments
presented in Friedman 1999b.
4. See, for example, Monareng 2009.
5. This is an elaboration of the analysis in Friedman 2005b.
6. For a seminal analysis of powerlessness and its role in inhibiting public
expression of interests and values, see Scott 1985.
7. Author’s engagement with provincial politicians, Mpumalanga province,
2010.
8. The argument here draws heavily on Friedman 2009.
9. The ANC subsequently embarked on a campaign to boost its member-
ship to one million – by September 2010 it reported an increase from
621 000 (in December 2007) to 749 000 (Mantashe 2010). It now claims
over a million members: ‘ANC achieves million-member target’ IOL News
9 January 2012 http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/anc-achieves-million
-member-target-1.1209649#.Uos4etKNk2Y, Accessed 19 November 2013
10. Parliamentary Monitoring Group Scorpions Media Briefing 30 July
2008 http://www.pmg.org.za/briefing/20080730-proposal-principles-setting
-out-new-unit-scorpions-directorate-spec, Accessed 19 November 2013.
11. The ‘motive force’ is ANC terminology for its black constituency (African
National Congress 2010: 3).
12. See, for example, Oelofse 2011.
13. See ‘Voters Ditch ANC’, Sunday Times 20 July 2008, p. 1.
14. Karl von Holdt, Malose Langa, Sepetla Molapo, Nomfundo Mogapi, Kindiza
Ngubeni, Jacob Dlamini and Adele Kirsten The Smoke That Calls: Insurgent
Citizenship, Collective Violence and the Struggle for a Place in the New South
Africa Johannesburg. Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation,
Society, Work and Development Institute, University of the Witwatersrand,
2011.
15. The prime exception is the Western Cape province which, because of its
unusual demographics, was fiercely contested. While the white suburbs and
black townships voted on traditional lines, the mixed race or ‘coloured’ pop-
ulation, which forms a majority in the province, have had no set party
allegiance although, in the 2009 and 2011 elections, they have veered
decisively towards the DA.
16. Calculations by researchers at the Electoral Institute of South Africa commu-
nicated to the author, May 2011.
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4
Botswana: Presidential Ambitions,
Party Factions and the Durability
of a Dominant Party
Christian John Makgala and Shane Mac Giollabhuí
Compared to its post-colonial counterparts, Botswana stands apart as

an exceptional case. At independence in 1966, the prospect of demo-
cratic consolidation in Botswana was slim. The country displayed all
the symptoms of an ailing democratic patient: an anaemic civil society;
an unformed middle-class; and a radical political opposition which was
poorly organized and out-of-step with the largely conservative country-
side. Botswana, moreover, was desperately poor and owed its economic
survival to hostile neighbours. It is a remarkable feat, then, that almost
50 years later the country is credited as the senior ranking democracy on
the African continent and has won renown among both scholars and
policy-makers for its responsible government and record of blistering
and unrivalled economic growth (Samatar 1999; Leith 2005).
The exceptionality of Botswana has become a staple of the litera-
ture on comparative democratic institutions (Acemoglu et al. 2003).
This status, however, is hotly contested by some observers who dis-
pute Botswana’s democratic credentials. Over the past decade and more,
Good has led the charge, criticizing the weak separation of powers,
persistent and gross economic inequality, ill-treatment of indigenous
groups and the encroachment of authoritarian values (Good 1993, 1996,
2008). This illiberal streak, according to domestic critics, has increased
sharply under the narrow and increasingly ‘militaristic’ presidency of
Ian Khama, whose government is ‘reclusive, divisive, secretive, isola-
tionist . . . contemptuous of civil society, the media and the opposition’
(cited in Good 2010: 10).
The dominance of the ruling party is at the centre of compet-
ing accounts of democratic and economic stability, on one hand,
69
70 Botswana
and illiberal and authoritarian behaviour, on the other. The Botswana

Democratic Party’s (BDP) dominance is marked: The party has won ten
consecutive parliamentary elections since independence. The party has
won, on average, just under two-thirds of the popular vote which has
been translated (by a disproportionate electoral system) into four out
of every five parliamentary seats. The character of this dominance was
more pronounced under the stewardship of the Republic’s first and
second presidents, Sir Seretse Khama (1966–1980) and Quett Masire
(1980–1998), respectively. In these early years of statehood, the strength
of the incumbent was reflected in the weakness of the opposition, which
was chronically divided and popular only in small geographic pockets
(Darnolf and Holm 1999).
The first cracks in the BDP’s dominance appeared in the valedictorian
years of President Masire. The opposition registered its first break-
through in the 1994 election, attracting just over 37 per cent of the vote
in parliamentary elections. The main opposition party, the Botswana
National Front (BNF), had campaigned effectively on issues of govern-
ment corruption, unemployment and staggering economic inequality.
Although the BNF split at its 1998 congress in Palapye, the 1994 election
signalled the beginning of an increasingly robust challenge to the dom-
inance of the BDP. During the presidency of Festus Mogae (1998–2008),
the electoral contest at the constituency level has become more com-
petitive: Uncontested seats, once commonplace, have become a thing of
the past;1 the BDP’s margin of victory has shrunk significantly over the
years; and mal-coordination among competing opposition parties has
become a major source of the BDP’s victory in marginal constituencies
(Poteete 2012).
In this chapter, we explore the paradoxical nature of the BDP’s dom-
inance, which has played a large role in both the historic resilience of
Botswana’s democracy and the current charges of democratic decline.
First, we point to the constitutional fusion of powers between the leg-
islature and the executive, which places the state president (who is also
the president of the ruling party) in an extraordinarily privileged posi-
tion. Second, we look at the economic basis of one-party dominance
in Botswana, which at least partially accounts for both the decades
of democratic stability and the resurgent threat from the opposition.
Third, we look at a critical juncture in the history of the BDP – the
near-defeat of 1994 – which led to seismic change inside the dom-
inant party. We argue that these internal changes have led to an
unintended amplification of internal party conflict. Finally, we examine
how the incumbent, President Ian Khama (2008–), has sought – largely
Christian John Makgala and Shane Mac Giollabhuí 71
unsuccessfully – to manage conflict within the BDP, leading to the

party’s first major split. We conclude the chapter with some reflec-
tions about the uneasy relationship between one-party dominance and
democracy in Botswana.
A fusion of powers
There is a tendency to weave a rags-to-riches narrative about Botswana’s

‘democratic miracle’, which privileges the transformative virtue of
agency over the dead-weight of structure. It is, however, inaccurate to
see Botswana as a Cinderella, even if the dowry at independence was
miserable. Botswana escaped relatively unscathed from the horrors of
colonial rule, which disfigured much of Africa. Local institutions that
linked subjects to rulers were left largely intact (Hjort 2010). Thus,
Botswana has a ‘strong tradition’ of limited government: The right to
hold private property is ‘entrenched’ (Crowder et al. 1990: 10); polit-
ical leaders were ‘not above the law, abuses could be checked’ (Tlou
1998: 28); and many leaders relied heavily on popular consultation and
impartial advice from an advisory body appointed on the basis of merit
(Mgadla 1998: 9; Maundeni 2002).2
The exercise of power in Botswana bears a closer resemblance to the
professional, bureaucratic model of Westphalian statehood than it does
to the debased ‘neo-patrimonial’ model synonymous with post-colonial
Africa. At independence, the BDP could draw on a reservoir of legiti-
macy to enact their programme of government. The BDP’s exercise of
power was further shaped by the strongly centralized nature of the state
institutions, which translated resounding electoral majorities into over-
whelming legislative and executive clout. Under its constitution, power
in Botswana is concentrated at the apex of the state: the National Assem-
bly (the lower house of parliament) which elects and in theory may
dismiss the president. The ‘fused’ relationship between executive and
legislature provides the president with a great deal of power, which is
not checked significantly by any other state institution. In addition to a
range of other powers, the President of Botswana can appoint and dis-
miss Cabinet, nominates ex officio members of Parliament and dissolves
Parliament.
This fusion between Parliament and Executive is a striking feature
of the government in Botswana – but we contend, pace Good, that
a separation of powers between branches of the government is not a
necessary condition of democracy. In his commentary on presidential
leadership, Schlesinger (1987: 56–58) underlines the quintessentially
72 Botswana
American quality of the doctrine of a separation of powers and offers

a description of the United Kingdom which might as easily describe
legislative–executive relations in Botswana:
in practice, the fusion of governmental powers means a quite extraor-

dinary concentration of power in the Executive. The British Prime
Minister appoints people to office without parliamentary confir-
mation, makes foreign policy without parliamentary participation,
declares war without parliamentary authorization, concludes treaties
without parliamentary ratification, sets the budget without parlia-
mentary consultation, and withholds information without parlia-
mentary recourse – essentially inheriting the prerogatives that once
belonged to absolute monarchy.
Thus, it is not surprising that critics of democracy in Botswana attribute

blame to the fusion of government powers and they seem to have a
point. However, the problem is not that a fusion of powers is inherently
undemocratic; the danger is that a single party, permanently in power,
might become, as Locke feared, ‘licentious with impunity’.
In Botswana, this concentration of power is further sharpened by a
range of ancillary features, which serves to further focus power in the
office of the presidency. There is no direct popular check on the power
of the president: The incumbent does not need to win an election in a
particular parliamentary constituency.3 Second, there is neither a vote of
investiture nor indeed any other type of competitive vote to select the
president in the National Assembly. Third, the president can nominate
his successor, who – on the carefully choreographed departure of the
president – accedes automatically to the presidency.4 Fourth, the use
of an electoral system with single-member constituencies in which a
plurality of votes can secure a parliamentary seat delivers an artificial
majority to the ruling party, while punishing severely all other electoral
contenders.5 Finally, Botswana has few of the structural characteristics –
industrial base, active citizenry, vocal media and so on – which might
offer a counterweight to executive power (Linz and Stepan 1996).
The institutional architecture of Botswana, then, has some distinc-
tive features: a weak legislature, which is held in thrall by a powerful
executive; a powerful president who is almost completely insulated
from popular discontent; and, most importantly, a dominant political
party that does not face a credible threat from the opposition. In this
context of winner-takes-all politics, the question is whether this singu-
lar conjunction – the extreme concentration of power at the apex of
the state combined with the dominance of the ruling political party –
threatens the quality of democracy.
The political economy of one-party dominance
Over the course of the first 30 years of independence, the leadership

of the BDP used the extreme concentration of power to sow the seeds
of their electoral dominance. Capitalizing on the sudden increase in
diamond revenue, the party gradually inflated and politicized the state
sector to deliver public services to its core constituency (Acemoglu et al.
2003; Siphambe et al. 2005). The BDP government rolled out social
amenities such as education, health care, agricultural support, water,
roads and telecommunication to its rural supporters. The BDP govern-
ment has done exceptionally well, by African standards, in this regard
and was able to endear itself to the voters especially in the rural areas
which have remained the party’s heartland over the decades.
In his account of one-party dominance, Greene (2009: 811) argues
that ‘dominant parties win consistently because they generate advan-
tages from the public budget that fundamentally skew the partisan
playing field in their favour’. This effect is achieved through four
mechanisms: diversion of funds from state-owned enterprises; selective
distribution of public sector employment; an informal expectation that
businesses must support the ruling party (either through illicit campaign
contributions or back-room kickbacks); and party use of state resources
to inform and mobilize voters. This political economy of one-party
dominance increases, in turn, the costs of supporting the opposition,
including ‘foregone patronage goods and the threat to one’s job, access
to public services, and the protection of the state’ (Greene 2009). There
is clear evidence of each of these mechanisms occurring in Botswana.
The death of President Seretse Khama in 1980 seems to have led to
an increased politicization of the public service, which has both galva-
nized opposition and adversely affected productivity in the civil service.
Research conducted by sociologist Selolwane (cited in Makgala 2006) has
yielded some insightful information about the degree of politicization
of the public service and its consequences:
Some of the informants (mainly those who took early retirement)

claim that the years immediately following the death of Khama saw
increasing politicization of the public service which made it uncom-
fortable for those used to Khama’s brand of apolitical professional
service. This apparently pushed some out of the service into the
74 Botswana
private sector. Political party affiliation, they claim, began to mat-

ter in relation to who got promoted and who took what lucrative
position in the foreign-service and in the public bureaucracy . . . I was
interested in the fact that this claim coincides with press reports
of the time that there was beginning to be too much of a link
between party affiliation and the civil service promotion, and that
as a result professional standards were dropping, leading to gaps
between planning and implementation.
In Botswana, the state is the country’s largest employer, responsible for

the creation of the lion’s share of wealth. The mining of diamonds
is strictly controlled by government through a joint venture with the
South African mining giant De Beers, the result of which was a company
called Debswana. Access to state contracts provide the primary route
along which wealth can be accumulated by individuals. If companies
wish to win government tenders, there is an expectation of recipro-
cal appreciation. Companies, in other words, must give back to the
BDP in one way or another. The lack of a diversified economy also
means that most business people are forced to support the BDP even
if they do not agree with its policies or the manner in which the party
operates its internal democracy. In August 2011, the private Botswana
Guardian newspaper ran the headline: ‘BDP bigwigs win more govt. ten-
ders’ (Botswana Guardian, 12 August 2011). This article had the subtitle
‘Satar Dada and brother rake in over P300 million in five years’. Satar
Dada is the country’s famous multimillionaire who has also been the
BDP’s treasurer for a long time.
The blending of party and state interests has also tilted the electoral
playing field, privileging the BDP and leaving the opposition at a disad-
vantage. This inequality is reflected in the massive wealth of the ruling
BDP and relative poverty of the opposition parties. The wide-ranging
powers of presidential patronage has placed the BDP ‘in a position to
reward party activists and supporters by appointing them to positions in
the diplomatic and civil service, and the councils, land boards, and tribal
administration’ (Mokopakgosi and Molomo 2000). The president, in the
same vein, is able to punish disloyal party members by withholding
patronage. Massive financial support from the local business commu-
nity as well as secret foreign funders has greatly contributed to the
party’s dominance of the political landscape (Molomo and Sebudubudu
2005: 147–162). In addition to this largesse, the BDP, like its counter-
parts elsewhere on the African continent, has never shied away from
exploiting its incumbency to use and abuse state resources, such as the
state media, to shore up its fortunes.
Opposition parties, on the other hand, live a hand-to-mouth exis-

tence, unable to campaign effectively against the BDP in far-flung parts
of the country. The opposition hardly ever receive meaningful financial
backing from Botswana’s business community. Any contribution to the
opposition is carried out in secrecy in order to prevent the companies
involved from facing the full wrath of the BDP government through
blacklisting when it comes to winning government contracts. A few
businesses owned by opposition members win small-scale government
tenders. However, this seems to be mainly a deliberate public relations
stunt so BDP leaders and party members can boast about companies
owned by opposition members winning government tenders.
The opposition parties have over the years complained strongly about
the uneven political playing field and called for funding of political par-
ties by the state. However, the BDP has steadfastly rejected this call
claiming that there was no money and that the money available was
for provision of services to the population. Thus, the BDP has encour-
aged an attitude in which state funding of political parties is regarded
as a waste of public funds. The opposition parties, on the other hand,
have not helped their cause as they remain fragmented and hostile to
one another. This situation led the BDP to argue that even if political
parties were to be funded by the state, it would get the lion’s share
of the funds because as the ruling party it commands more than half
of the votes while the rest is shared by various and weak opposition
parties.
Increased electoral competition and factionalism:

Dominance under threat?
The structural basis of the BDP’s dominance has weakened consider-

ably since independence. The percentage of the population in rural
areas, which has provided the bedrock of the BDP’s electoral support,
has declined from 82.3 per cent in 1981 to 45.8 per cent in 2001.
The economy has also developed from its narrow agricultural base;
there is now a small, emerging construction, financial and tourist sec-
tor (Poteete 2009). This economic growth has brought urbanization,
increased access to education and a decline in the influence of tradi-
tional leaders. Together these structural factors account for much of the
increase in support for the opposition (Wiseman 1989; Poteete 2012).
Moreover, as the economy has developed, the BDP’s control over state
resources has shrunk: The number of state-owned enterprises has fallen
markedly; so too has public investment; and the country’s economy has
become increasingly privatized. The combined effect of these structural
76 Botswana
changes, according to Greene (2009: 827), ‘has deprived the government

of access to politicized public resources’.
The weakening of the structural basis of BDP dominance has led to
a corresponding rise in support for the opposition, which culminated
in the 1994 election. The BDP responded to its flirtation with defeat by
engineering a concerted overhaul of democratic procedures within the
party. In a bold move, the party introduced party primaries, allowing
party members (in good standing) to nominate parliamentary candi-
dates in the country’s 57 constituencies (Molomo 2003). The intention
of party reformers seems to have been to reinvigorate the party mem-
bership by offering a stake in a core party activity, while encouraging
new members, particularly female and young voters, to join the party.
The introduction of party primaries, however, was also a response to the
growing problem of factionalism in the party, which had undermined
campaign efforts in the 1994 election.
Since the party introduced party primaries in a process known as
bulela ditswe (or, literally, opening the floodgates), competition between
different factions has reached a fever pitch – heightened, perhaps, by a
scramble for declining access to state resources. This internal party com-
petition revolves around elections to the Central Committee of the party
and, of course, around constituency-based contests for parliamentary
candidacy. The ferocity of these internal campaigns can be attributed
to the fact that, as in other one-party-dominant systems, selection as
a parliamentary candidate for the dominant party is tantamount to
election as a member of parliament. The BDP, like dominant parties else-
where, must reconcile the ambitions of its competing factions, if it is to
maintain its dominant position.
Starting around 1991, the BDP began to experience bitter factional
infighting, with one faction led by the party’s long-time Secretary Gen-
eral Daniel Kwelagobe and the other by Lt. Gen. Mompati Merafhe, who
had been recruited into Cabinet from the army soon after the 1989
election. The factional friction in the party was a result of a commis-
sion of inquiry into illegal land dealings that implicated Kwelagobe and
Masire’s then vice-president, Peter Mmusi (Republic of Botswana 1991).
The two men resigned from their Cabinet positions to clear their names
at the High Court. Mmusi also resigned from the vice-presidency and
Masire replaced him with Festus Mogae. By the mid-1990s Ponatshego
Kedikilwe, a Cabinet minister, was reported to be harbouring presiden-
tial ambitions and aligned himself with the Kwelagobe faction, which
had overwhelming grass-roots support in the party. An inability to dis-
guise his ambition led to the private Mmegi newspaper writing in July
1997 that ‘Kedikilwe’s passion for power, especially the presidency, is

well known’ (Mmegi, 18–24 July 1997).
It appears that the intense rivalry between Festus Mogae (Masire’s new
vice-president) and Kedikilwe began in 1997, when Kedikilwe pushed
his luck by deciding to contest the BDP’s national chairmanship, a posi-
tion previously synonymous with the vice-presidency. When Mogae
showed interest in the national chairmanship, the expectation was that
Kedikilwe would courteously refrain from contesting the position and
allow Mogae to gain the national chairmanship on a silver platter. How-
ever, Kedikilwe stood his ground and this forced Mogae to withdraw
from the race at the last moment.
In 1997, the constitution of Botswana was amended to ensure that
the vice-president automatically succeeds the president when the lat-
ter ceases to carry out presidential duties for one reason or another.
It is believed that Masire pursued this course of action in order to
thwart Kedikilwe’s ambitions and ensure that Mogae, who otherwise
had no solid political base, was shooed into the presidency without
challenge. BDP Member of Parliament Botsalo Ntuane (Sunday Stan-
dard, 4–10 November 2007) insightfully informs us how Masire rode
roughshod over some key BDP leaders who were strongly opposed to
automatic succession:
[Parks] Tafa [Masire’s legal advisor regarding automatic succession]

admits that some senior party members did in the course of the
debate convey strong objection to automatic succession. They felt
that the clause effectively mortgaged the party to a single individual
who could choose and pick a successor on personal whim. It is known
that in the internal discussions, Kwelagobe and Merafhe were among
those opposed to the move but, with Quett [Masire] in his element in
front of an adoring BDP crowd, there was little prospect of blocking
the amendment.
According to David Magang, a former Cabinet minister, Masire’s move

was a self-serving masterstroke (Magang 2008: 489).
In April 1998, Masire retired and Mogae succeeded him by way of the
automatic succession clause. ‘Most insiders believed Mogae would try to
heal the rift [in the party] by giving BDP chairman Kedikilwe the Vice
Presidency [ . . . ]. But he bypassed his cabinet colleagues and brought in
[Ian] Khama from the Army. His decision met strong resentment from
the BDP leadership’ (Botswana Guardian, 9 June 2000). In addition to
being Seretse’s son, Ian Khama is a very popular Chief of the Bangwato
78 Botswana
whose territory is a solid BDP heartland with more constituencies than

any other district in Botswana. His arrival on the political scene and
Kedikilwe’s demotion to the less prestigious Education Ministry dealt a
serious blow to Kedikilwe’s campaign for the presidency. In July 2000,
he resigned his Cabinet post allegedly as a result of a misunderstanding
with the new Vice-President Khama. According to the Guardian (9 June
2000), Kedikilwe’s resignation was expected to trigger a mass resignation
by other Cabinet ministers in solidarity. However, it became apparent
that some of Kedikilwe’s sympathizers were instead jostling behind the
scenes for portfolios in the anticipated Cabinet reshuffle.
In mid-2003, things came to a head when Khama, with Mogae’s
full support, competed against Kedikilwe for the party chairmanship,
the campaign of which was extraordinarily rancorous. By that time
Kedikilwe was believed to have renewed his bid for the presidency and
some members were worried that this would cause instability in the
party. During a BDP meeting in April 2003, Kedikilwe was apparently
cornered and asked to declare whether he was going to challenge Mogae
for the presidency. This form of inquisition was ‘seen by some as a trav-
esty of democracy’ [ . . . ] ‘Analysts and politicians argue that the BDP’s
action amounts to stifling of inner party democracy and victimization
of those perceived to be a threat to the party president’ (Mmegi, 18–24
April 2003). Be that as it may, Mogae seemed to use Khama to ward
off the threat from Kedikilwe. In theory, Kedikilwe commanded more
support in the party structures and at the grass-roots level than Khama.
Nevertheless, in May 2013, Khama unexpectedly declared that he would
be challenging Kedikilwe for the chairmanship. As indicated above, the
subsequent campaign was much more bitter than campaigning between
the BDP and the opposition.
In contrast with tradition, Mogae publicly declared his support for
Khama. He argued that Khama’s move to compete for the position of
party chairman promoted inner party democracy in the BDP. ‘We should
not personalize institutional positions [ . . . ]. To contest for a party posi-
tion entails no enmity towards the incumbent.’ Mogae also declared:
‘I have no qualms with any party member challenging me for the pres-
idency’ (Mmegi Monitor, 3–9 June 2003). However, his open support
for Khama caused controversy in the party. Some members saw it as
unfair to Kedikilwe and promoting factionalism instead of uniting the
party.
In an interesting twist of events, Kedikilwe supporters, including
Kwelagobe, shifted their allegiance to Khama. Opportunism and patron-
age were said to be the pull factors. In reaction, Kedikilwe criticized
the preferential treatment extended to Khama by Mogae and claimed

that Botswana’s democracy had regressed:
We seem to be making special dispensations for one man, but that

is not how the rule of law works; you do not create laws to enable
an individual [ . . . ]. Over the last couple of years the politics of this
country has gone backwards. [ . . . ] Many people in the top echelons
of the party are today scared to speak their minds because of the
stature of Khama. Many are no longer following any principles, but
merely taking a side which they think will guarantee them longest
stay in positions of power.
(Gazette, 18 June 2003)
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ian Khama defeated Kedikilwe with a big mar-

gin during the party congress in July 2003. Kedikilwe accepted defeat
graciously but his views about Khama would be amplified after Khama
became Botswana’s fourth president on 1 April 2008. It is important to
note that Ian Khama’s leadership style has been in stark contrast to his
father Sir Seretse Khama’s famed tolerance and belief in consensus.
The BDP under President Ian Khama: Dominance

unravelling?
Ian Khama was recruited into the BDP in 1998 in a bid to control and
possibly end the debilitating factionalism that threatened to tear the
party apart. However, as we have already indicated above, his arrival
only helped to fuel factional infighting and took it to a new level. In the
period leading up to Ian Khama becoming the BDP president factional
hostility escalated to even more worrying levels.
On 28 March 2008, a month before Khama became president, BDP
delegates met in Gaborone and agreed on constitutional amendments
that gave the president more powers. In an extraordinary attempt to
quell the turbulence within the party,
the ruling BDP amended its constitution to create a parliamentary

caucus whose decision would be binding on all ruling [party] back-
benchers. The amendment also made the president chairman of
cabinet and the caucus. [ . . . ] this means that decisions will first be
made at cabinet level chaired by Khama, then taken to caucus also
chaired by him and after that to parliament for approval with little
or no debate since the members of the BDP backbench would be
80 Botswana
expected to toe the party line. In a very real sense, the Botswana
Parliament would be marginalized even further and reduced to a rub-
berstamp, with dissenting ruling party backbenchers facing possible
disciplinary action should they not toe the party line.
(Monageng Mogalakwe, cited in Ramadubu, 26 August 2011)
The party did reject a proposal that sought to empower the president to
discipline and even expel from the party any member seen as causing
trouble or lacking discipline.
Shortly after Khama became president in 2008 there were heated
debates in parliament and the media about a controversial proposal
to establish a new intelligence system in Botswana: the Directorate of
Intelligent Services (DIS) (Maundeni 2008: 135–146). Whereas many
appreciated the need for streamlining the country’s intelligence ser-
vice, others in the BDP, the opposition, the media and the civil society
argued that the DIS had poor oversight and was open to abuse by the
president and his associates. It was even believed that the new system
was designed to deal with Khama’s critics and perceived enemies. The
agency’s proposed oversight structure was dismissed as consisting of
well-known BDP activists and a Khama relative.
In 2009, the party prepared for its elective congress which was to
become the most controversial and divisive election the BDP ever
witnessed. In the build-up to the congress Khama urged his Cabinet
members who also held positions in the party to abandon one of the
positions and concentrate on only one for purposes of efficient ser-
vice delivery. Kwelagobe, then a Cabinet minister and chairman of
the BDP, decided to quit his Cabinet position for the party chairman-
ship. Kwelagobe decided to contest for the chairmanship of the party
against Khama’s anointed candidate Tebelelo Seretse, much to Khama’s
widely publicized annoyance. Kwelagobe argued that he was following
the party’s constitution which encouraged party elections.
A supportive faction of the BDP, the private media and political
observers hailed Kwelagobe’s position as principled. He was portrayed
as a national hero, who sacrificed a lucrative Cabinet position in order
to provide selfless service to the party. On the other side, Khama and
members of his faction in the BDP went around the country deriding
and rubbishing Kwelagobe as an old and sickly power hungry oppor-
tunist. Relations between the two factions ebbed very low. At one point,
the party denied Kwelagobe official party transport to a BDP event in
faraway Tsabong, while other leaders were said to have been ferried in
the presidential helicopter.
Interestingly, the faction that supported Kwelagobe won all the con-
tested positions, much to Khama’s displeasure. So annoyed was Khama
that he left the party congress without performing the ceremonial duty
of congratulating the winners and welcoming them to the leadership of
the party. Kwelagobe’s strategy of leaving a well-paid Cabinet position
for the supposedly pro bono party chairmanship was viewed as poten-
tially having serious consequences for the party. It was suggested that
‘the move could spell the doom to the patronage and paternalism that
has for so long held the party together and ensured its continued stay
in power’ (Makgala, 24 July 2009).
The hard-won victory at the party congress in July 2009 was soon
lost again. Khama appointed people viewed as his loyalists to numer-
ous party committees without consultation and effectively neutralized
the victorious faction. Before long the newly elected Secretary Gen-
eral Motswaledi and Khama were at loggerheads after Khama accused
him of undermining his authority. Motswaledi had questioned a prac-
tice where Khama had ordered party lawyers to perform a duty nor-
mally performed by the Secretary General. The lawyers had even
publicized their views in the newspapers. On questioning this devel-
opment Motswaledi was portrayed as lacking in discipline by Khama
and was barred from contesting elections in the Gaborone Central
constituency. This became a protracted issue in the BDP and played
itself out in the media. With support from some other young BDP
leaders, Motswaledi appealed to the High Court, accusing Khama of
abusing his powers. However, Motswaledi lost the marathon case as
the Court decided that the president enjoyed constitutional immu-
nity from litigation by virtue of holding office. Appeal by Motswaledi
led to a higher court upholding the same decision. After losing
this historic court case Motswaledi was suspended from his party
position.
Interestingly, during the Motswaledi affair some fellow young BDP
leaders publicly and vocally stood by him, while faction elders ditched
him and declared their loyalty to the party president. These young party
leaders lived in fear of being suspended or expelled from the party. Dur-
ing the build-up to the 2009 congress they had convincingly presented
themselves as constitutionalists and defenders of democratic principles.
As a result, they were treated like terrorists within the party and dealt
with accordingly. Their rival faction increasingly came across as syco-
phantic loyalists whose primary interest was political survival on the
basis of Khama’s patronage. They were treated like BDP aristocrats by
the party leader.
82 Botswana
Meanwhile another young BDP leader, Botsalo Ntuane, had also been
punished by not being allowed to contest in his home constituency of
Nata/Gweta (another BDP stronghold). Instead, he was forced to contest
in a difficult opposition-held constituency in Gaborone. In the October
2009 general election Ntuane put up a spirited campaign against oppo-
sition parties and his own BDP and won the Gaborone constituency.
This would be a sign on the wall. Continued persecution of BDP dis-
senters, who were charged with alleged indiscipline and summoned to
appear before the party’s disciplinary committee, led to a BDP exodus.
In April 2010, four BDP members of parliament and scores of council-
lors and thousands of their supporters quit the BDP and formed their
own party, named the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD). Soon
after its foundation, the BMD claimed it had around 70,000 members,
who were predominantly former BDP members. As time went on, more
BDP members joined the BMD even though a few retraced their steps
back to the BDP. Ian Khama seemed so central to the grievances of the
BMD that the party was in some quarters dismissed as a one-issue party,
founded solely to oppose Khama. The party, nonetheless, had enough
members of parliament to assume the position of official opposition in
the National Assembly.
This was the BDP’s first major split since its foundation in 1962.
By 2011, the BDP was continuing to lose members to the BMD. In
August 2011, the BDP’s newly nominated Secretary General Kentse
Rammidi left the party in protest of what he called Khama’s autocracy
and overbearing unilateralism. Rammidi told a BMD rally that ‘lack of
internal democracy at BDP and Khama’s one-man-show leadership style
are the central plank of his unexpected decision to leave the party. And
[ . . . ] that the party of Seretse Khama lost direction the moment his son
Ian became its leader on April 1st 2008’ (The Midweek Sun, 31 August
2011). In response to the establishment of the BMD and the loss of
party members, the BDP, which celebrated its 50 years existence in
2012, embarked on a concerted recruitment effort to entice former BMD
leaders and members back into the party.
Conclusion
Botswana has an uneasy standing in the eyes of democratic theorists.

If one accepts government turnover as the true test of a democracy
(Przeworski et al. 2000) Botswana’s situation looks bleak. Although there
is alternation in the office of the president, there is no alternation of
the party in power. The dominance of a single party threatens the logic
of accountability in a representative democracy and works against the

grain of the Madisonian exhortation that the ‘greater the power, the
shorter ought to be its duration’ (Federalist Paper No. 52). In Botswana,
the heavy concentration of political power in the office of the presi-
dent, on one hand, combined with the absence of any threat of electoral
alternation, on the other, has left democracy dangerously exposed to the
vagaries of the president.
How has the dominance of the BDP influenced democracy in
Botswana? In the early years of independence, at least, the BDP exerted
a stabilizing influence on the fledgling democracy. In addition to its
responsible stewardship of the economy, epitomized in the restraint of
its first president, Sir Seretse Khama, the BDP acted as an integrative
vehicle which – in the best manner of a dominant party – provided
‘the buckle which binds one social force to another and which creates
a basis for loyalty and identity transcending more parochial groupings’
(Huntington 1968: 405; Holm 1987; Ake 2000). Over time, however, the
BDP has suffered the same debilitating decline seen in other one-party-
dominant systems: ‘it [the dominant party] wears itself out in office, it
loses its vigour, its arteries harden. It would be possible to show that
every domination bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction’
(Duverger 1964: 312).
There are three factors that have weakened the dominance of the BDP,
leading to a proximate impact on the party system. The first factor is
structural: Declining access to state resources, the decline in the party’s
rural support base and social modernization have weakened traditional
ties to the BDP. The second factor is institutional: Since the early 1990s,
the BDP party organization has struggled to regulate factional compe-
tition. These two factors, of course, are closely intertwined: Declining
access to state resources has intensified competition within the party,
while the BDP’s response to factionalism – the introduction of party
primaries – has only served to further destabilize the party. The third
factor is agency based: In his quest for control, President Ian Khama
has used the extraordinary power of his office to systematically deny
any opportunity for discontented members to voice dissent within the
party. The unpredictability and manifest prejudice of the president has
led directly to a rupture, which produced the first major split in the
history of the BDP.
While there is prima facie evidence of BDP’s decline and a corre-
sponding opening-up of the party system, we should not overestimate
the prospect of an imminent change in government. The opposition
is split three ways between the BNF, Botswana Congress Party (BCP)
84 Botswana
and the BMD. If these three parties are to translate their electoral
support into parliamentary representation, the parties must coordinate
candidate selection across 57 constituencies, while convincing their
respective supporters to rally behind a compromise candidate. Since the
BNF/BCP track record of collaboration is lamentable, the BMD might
be tempted to go it alone. In any event, it is unwise to write off
the BDP.
Notes
1. The uncontested election of Mogae’s successor, Ian Khama, in Serowe North-
West is a notable exception.
2. On the other hand, it is important not to exaggerate, or even romanticize,
the extent to which political institutions in pre-colonial Botswana resem-
bled their European counterparts: While there was a degree of participation
and professional consultation, the pre-colonial constitutional structure ‘pro-
moted heredity and never accommodated political competition, which is the
hallmark of liberal democracy’ (Maundeni 2005: 83).
3. This innovation was introduced in 1972 in an apparent response to the
electoral defeat of Vice-President Masire by the leader of the opposition
party in the Kanye constituency. It was argued that the president needed
to have the whole country as his constituency because otherwise he may be
inclined to concentrate infrastructural development in his own parliamentary
constituency at the expense of the rest of the country.
4. Under the constitution of the BDP, all positions are contested with the excep-
tion of the presidency. In theory, any interested party member can register to
contest the position, but in practice success is almost impossible because by
the time the elections are held the sitting president will have been endorsed
by all constituencies or regions.
5. In addition, there is the serious charge that the judiciary does not act as a
sufficient check on the power of the executive. The decision by the judiciary
to uphold President Festus Mogae’s order to deport Professor Kenneth Good
in 2005 is offered by critics as an example of this timidity (for details, see Pegg
2005: 829–831; Taylor 2006: 101–122).
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5
Namibia: From Liberation
to Domination
Henning Melber1
As a result of the sobering socio-political realities in the former settler

colonies of Southern Africa Saul (1999: 167) argues that decolonization
turned out to be ‘liberation without democracy’. The track records of
liberation movements such as the South West African People’s Organisa-
tion (SWAPO)2 in Namibia are indeed reason for disappointment among
many who supported the social emancipation of the colonized. Not only
were the movements’ internal practices during the wars of liberation
often far from democratic, but also liberation movements displayed a
similar lack of democratic virtues and disregard for human rights once
they gained power.
The fight against unjust systems of oppression and colonial minor-
ity rule did not protect the cadres of the movements from abuses of
power within their own ranks. Nor did it prevent forms of authoritarian
and autocratic rule after independence. The famous statement of Lord
Acton more than half a century ago, that power corrupts, and absolute
power corrupts absolutely, is finding confirming evidence in the post-
colonial settings of Southern Africa. Based on their ‘struggle credentials’,
former liberation movements managed to secure overwhelming majori-
ties among the electorate and stay in power; sometimes against all odds,
as the case of Zimbabwe illustrates. In Namibia, Swapo has not (yet)
faced similar challenges. After almost a quarter of a century, the former
liberation movement is still in firm political control.
The questions that remain unanswered are: To what extent are libera-
tion movements to blame for the current political realities in Southern
Africa? Some liberation movements have become ruling parties that
dominate the political landscape in which they operate but they have
obtained their dominant positions more or less legitimately in relatively
87
88 Namibia
free and fair general elections. Is their hegemony a sign of the failure
of opposition parties and other civil society actors? Or maybe, these
questions are misleading. It could well be that dominant parties and
weak opposition are just two sides of a coin minted in the decades of
oppression and resistance, which ended not too long ago. After all, the
hierarchical environments both at home and in exile were for a long
time anything but fertile breeding grounds for democrats, who, as social
products, do not fall from heaven or miraculously appear at Indepen-
dence Day when a national flag is hoisted to the tunes of a national
anthem.
Against the background of more than two decades of Namibian
post-colonial political culture, this chapter investigates to what extent
one-party dominance and its consequences are to be blamed on Swapo
or rather result from the context and circumstances which shaped
Namibia’s political development since 1990. The analysis emphasizes –
thereby complementing an earlier effort (Melber 2013) – the enduring
features of Namibian political culture and ideology which, as a result of
one-party dominance, continue to shape people’s mindsets in anything
but a democratic conviction. It uses the discourses articulated in the
public sphere by policy-makers and their supporters to illustrate the fea-
tures of a rhetoric which shows clear signs of an authoritarian mindset.
Thus, this chapter portrays the political culture of present-day Namibia
under Swapo.
Decolonization and the dominance of Swapo
One of the important factors that lies behind the dominant posi-
tion of Swapo in Namibia’s current political landscape is the party’s
role in Namibia’s history of decolonization. Swapo’s predecessor, the
Ovamboland People’s Organisation (OPO), was formed in the 1950s as
a grass-roots response to South African occupation and apartheid’s dis-
criminating labour conditions among migrant workers from the most
densely populated Northern part of what was then South West Africa.
In 1960, it was transformed into the SWAPO. SWAPO managed to gain
the support of large parts of Namibia’s colonized majority under its ban-
ners of Solidarity, Freedom, Justice and One Namibia, One Nation. During
the late 1960s, SWAPO consolidated its status as the almost exclusive
agency of anti-colonial resistance.
By the mid-1970s, a resolution of the General Assembly of the United
Nations recognized SWAPO as ‘the sole and authentic representative
of the Namibian people’. This unique status encouraged the further
Henning Melber 89
promotion of the movement’s hegemonic position as manifested in the

slogan SWAPO is the people and the people are SWAPO. After independence
in 1990, the party’s hegemonic position, in turn, spawned the ominous
perception that SWAPO is the government and the government is the
state – which implies that the party is the state and, therefore, has the
sole power to define who is a true Namibian based on his/her loyalty to
the party.
This point of view – or rather firm belief – is guided by the convic-
tion that there is no legitimate alternative to Swapo. It is considered a
naturally given fact that as the liberator of the Namibian people Swapo
will continue to govern if not infinitely then at least for a very long
time. Sam Nujoma was Swapo’s president from its founding to 2007 and
Namibia’s first president from 1990 to 2005. Nujoma obtained the title
Founding Father of the Republic of Namibia3 and stated in a speech to the
SWAPO Youth League in 2010:
As Namibian youth, and as Africans, you must therefore be on the

full alert and remain vigilant against deceptive attempts by oppor-
tunists and unpatriotic elements that attempt to divide you. As the
future leaders of our country, you should act with dedication and
commitment; to always promote the interests of the SWAPO Party
and the national interests before your own. It is only through
that manner that the SWAPO Party will grow from strength to
strength and continue to rule Namibia for the next ONE THOUSAND
YEARS.
[capital letters in the original] (Nujoma 2010)
The statement speaks to the underlying message in Namibia’s post-

colonial patriotic history, which maintains that the liberation move-
ment deserves unquestionable and never-ending support based on its
historical role of bringing independence to the country. To resist efforts
towards political change is equated with the national interest. Because
Swapo stood firm where others wavered the movement is entitled to
claim sole agency over the Namibian people.
At the first Swapo congress after independence, which was held from
6 to 12 December 1991, the liberation movement officially changed its
status and re-defined itself as a political party. As its new constitution
declared in article II:
SWAPO PARTY is a mass based political party born and selected in the
crucible of a popular and heroic struggle for national independence.
90 Namibia
It is founded on the principles of democracy, solidarity, freedom,

social justice and progress.
(SWAPO PARTY undated: 1)
Measured against such noble and ambitious declarations, the sociopolit-

ical reality during the subsequent two decades has been rather sobering.
Interesting enough, the growing discrepancy between political pro-
grammes and social realities in Namibia, as well as the frustration over
the lack of service delivery, has not yet resulted in any fundamental
changes in the political culture or the composition of the political forces
in control of the public sphere. Instead, Swapo managed during the
1990s to consolidate and firmly entrench its dominant position. The
absolute majority obtained in the first general elections in November
1989, on the basis of which the first government was formed, was turned
into a two-thirds majority in late 1994, which since then has been main-
tained and even expanded into three-quarters of the votes cast during
subsequent elections.
The results in parliamentary and presidential elections testify to
Swapo’s undisputed leadership role and correspond to the party’s sim-
ilarly overwhelming results in regional and local elections. The latter
are conducted on the basis of a first-past-the-post electoral system,
whereas a system of proportional representation is used for parliamen-
tary elections. Regardless of these differences in electoral systems, Swapo
has emerged as the dominant political force on all levels, that is, the
undisputed party political agency representing the Namibian people
nationally, regionally and locally.4
Loyalty to Namibia is equated with loyalty to SWAPO. Diescho (1996:
16) concluded in the mid-1990s that the legacy of colonialism and
the struggle against foreign rule produced a ‘psychosis of fear’, which
permeates Namibian society. A culture of silence has since become a
constitutive part of Namibia’s political reality, where ‘good patriots’ do
not criticize the government or Swapo.
Namibia’s current political landscape
The results of the 2009 parliamentary and presidential elections (Melber

2010) as well as those of the regional and local elections a year later
confirmed the overwhelming dominance of Swapo 20 years into inde-
pendence. In the parliamentary elections, Swapo gained 75 per cent of
the votes cast, thus winning 54 out of the 72 parliamentary seats, with
eight opposition parties sharing the remaining 18 seats. The Rally for
Henning Melber 91
Democracy and Progress (RDP), a breakaway party established at the end

of 2007 by an influential but politically sidelined group of Swapo lead-
ers, managed to become the official opposition with just over 11 per
cent of the votes and eight seats in the National Assembly. This did
not match expectations. The previous official opposition, the Congress
of Democrats (CoD), fared even worse. In 1998, the CoD was the first
political party established on the initiative of dissenting higher ranking
Swapo members but by 2009 the party had imploded through infight-
ing and ended up with less than 1 per cent of the votes and only one
parliamentary seat. While Swapo lost one seat compared to the 2004
elections, it maintained a very comfortable majority of three-quarters of
the votes.
A total of nine opposition parties initiated a legal intervention disput-
ing the correctness of the 2009 parliamentary election results and took
the Election Commission of Namibia (ECN) to court over suspected pro-
cedural and other irregularities. On 24 December 2009, the High Court
granted the applicants a period of access to particular election materials
(excluding the ballot papers) to substantiate their claims. On 4 January
2010, the last day of this access period, the parties submitted an appli-
cation to nullify the National Assembly election results on the basis of
their compiled evidence. The court hearing took place in early February
2010. A ruling then struck the case from the roll for procedural reasons.
In September 2010, an appeal against this decision was granted by the
Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling by all five judges. As a result,
the case had to be heard again in the High Court, where it was turned
down in early 2011. The opposition parties appealed again and another
ruling was scheduled for mid-September 2011, and subsequently post-
poned until October 2011, only to be postponed again. The appeal was
finally dismissed in late October 2012 with the Court addressing harsh
criticism to the Electoral Commission for shortcomings in the election
procedures. An interesting question that remains is whether the inde-
pendence of the judiciary can strengthen the country’s legitimacy as a
pluralist society and assist the consolidation of Namibian democracy.
It seems that it can only benefit the credibility of Namibia’s democracy
if objections of the opposition are properly dealt with in a court of law.
While Swapo can with confidence claim that it has defended its
hegemonic role and mastered the challenge posed by the RDP, the cur-
rent five-year term in office and the next elections expected in 2014
might prove to be decisive in terms of Namibia’s political culture. If the
dogmatic and narrow-minded perception that only Swapo stands for
Namibian patriotism prevails, the country’s already damaged reputation
92 Namibia
will continue to suffer and internal divisions will deepen. Despite the
relatively peaceful process on election day and despite the fact that the
opposition seems to have come to terms with the election results, there
were worrying signs of increased violence taking place ahead of the 2009
elections. Given these warning signs, maintaining peace and stability
might well be one of the main challenges Namibia and the ruling party
will be facing in the run up to the 2014 elections.
The extent to which the RDP is emerging as a political alternative
to Swapo remains limited. Rather, it seems to offer more of the same.
However, the RDP has changed the party political map of Namibia more
than any other opposition party before it and has sparked a lively public
debate around democratic practices and virtues. This shake-up contains
the risk that authoritarian tendencies, which have manifested them-
selves in Swapo since independence, gain weight in an effort to silence
any challenges to the ruling party’s hegemonic power. As a result, civil
society is likely to suffer collateral damage. Unfortunately, the habit of
name-calling in public discussions on political issues continues unabat-
edly. Swapo officials do not hesitate to respond to critical observations
articulated in public by means of heavy-handed, at times vicious, attacks
on the personal integrity of those who raise views unpopular among
Swapo functionaries.5 The RDP often pays back in the same currency.
This shows that the mindsets of those who have left their political home
for the opposition have not changed. Instead, the shared political social-
ization they experienced in Swapo and its resulting value system remain
intact and come to the fore when the erstwhile colleagues clash with
each other.
A culture of intolerance
On 10 May 2008, Swapo activists prevented the RDP to hold a political

rally in a part of Windhoek’s former township Katutura, although the
rally was properly registered and in full compliance with existing laws.
The RDP, in reaction to this violation of its constitutionally enshrined
rights, released an open letter to President Pohamba, in which it blamed
‘neo-fascist elements’ in Swapo and compared the incident with Hitler’s
methods. Shortly thereafter, the Minister of Education, being a high-
ranking Swapo official, publicly declared that there are no-go areas for
other political parties, in the form of zones owned by Swapo. RDP
responded with a statement qualifying this as a ‘fascist inclination’.
Since then, this discourse has not ceased. Swapo continues to claim that
certain locations are their domain and should remain inaccessible to
Henning Melber 93
other political parties. If the opposition tries to hold political gatherings

there, they are regarded as violating unwritten rules, even though they
might be in strict compliance with the legal provisions for arranging
such meetings.
The annual report released in August 2008 by the United Nations’
committee in pursuance of compliance with the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) reminded
‘the state party that the exercise of the right to freedom of opin-
ion and expression carries special duties and responsibilities’ and that
hate speech, mostly by politicians, continued at an unacceptable rate
(Maletsky 2008). As Diescho (2008) observed: ‘The Swapo leaders and
other political party leaders breed prejudice, intolerance, and the types
of reactions that are becoming the order of the day in the body politic of
the nation.’ The degree of aggressive polarization was illustrated maybe
most spectacularly in a political rally held by the Swapo Party Youth
League on 18 October 2008 in Katutura, when its president demanded
that all higher ranking positions in the state apparatus and state-owned
enterprises ought to be filled by Swapo members. He was quoted as stat-
ing: ‘We have a political religion called Swapo and the political heaven is
Swapo, and the political hell is where all the other political parties are.’
As a special guest, the leader of a delegation from the Youth League of
the South African African National Congress (ANC) demanded with ref-
erence to opposition parties: ‘Destroy these political cockroaches; they
are in your kitchen’ (Weidlich 2008).
Unfortunately, throughout 2008 the vitriol was not confined to
rhetorical warfare: Polarization escalated during campaigns for local by-
elections and turned into physical violence between the followers of two
contesting parties at a number of events, forcing the police to intervene.
These worrying developments did not bode well for the forthcoming
elections of 2009. In an unprecedented move, the respected Swapo vet-
eran Andimba Toivo ya Toivo – a founding member of the liberation
movement who spent almost 20 years as a political prisoner on Robben
Island and served as a minister in three cabinets until his retirement in
2005 – showed the wisdom one would expect from a true leader. In the
light of the violent escalations in 2008 he published an open appeal for
tolerance and respect, in which he urged:
We are living in new times that require new ways of conducting

political struggle. The formation of new parties and the exchange
of differing opinions in the political arena is a normal occurrence
in the life of a democracy. The flourishing of new ideas can only
94 Namibia
contribute to the vitality and development of our nation. The present

should be a battle of ideas and not of swords, and the battle should
be conducted with respect for our fellow human beings.
(Toivo ya Toivo 2008)
Unfortunately, Toivo ya Toivo turned out to be a lone voice of rea-

son. In fact, the alliance between the erstwhile liberation movements
in Southern Africa seems to have fostered not only a shared identity
but also a trend of parties in power considering themselves to be ‘the
end of history’. Jacob Zuma, president of the South African ANC, vis-
ited Namibia on 8 December 2008 and met with President Hifikepunye
Pohamba and former President Sam Nujoma. A Joint Communiqué
released after the visit, stated:
It was noted that there is a recurring reactionary debate around the

need to reduce the dominance of former libration [sic!] movements
on the African continent. In this regard the emergence of counter
revolutionary forces to reverse the social, political and economical
gains that have been made under the leadership of our liberation
movements was discussed.
(ANC 2008)
In a similar spirit, a Namibian deputy minister wrote an opinion article

in the daily state-owned newspaper in which he claimed a right to self-
defence in response to unwanted attacks by political enemies and their
allies. He ended the article by stating:
The SWAPO Party shall prevail against the onslaught and all tactics
designed by the perpetrators of various methods of violent political
abuses being meted against our party and its leadership. We the peo-
ple of Namibia shall win this war, the SWAPO Party shall win this
war, and Namibia shall forever remain peaceful.
(Kazenambo 2008)
During the final stages of the 2009 election campaign even a seasoned
politician and prominent Swapo leader like former Prime Minister Hage
Geingob joined the fray and did not refrain from caustic polemics.
Addressing a well-attended political rally in the harbour town of
Lüderitz in mid-November he qualified opposition parties as ‘fake’ and
accused their leaders of suffering from a ‘Savimbi syndrome’, to which
he added: ‘the moment Savimbi died, there was peace in Angola’ (Cloete
Henning Melber 95
2009; Sasman 2009). Despite public criticism over this irresponsible

outburst, he continued in similar fashion in the weekend before the
elections. At a rally in the mining town of Tsumeb, Geingob stated that
‘international observers’ and ‘cry babies’ should not describe the victory
of his party in the forthcoming elections as undemocratic and intolerant
towards opposition parties (Special correspondent 2009).
Such utterances by senior Swapo leaders are clearly out of tune if one
expects a melody of multiple voices that signifies the democratic spirit.
It should come as no surprise that the rank and file of the party copy
this type of undemocratic rhetoric. A triumphant (if not sycophantic)
article published both in the state-owned daily newspaper and on the
Swapo website confidently ended with the writer’s ‘claim that Namibia,
SWAPO Party and Sam Nujoma are one’ (Froese 2009). Statements like
these do little to bring about the ‘peaceful, tolerant and democratic soci-
ety governed by the rule of law’ that Swapo claims to have established6
and do not bode well for all those who do not share Swapo’s point
of view.
A case in point is the hysterical reaction to the results of the 2009
elections in the Namibian mission to the United Nations. The slight
majority of votes for the RDP prompted a witch hunt which targeted
Namibia’s permanent representative to the United Nations. Suspected of
being an RDP supporter, he was disqualified as a ‘hibernator’ and held
personally responsible for the election result, which was announced
prior to the elections in Namibia itself. At a press conference, the leaders
of the Swapo Party Youth League and the National Union of Namibian
Workers (NUNW) among others stated:
Namibia under SWAPO Party Government can proudly teach

America, Europe, Asia, SADC and Africa the meaning of national
reconciliation, democracy, peace, stability and how to hold peaceful
and democratic elections. [ . . . ] Poor and disappointing performance
must be compensated by a recall and subsequent release from duties.
We mean it, because the high commissioners are not diplomatic
tourists in those countries but were supposed to represent the Pres-
ident of Namibia with uniform loyalty and not divided allegiance.
[ . . . ] The SWAPO Party must urgently set up a Deployment Policy
on the basis of which cadres will be deployed in the Government, its
agencies and its SOEs and hold accountable on their performance and
recalled for non-performance. If laws prevent this from happening,
we cannot be held back by laws we can change, as simple as that. [ . . . ]
We shall defend the gains of the liberation struggle through the ballot
96 Namibia
box. Those saboteurs and political cry babies who are masquerading
as democrats are political failures on the string of neo-imperialists.
(Ngurare and Kaaronda 2009)
After Swapo’s electoral victory in 2009, which was celebrated as if it

was brought about on a military battlefield, the following statement was
published on Swapo’s home page blog:
We are all democrats and therefore we must know that democracy

means hardship to our people. Please no mercy to hibernators let
them learn a lesson [ . . . ] to feel the pinch of the Namibian majority,
enough is enough comrades.7
And a like-minded party member posted in a similar vein:
We in Swapo party wants to let those hibernators know that defecting

Swapo is defecting the nation. Swapo is the Nation and the Nations
of Namibia are Swapo.8
Swapo tends to defend such utterances as a sign that the democratic

principle of freedom of opinion is respected and practiced. This self-
righteousness finds its roots in the hegemonic position the party held
in the struggle for independence, when Swapo obtained a UN-endorsed
monopoly to represent the Namibian people.
While identifying this culture of intolerance and hostility towards dis-
sent, one needs to remember that reality lies in the eye of the beholder.
Strikingly, and in contrast to the critical observations presented above,
the Afrobarometer survey undertaken at the end of 2008 offered the
insight that Namibians ‘are among the most satisfied populations in
African democracies in terms of how democracy works in the country’
(Afrobarometer 2009b: 9).
Signs of change?
While Swapo’s dominant position is increasingly based on a culture of

intolerance rooted in its hegemonic role during the struggle for inde-
pendence, its dominance is maintained by way of state-party relations.
Elsewhere I have described how the use (if not abuse) of state institutions
has consolidated and strengthened Swapo’s dominant position (Melber
2013; Melber 2014). The state funding of political parties is a case
in point. So is Swapo’s access to the state-owned and state-controlled
Henning Melber 97
media. However, Swapo’s privileged access to state resources does not

fully explain the absence of a meaningful opposition or the weakness
of any political alternative to Swapo. Those active in Namibia’s oppo-
sition parties share to a large extent the mindset of those currently in
political power and control. Hence, they do not represent a meaning-
ful challenge to the dominant discourse but seem to offer rather more
of the same. In the absence of any genuine alternatives, voters seem to
think that they might as well continue to render support to the devil
they know.
Swapo, as the party in control of Namibia’s political sphere, has so
far not been seriously challenged. The formation of the CoD in 1999
and the RDP in 2007 were mainly the result of internal party differences
and initially appeared to be feasible political alternatives. Emanating
from within the ranks of the liberation movement-cum-ruling party
and having party leaders with ‘struggle credentials’ who previously held
political office in Swapo, the CoD and the RDP emerged as new and
promising elements in Namibian politics. They became, for some, a wel-
come alternative to the entrenched system of entitlement linked to the
first-generation Swapo officials. However, in the eyes of Swapo, if not
the public at large, the new parties were provocateurs, neo-imperialist
pawns, traitors, prophets of doom or simply misguided elements the
leaders of which were mainly motivated by personal loss in Swapo’s
internal power struggles. In any case, neither the CoD nor the RDP
managed to reduce Swapo’s dominance in any significant way.
Citizens’ frustrations over the lack of delivery by the Swapo govern-
ment have not yet reached a level that threatens the ruling party’s
hegemony at the ballot box. This might be because there is no mean-
ingful and credible political alternative. Based on its liberation narrative
and its subsequent forms of patriotic history, SWAPO has so far managed
to retain the image of being the sole liberator of the Namibian people.
Its legitimacy as a former liberation movement remains effective even at
a time when the first generation of ‘born frees’ are casting their votes at
the polling stations.
In the build-up to the 2009 elections some observers speculated that
voter behaviour might change two decades into what could be per-
ceived as failed promises, especially because a considerable number of
young voters would be able to express their political preferences for
the first time. As they constituted a sizeable constituency capable of
influencing the election outcome, these ‘born frees’ were said to be an
unknown variable. According to an Afrobarometer survey conducted
in late 2008, Swapo’s appeal among younger voters (18–34 years) was
98 Namibia
not particularly strong. The party’s core support remained the ‘older,
rural [voters] and respondents with less education, especially from the
north-central areas’, while ‘urban, female, and younger voters represent
a growing challenge for the ruling party in terms of party closeness or
identification’ (Afrobarometer 2009a: 8).9
As it turned out, the ‘born frees’ did not change the overall voting
pattern in 2009. In the absence of any reliable exit surveys, the elec-
tion results themselves suggest that the ‘born frees’ showed no marked
deviation from the voting pattern of other segments of the electorate.
Indeed, voter turnout seemed evenly distributed among generations and
the votes cast did not indicate any strong age-related patterns. Recall-
ing her grandfather during her childhood days in the rural North, one
young voter explained:
Today he lies peacefully in his grave alongside a tarred road that does
not witness the darkness I was so terrified of during my village-life
experience. My people in that former little village of Bukalo are now
building on plots of a declared settlement that harbours two sec-
ondary schools within five minutes walk from each other. For every
visit home, I see no sight of any teenage girl walking long distances
to a waterhole. I drink clean ice-cold water from almost every home
in this growing settlement. That means our tax dollars have been
invested in building, rebuilding and upgrading our nation’s infras-
tructure, improving our children’s education and the livelihood of
our communities. A vision was set, thus my choice was finally made
because I want to see history being made for the reference of the cur-
rent generation. This is for my grandparents and all of my family that
came before them that did not live to see how far our country has
come. I want to see the struggles and sacrifices that they made hon-
oured. Today I voted in an environment where all Namibians from
different backgrounds were able to shake hands in a voting queue
and use those long hours to share their humour without looking at
each other with questioning eyes.
(Mwiya 2009)
Perceptions like these are part of Namibia’s present social and politi-
cal reality and therefore it is no surprise that the 2009 election results
confirmed Swapo’s hegemonic status despite the RDP’s claims and
expectations that it would be a serious contender. The ‘enemy within’
turned out to be an ineffective opposition party. Political legitimacy and
electoral support seemed to depend more on delivery of material goods
Henning Melber 99
and services than on the ability to provide an alternative perspective

to voters.
Delivery and democracy
Despite Swapo’s consistently strong results at the ballot box, lack of

delivery on national, regional and local levels is increasingly associated
with policy failures of the party in power. In the eyes of the majority
of voters and in line with party members’ own understanding, Swapo
is synonymous with the government and the state. If the state fails to
deliver, the political party in power fails. A posting on the party website
ahead of the local and regional elections of 2010 illustrates this way of
thinking:
cdes, I just have a concern over services rendered through municipal-

ities and/or town councils. Of late, we heard of electricity cut down at
okahandja for example, and other towns being warned. What seems
to concern me is why are this towns not paying their bills on time?
Why is it happening during this time when the elections are just
next door? I otherwise have to say some of this guys are trying to
jeopardise everything that all through SWAPO is not good. This town
councils must realy shape up or else ship out.10
In a similar vein a ‘SMS for the day’ in the local daily The Namibian
ahead of the same local elections commented:
We are tired of voting for people who cannot deliver. This country
is getting worse. To fellow voters, I think the time is ripe for us to
take off our political party clothes and vote for candidates who can
deliver. This is the only way we can prosper like developed countries
did. Time for being fooled is over. We voters, especially the youth,
are the agents of change. Let’s use our constitutional rights to save
our beautiful country from stagnation and destitution. I also want to
encourage independent candidates in future elections.
(Shiwana 2010)
Associating a lack of delivery with Swapo and its political office bearers
brings the social contract between the ruling party and the electorate
into question because the erstwhile liberation movement has consis-
tently campaigned on the basis of a better quality of life if not for
all then at least for most of the previously marginalized. According to
100 Namibia
Swapo, liberation from colonialism and apartheid would mean material

improvements for the majority of Namibian people. The ‘liberation
gospel’, which so far has provided Swapo with legitimacy and helped
to secure the party’s unchallenged and undisputed political position,
shows some wear and tear. Its expiry date seems near as the personal
memories of the fight against settler minority rule and the humiliat-
ing living conditions under apartheid fade away. What remain are the
current similarly humiliating living conditions for which Swapo and its
government are held responsible.
The latest public outcry over the dismal living conditions of consid-
erable segments of the Namibian population was in response to the
disclosure that people were gathering regularly outside of the capital at
a dumping site to collect the weekly delivery of expired tins or even
rotten food from garbage trucks. When the feeding from the dumps
became known, the number of people flocking to the site reportedly
quadrupled to around 400 compared to the week before. Trucks loaded
with stale and rotten food were subsequently prevented from accessing
the dumpsite by a police contingent (Jason and Rhodes 2011).
The subsequent debates in the media are indicative of the growing
resentment towards the political elite, who are accused of not deliver-
ing. A commentary in the state-owned daily newspaper New Era best
illustrates the dissatisfaction over the current state of affairs:
A series of recent media reports exposing the issue of poor people

feeding from the dumpsite is ‘an eye-opener’ to our leaders. The
media has been reporting about poverty in Namibia all along, and
the government’s eyes only opened now? There were so many reports
both national and international, about the dire poverty situation and
unemployment in Namibia and the leaders only realised that now?
Does it mean our leaders cannot read and only grasp the true situ-
ation when they see pictures, or can they only read pictures? If so,
maybe we must start newspapers with only pictures that depict the
real Namibian situation and leave out text, so that our leaders can
understand what is really happening in the country that they lead.
[ . . . ] If 50 percent of our population is jobless, where do you think or
how do you as leaders think these people survive? The many crime
incidents, the high suicide rate, what do you think causes these, ‘hon-
ourables’? I mean, really now, do you want to tell me you do not
see the state of poverty in the country, people dying of cold because
they do not have shelter or blankets, scavenging in rubbish dumps,
stealing food in shops? Or maybe the leaders are not exposed to this
Henning Melber 101
poverty, as they might not know people who are poor, since their
own families and acquaintances have been catered for.
(!Hoaes 2011)
Sentiments like these seem to be growing. Therefore, the biggest risk to

Namibia’s political stability will not come from a well-organized oppo-
sition able to reduce the dominance of Swapo on the basis of presenting
policy alternatives. The main risk will be the lack of delivery in material
terms by the party in power: when Swapo is neither able nor willing to
meet expectations in terms of a better life for all, but instead seeks a bet-
ter life mainly if not exclusively for those who are members of or close
to the new political elite.
For now, Swapo’s dominance remains unchallenged as voters have
not yet used the ballot box to express their growing discontent with
their material circumstances. As Lindeke and Shejavali (2007: 12) sug-
gest, Namibia’s performance in terms of conducting regular and largely
credible elections can be considered relatively successful ‘yet it remains
difficult to know whether this is the result of “democracy”, SWAPO
leadership and ideas, or the more general Namibian conditions that pre-
vail in this particular historical setting’. For the time being, as another
observer with intimate knowledge concludes, ‘the supply of democracy
in Namibia seems to outstrip the demand of it’ (Du Pisani 2009: 19) but
a continuation of this state of affairs is not guaranteed.
The overwhelming dominance of Swapo has certainly not encouraged
the articulation of dissenting political views or the mobilization of party
political alternatives. In the absence of such meaningful alternatives it is
difficult to decide whether the blame should be placed solely on Swapo.
On the other hand, the party’s self-righteousness and culture of entitle-
ment combined with its claim that the party is the government and the
government is the state provides no incentive for citizens to actively and
confidently pursue and practice their civil rights. If one adds the at-times
raving dismissal of dissenting views, it becomes clear that Namibia’s
political reality increasingly fails to reflect or live up to the spirit and
substance of the constitutional democracy adopted at independence.
Notes
1. This paper complements Melber (2013). It is one of the results of an almost
life-long personal involvement in the political processes described, as already
documented in a series of earlier publications. Overlaps with this earlier
work (Melber 2000, 2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2006a, 2006b, 2007a, 2007b,
2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2010, 2011a, 2011b and 2011c) are unavoidable.
102 Namibia
2. SWAPO was later re-named SWAPO of Namibia and, in the process of

transforming from a liberation movement into a political party, officially
re-named itself Swapo Party. This chapter uses all names, depending on the
context and/or the source/document quoted.
3. ‘Founding Father of the Republic of Namibia’ is the official title conferred
upon Sam Nujoma by the Members of Parliament when he retired after
three terms in office as Namibia’s Head of State (1990–2005). To enable his
third term in office a change of Namibia’s constitution was required (Melber
2006b). Swapo motivated the constitutional amendment and Nujoma’s third
term by referring to a need to keep a trustworthy guardian in place in order
to secure continued democracy.
4. This does not preclude local deviations, which are mainly based on particular
ethnic identities. These local differences testify to the fact that Namibian
society is not ethnically uniform but includes various ethnic identities which
on a local level translate into different political preferences. For empirical
details, see Melber (2010, 2013).
5. At the end of 2007, for example, the South African-based Namibian scholar
Joseph Diescho had blamed two leading political office bearers in Swapo
of political opportunism and was quoted accordingly in a local newspa-
per. One of them, Hage Geingob, was prime minister from 1990 to 2002,
was subsequently marginalized but made a remarkable political comeback,
when he was elected as the vice-president of Swapo at the party’s congress in
November 2007, making him the designated successor to the party’s current
president and Head of State. Geingob voiced his frustration over Diescho’s
criticism by calling him an ‘intellectual prostitute’ at a public political rally
in early January 2008.
6. See http://www.swapoparty.org/founding_president.html.
7. Posted by Cde Kanamutenya, 2 December 2009 at http://www.swapoparty
.org/. For authenticity the original spelling has been retained.
8. Posted by Kapitaholo Otati, 11 December 2009 at http://www.swapoparty
.org/. For authenticity the original spelling has been retained.
9. For more results from the survey, which was undertaken between 23 October
and 3 December 2008 among 1,200 Namibians, see Afrobarometer (2009c).
10. Posted by shilongoh-shafiishuna, 13 September 2010 at http:/www
.swapoparty.org/. For authenticity the original spelling has been retained.
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H. Melber (ed.) (2003a) Re-examining Liberation in Namibia: Political Culture since
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Part II
Other Party Systems
6
Ghana: The African Exemplar of an
Institutionalized Two-Party System?
Cyril K. Daddieh and George M. Bob-Milliar
Ghana’s experience with political party development has diverged from

the African norm. Since the early days of decolonization and right
through the upheavals of the post-colonial period when the coun-
try alternated between civilian rule and military dictatorship, Ghana
maintained a limited number of political parties but more importantly
since the democratic transition in 1992 the Ghanaian party system has
evolved into the only strongly institutionalized two-party system on the
continent (see Carbone 2003; Morrison 2004; Debrah 2007; Gyimah-
Boadi and Debrah 2008; Whitfield 2009; Daddieh 2011; Lynch and
Crawford 2011; Bob-Milliar 2012a). This chapter provides evidence to
substantiate the claim that Ghana’s party system is best described as an
institutionalized two-party system and seeks to address two important
questions: How did Ghana’s two-party system develop? And how has
the party system contributed to the development of democracy since
Ghana joined the third wave of democratization in May 1992?
In answering these questions, we first draw attention to the histori-
cal evolution of the Ghanaian party system, establishing a genealogical
link between the political organizations and activism that emerged
during the formative pre-independence period and the current constel-
lation of political parties and their operations. In particular, we point
to the salience of founding traditions and narratives that transcend or
cut across ethnicity and region in shaping the current two-party sys-
tem. These founding traditions and related policy positions continue to
animate the two main parties, structure elite recruitment and inform
patterns of popular support as well as voting behaviour in the present
democratic dispensation. They explain why, although up to seven polit-
ical parties have competed for votes in Ghanaian elections since 1992,
the two main parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and
107
108 Ghana
the New Patriotic Party (NPP), have monopolized the presidency and
virtually all parliamentary seats and have alternated as Ghana’s ruling
party.
In addition, the institutional and constitutional architecture of
Ghanaian politics has had an important influence. The constitutional
prescription that ‘Every political party shall have a national charac-
ter, and membership shall not be based on ethnic, religious, regional,
or other sectional divisions’ (Republic of Ghana 1992: 48) means that
smaller regional or ethnic parties are effectively banned. Other signif-
icant institutional arrangements are Ghana’s first-past-the-post (FPTP)
electoral system which allows a parliamentary candidate with a plurality
of the votes in a single member district to win the seat and its presiden-
tial system which is weighted heavily in favour of the executive branch,
with a hegemonic president who is popularly elected. Together, these
institutional aspects seem to benefit the two main parties and their can-
didates to the detriment of smaller, regional or ethnic parties, as well as
independent candidates.
Since 1992, Ghana’s two-party system has operated and thrived
within a democratic environment characterized by a willingness on the
part of political parties and their candidates to engage in meaningful
policy debates, to submit to public interrogation of their party programs
and to sign the ‘Political Parties Code of Conduct’. These developments
have, in turn, contributed to the accountability, legitimacy and stabil-
ity of political parties and enhanced the electorate’s commitment to
Ghana’s liberal democracy. The balance of this chapter enters into a
substantive analysis of the historical, cultural and institutional foun-
dations of the two-party system and its impact on Ghana’s democratic
development.
Sizing up Ghana’s two-party system
We have already noted that the Ghanaian experience with party sys-
tem development has differed from the African norm. After a wave
of democratization swept across the African continent in the 1990s,
many party systems showed a high degree of volatility and proved to
be weakly institutionalized. The party systems of Benin and Zambia,
discussed in Chapters 7 and 8 of this volume, are cases in point. Other
African party systems developed into one-party-dominant systems, as
documented in the chapters about Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.
In contrast, Ghana’s party system emerged as a strongly institutionalized
two-party system, the only one on the continent. Over the course of six
Cyril Daddieh and George Bob-Milliar 109
electoral cycles (1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012), Ghanaian pol-
itics proved competitive yet stable with two relatively evenly matched
political parties engaging in a two-way contest which has so far resulted
in two alternations of power.
In the run up to the country’s democratic transition in 1992, it wit-
nessed the birth of 13 political parties, a large number by Ghanaian
standards. By the time the first elections were held in November and
December of the same year, some of these political parties had already
faded. Three parties entered into an alliance with the NDC, which
was the civilian alter-ego of the Provisional National Defence Coun-
cil (PNDC) that had ruled Ghana since 31 December 1981 when Jerry
Rawlings took power in his second successful military coup. In the end,
only five political parties contested the first multiparty elections in 1992.
The NDC and the NPP were joined by the People’s National Convention
(PNC) – a reincarnation of the Nkrumahist-leaning People’s National
Party (PNP) that had won the 1979 elections under the leadership of
Dr. Hilla Limann whose time in office was cut short by the Rawlings
coup – as well as two new political parties, the National Independence
Party (NIP) and the People’s Heritage Party (PHP).
Since 1992, Ghana has maintained a more or less similar line-up
of political parties. The number of political parties competing in par-
liamentary elections has fluctuated somewhat but has never exceeded
seven. By the second election in 1996, the NDC and the NPP had
emerged as the two main competitors. Since then, two alternations of
power have occurred: in 2000, when the NPP defeated the NDC in both
the presidential and parliamentary race, and again in 2008, when the
NDC regained executive power and a majority in the legislature.
In every national election since 1996, the NDC and the NPP together
have captured roughly 97 per cent of the votes and no less than 95 per
cent of the parliamentary seats. Needless to say, the smaller parties,
including the PNC and the Convention People’s Party (CPP) which was
resurrected in 1996, have not gained much traction partly because they
lack the financial resources to attract credible candidates that can run
competitive campaigns in all 230 constituencies (Ninsin 2006: 5–6).
In presidential elections, the performance of the smaller parties has been
similarly unimpressive. With the exception of the transitional elections
of 1992 when the presidential candidates of the smaller parties managed
to win just over 11 per cent of the vote between them and the 2000 pres-
idential elections when their combined total was just over 7 per cent of
the vote, the smaller parties together fail to muster more than 3 per cent
of the vote in presidential elections.
110 Ghana
The fact that the smaller parties lack a meaningful presence is reflected
in their inability to field a full complement of parliamentary candidates.
In the 2008 elections, for example, both the NDC and the NPP competed
in all but one of the 230 constituencies.1 By contrast, the CPP and PNC
competed in 206 and 129 constituencies, respectively. The newly created
Democratic Freedom Party (DFP), Democratic People’s Party (DPP) and
Reformed Patriotic Democrats (RPD) fielded candidates in 108, 49 and
10 constituencies, respectively. When election results were declared the
NDC was left with 115 parliamentary seats to the NPP’s 108. The PNC
won two seats compared to the CPP’s one seat, while the other small
parties barely registered on the electoral radar and failed to win any
parliamentary seats.
In the most recent elections in December 2012, seven political par-
ties and one independent candidate vied for the presidency and 1,332
candidates contested seats in the newly expanded 275-member parlia-
ment (see http://www.ec.gov.gh/). The NDC’s John Dramani Mahama
won 50.7 per cent of the votes and the NPP’s Nana Akufo-Addo received
47.7 per cent. Displeased with the results declared by the Electoral Com-
mission (EC) which made Mahama the president-elect, Akufo-Addo and
the NPP approached the Supreme Court seeking to have the results over-
turned or annulled (see Republic of Ghana, Petition No. J1/6/2013).
After months of litigation, the Supreme Court ruled against the petition-
ers and let the results stand. With regard to the parliamentary elections,
the NDC won a majority of the seats, 148 out of 275 (or 53.8 per cent),
compared to the NPP’s 123 seats (or 44.7 per cent).2 The PNC captured
a single seat and independent candidates won three seats. Results like
these prompted Paul Nugent (2001) to coin the evocative label of ‘also
rans’ for the small parties in Ghana’s multiparty politics.
It is worth noting that most of the small parties have represented
disaffected factions that broke away from the two main parties but
subsequently returned to the fold or formed a strategic alliance with
the other main party after a drubbing at the polls (Bob-Milliar 2012b).
Indeed, the willingness of the two main parties to allow breakaway
factions and independents to return seems to have contributed to the
institutionalization of Ghana’s two-party system.
In sum, the election results since 1992 attest to an institutionalized
two-party system. The two main parties have dominated the electoral
contest since the beginning of the new democratic dispensation with
only a handful of very weak, largely inconsequential small parties join-
ing the fray. The NDC and NPP have now twice alternated in office.
There is even a level of symmetry to these turnovers, coming as they do
in eight-year intervals.
This is how Rachel Riedl (2014: 1) has summarized the current

situation:
Ghana has developed a highly institutionalized party system with

low levels of volatility and an alternating majority between stable
parties. Ghana has experienced two democratic turnovers, and the
two major parties – the NDC and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) – are
deeply connected to their constituencies: they organize across the
national territory to compete in every constituency, they mobilize
participation during and beyond elections, and they aggregate coali-
tions of diverse citizens and interests. The NDC and the NPP are both
enduring entities that help shape individual partisan identities and
structure national, regional, and local competition.
Her assessment emphasizes the institutionalized nature of the current

party system configuration which seems to be based, at least in part,
on the deep connections the two main parties have with their con-
stituencies. In the next section, we will further examine the historical
foundations of these connections.
The historical foundations of Ghana’s two-party system
The genealogy of the current party system configuration can be traced to

the formative years of party organization during the pre-independence
period. The first real impetus for the formation of modern political
parties in Ghana was provided by the administration of Sir Gordon
Guggisberg, which promulgated a constitution bearing the governor’s
name in 1925. The new constitution may have been induced by
concerns about the prospective development of radical pan-territorial
nationalism by the ‘lawyer-merchant class’, which had founded the
National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) in Accra in 1920,
with branches in each of the four British colonies – the Gold Coast,
Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gambia (Davidson 1994). Whatever the
real motivation, the constitution afforded Gold Coast elites in the
key coastal towns of Accra, Cape Coast and Sekondi an opportunity
to be represented in the Municipal and Legislative Councils (Boahen
2000: 114–115; Amenumey 2008: 188). In Guggisberg’s own paternalis-
tic thinking, the populations of these towns ‘had advanced sufficiently
in modern civilization to justify the election by ballot’ (quoted in
Quarcoopome 1988: 152).
And so it is that in the mid-1920s, Accra witnessed the emer-
gence of three proto-political parties – the Ratepayers Association, the
112 Ghana
Mambii Party and the Independent Party. The Ratepayers Association

was formed not only to contest the Municipal and Town Council elec-
tions. As part of its agenda, the party sought to educate the general
public about ‘the proper methods of electing people to the Town Coun-
cil and a Municipal member to the Legislative Council’ (Quarcoopome
1988: 154). Its leadership was drawn mainly from the professional class
of physicians and lawyers. Prominent among them were Dr. Frederick
Victor Nanka-Bruce, Dr. C. E. Reindorf, Akilagpa Sawyerr, Glover Addo
and A. M. Akiwuni, all barristers-at-law. The main challenger to the
Ratepayers Association was the Mambii Party founded by Augustus
William Kojo Thompson, also a lawyer. It had its roots in another part
of society, drawing its support largely from urban workers, fishermen,
market women and petty traders, the majority of whom were illiterate
(Quarcoopome 1988). This was the very stratum of society that Kwame
Nkrumah would later mobilize into a formidable anti-colonial force.
The Independent Party, founded by Kwatei Quartey-Papafio, another
lawyer, represented a third force. The political and ideological differ-
ences that existed between these local organizations and their leader-
ship suggested partisan competitive politics-in-the-making along two,
potentially three, axes.
The proto-political parties and the competition between them that
the Guggisberg Constitution sparked were a harbinger of things to come.
With simmering political, economic and social discontent bubbling to
the surface once the Second World War ended, passive nationalism gave
way to more insistent voices making political demands in Britain’s so-
called model colony. A conservative, reform-minded lawyer-merchant
and professional class together with associates who had strong ties to
the traditional rulership formed the first mass political party, the United
Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), on 4 August 1947. They were led
by the following post-war political pioneers: Dr. J. B. Danquah, the
half-brother of Nana Sir Ofori-Atta I who was the paramount chief
(Okyehene) of Akyem Abuakwa (1912–1943); Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia who
would succeed Danquah in the leadership position and later become
prime minister; Edward Akufo-Addo who was brother-in-law of Nana
Ofori-Atta I; and five others. The leadership of the party was drawn
principally from three regions – Ashanti, Brong Ahafo and Eastern. The
UGCC was elitist in its leadership composition, social base and the inter-
ests it represented. Those attributes made the party the direct lineal
descendant of the NCBWA (Morrison 2004: 423), the Ratepayers Associ-
ation (Boahen 1989) and even the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society
(ARPS) before them.
Pitted against the UGCC was the CPP founded by Dr. Kwame
Nkrumah on 12 June 1949. It will be recalled that Nkrumah was invited
to return home from Great Britain to take over the running of the
UGCC. He accepted the offer even though, by his own admission, he
had misgivings about the UGCC leadership and indeed soon fell out
with those that had hired him. Nkrumah recruited into the party ranks
a broad coalition of teachers, clerks, petty traders, storekeepers, women,
farmers, workers, servicemen and unemployed middle school leavers.
This underprivileged stratum of colonial society was evocatively called
the ‘verandah boys’ because its members were mostly unemployed. As a
result, they could not afford rental accommodation in the city and were
reduced to sleeping on the verandas of the affluent few symbolized by
the UGCC leadership. Yet, it was the verandah boys who increasingly
set the pace of the nationalist struggle and infused the UGCC with vim
and vigour. They were inspired by Nkrumah, a former schoolteacher
and, like them, a ‘commoner’. It did not take long for the ideological
divisions to lead to a party split, with Nkrumah taking with him the
verandah boys and the broad social coalition he had built and parlay it
into the CPP. Thus, the CPP leadership was much more representative
of society and drawn from across the entire country.
The UGCC and the CPP not only reflected different social bases and
ideological interests, they staked out diametrically opposed positions
on some of the central questions of the time. For instance, whereas
the UGCC demanded independence within the ‘shortest possible time’
through ‘legitimate and constitutional means’, the CPP insisted on
‘independence now’ (Apter 1963: 167). Their visions for the future were
also at odds with each other. Nkrumah and the CPP insisted on arriving
at independence as a unitary state that was committed to development,
equitable distribution of national resources and social justice. By con-
trast, the UGCC leadership sought to protect ethno-regional, chieftaincy
and commercial interests by advocating a federal system of government
(see Boahen 2000; Svanikier 2007: 123–129).
These political differences played themselves out in the three gen-
eral elections that were conducted prior to independence in 1957, with
the CPP achieving sweeping victories in all three of them. The first elec-
tion, held in February 1951 under the terms of the Coussey Constitution
while Nkrumah was in prison for anti-colonial agitation, produced a
resounding CPP victory. The CPP captured 34 of the 38 seats in the
Legislative Council. The day after the elections, the colonial office was
forced to release Nkrumah from jail and make him leader of govern-
ment business.3 As leader of the UGCC, Danquah never fully recovered
114 Ghana
from this crushing defeat. However, as the colony moved inexorably

towards independence, the party system experienced a remarkable
metamorphosis.
In 1952, the UGCC was converted into the Ghana Congress Party
(GCP) with Busia at the helm. Meanwhile, different interest groups
formed political parties to pursue sectional interests and agendas. Lead-
ers of the Northern Territories organized the Northern People’s Party
to fight against perceived systematic neglect and underdevelopment.
Ewe nationalists formed the Togoland Congress (TC) to press their
case for reunification with Togo. The Muslim Association Party (MAP)
championed the needs of Muslims living in southern coastal cities and
in the forest zone. The Ga Shifimo Kpee sought greater representa-
tion for the Ga, the autochthones of Accra. These largely conservative
ethno-regional opposition groups coalesced under the United Party
(UP) banner. However, another even more virulent ethno-regional party
would emerge on the right in the form of the National Liberation
Movement (NLM).
In many respects, the NLM posed the greatest threat to the vision
of Nkrumah and the CPP. Founded in September 1954 by Baafuor Osei
Akoto, the chief linguist of the Asantehene (King of Asante), the NLM was
a coalition of wealthy cocoa farmers and traditional rulers concerned
about the reduced cocoa price and the CPP’s redistributive policies. The
chiefs were also afraid of losing their power, influence and privileges
under a socialist Nkrumah. Thus, special interests were superimposed
over the elite-mass divisions that had characterized anti-colonial politics
in the post-war period (Pellow and Chazan 1986: 30–34).
As Svanikier (2007: 130) has noted:
This period saw the crystallization of the two main political tra-
ditions which represent the two main political cleavages in the
country. They are the Nkrumahist tradition which is perceived as
ethnically and socially inclusive, broad-based, populist and left-wing
and the Busia/Danquah tradition which is perceived as elitist, ethni-
cally exclusive, liberal-democratic and right-wing. At the leadership
level both traditions have representatives from all the main ethnic
groupings although political parties in the Nkrumahist tradition have
tended to have more diversity at the top. However the political cleav-
ages that divide Ghanaian politics go beyond ethnicity and include
historical, social and ideological ones.
The crucial point here is that divergent organizational, ideological and

leadership interests between the UGCC and the CPP have structured
political competition in the country since the 1940s and formed the
historical foundations of the current two-party system.
The social and political divisions that the two parties reflected were
even refracted in the military coups by the National Liberation Coun-
cil (NLC) and the National Redemption Council (NRC) which toppled
the Nkrumah government in 1966 and the Busia government in 1972,
respectively. The officers who staged the NLC coup in 1966 came from
the conservative faction of the Ghanaian military and police. They
shared the worldview or conservative ideology, market-orientation and
class interests of the anti-Nkrumah civilian opposition led by Dr. Busia.
Indeed, the NLC brought Dr. Busia into the new regime and gave
him a number of strategic positions that served him well electorally
(Owusu-Ansah and McFarland 1995: 68). Busia and his allies manoeu-
vred to disenfranchise Nkrumahist parties by proscribing the CPP and
prohibiting the use of its name and party symbols. Not surprisingly,
Dr. Busia’s Progress Party (PP) easily won the elections in 1969. How-
ever, on 13 January 1972, Dr. Busia’s government experienced a coup
at the hands of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) led by Colonel Ignatius
K. Acheampong.
The 1972 NRC coup was considered the antithesis to that of the NLC.
Acheampong’s men were younger, lower-ranking officers. They were the
first to be largely trained in the country. They did not enjoy the benefit
of university education and ‘none was the lineal heir of the privileged
classes’ (Morrison 2004: 425). They were also the first generation to be
heavily influenced by Nkrumah’s socialist ideas. Acheampong served
as both teacher and clerk before joining the military in 1959. In that
regard, he belonged to the stratum of society from which Nkrumah
recruited. It is therefore not surprising that both Acheampong and
later Rawlings appropriated some of Nkrumah’s socialist programs and
institutions and pursued a populist agenda (Morrison 2004).
Indeed, many of Rawlings’ early civilian collaborators were well-
known leftist intellectuals and student radicals who were eager to help
secure the Ghanaian revolution. Most of these intellectuals were once
Nkrumahist sympathizers or had belonged to the Young Pioneers, one
of several vertical and horizontal institutions through which the CPP
extended its reach and influence over Ghanaian society. From the
very beginning, the right loathed the PNDC. In turn, the business
and professional class was targeted by the Rawlings-led Armed Forces
Revolutionary Council (AFRC) interregnum which lasted from June to
September 1979. They continued to feature prominently among those
who were hauled before the people’s tribunals set up by the PNDC
and received lengthy sentences and huge fines when found guilty. The
116 Ghana
Ghana Bar Association (GBA), for one, reacted negatively to this parallel
system of adjudication and, for a time, boycotted the conventional
courts in protest. Both sides viewed each other with mutual suspicion,
fear and loathing.
The PNDC feared to be overthrown by a right-wing conspiracy. Hence
Rawlings’ regime was forced to develop a survival strategy based on
cultivating its own key support base. It managed to attract the urban
working poor and a loyal rural support base that it could easily mobi-
lize against anti-regime urban intellectuals, and the commercial and
professional class whom it had alienated. Interestingly, these strate-
gic choices continue to inform the NDC’s current electoral campaigns
and are clearly reflected in the voting patterns that have characterized
Ghanaian politics since 1992 (Jeffries and Thomas 1993; Bob-Milliar
2011).
Ironically, the success of Rawlings seems to have come at the expense
of the earlier Nkrumahist ideology. The NDC, while representing the
Nkrumahist tradition in terms of its main support base, its electoral
strategies and some of its policies, was essentially built as Rawlings’
party and based on the legacy of his regime. Thus, it seems to be more
populist than Nkrumahist in character. By contrast the forces on the
right of the political spectrum seem to have fused into one Danquah–
Busia/UP tradition. Indeed, one of the more compelling stories of
the Ghanaian experience since 1992 is the simultaneous resurgence
of the Danquah/Busia tradition and the collapse of the Nkrumahist
forces. Clearly, Rawlings’ NDC had successfully co-opted a majority of
Nkrumahists into its leadership ranks and appropriated its social base,
while moving away from the Nkrumahist ideology and moulding its
own revised school of thought. The remnants of the Nkrumahist forces
subsequently proved too myopic and too selfish to come together in a
show of solidarity. The net result is that the CPP has been languishing
in the doldrums with well below 3 per cent of the popular vote.
Be that as it may, as the section above shows, the two political par-
ties around which the current party system revolves have deep roots
in Ghanaian political history. The NPP is the proud lineal descendant
of the UGCC, GCP, NLM, UP and PP. It has appropriated many of the
symbols, policies and personnel associated with the Danquah/Busia tra-
dition. The NPP is a self-proclaimed centre-right party dedicated to the
promotion of political and economic liberalization, thus embracing free
markets, property ownership, individual liberty and human rights. It is
avowedly pro-business and has set its aspirational sight on achieving
a ‘golden age of business’. The NPP leadership is made up of lawyers,
business and professional elites and the party draws support largely from
the middle-class and affluent parts of the urban areas.
By contrast, the NDC, together with the CPP and the PNC are consid-
ered left-of-centre parties. All three claim to draw inspiration from the
nationalism and pan-Africanism of Ghana’s founding father, Dr. Kwame
Nkrumah. Yet, they have not managed to unite with a common aim and
purpose or coalesce around a single candidate for presidential elections,
mainly because the NDC was primarily built on Rawlings’ legacy thus
moving away from a pure Nkrumahist ideology.
As K. C. Morrison (2004: 423–424) puts it:
The current party scene largely reflects the two traditional cleavages.
The two big tent parties with national appeal and comprehensive
platforms are the liberal New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the populist
National Democratic Congress (NDC). The NDC rose on the populist
remnants of Rawlings’s military regime (1981–92). It is ideologically
akin to the Nkrumahists (though sometimes denying it) and adopted
similar electoral strategies. It deviates most from Nkrumah in the
drift from a statist to a market economy. The NPP is dominated by
an intellectual, business, and professional elite dedicated to liberal
governance and market economy. It caters to many urban adherents.
Constitutional and institutional arrangements
In addition to the historical foundations discussed above, the institu-

tional and constitutional architecture of Ghanaian politics has had an
important influence on its party system. As previewed in the introduc-
tion, the institutional arrangements adopted in 1992 have contributed
to the entrenchment of the two-party system. First, Ghana has a FPTP
or winner-take-all electoral system. Members of parliament (MPs) are
elected with only a plurality of the votes in single-member constituen-
cies. Second, Ghana has a presidential system in which the president
and vice-president are popularly elected on the same ticket. To be duly
elected, the president must garner more than 50 per cent of the valid
votes cast nationally. If no candidate receives more than 50 per cent of
the votes, a runoff election between the two leading presidential can-
didates must be held within 21 days (Republic of Ghana 1992: 54).
The 1992 Constitution has given extensive powers of appointment and
policy-making to the presidency while leaving the unicameral national
legislature, which had an initial membership of 200 (increased to 230
before the 2004 elections and then to 275 before the 2012 elections),
118 Ghana
fairly weak in comparison. Particularly, the provision that the majority

of Ministers of State (the cabinet) shall be appointed from among MPs
(Republic of Ghana 1992: 63) has hamstrung parliament and rendered it
virtually impotent vis-à-vis the executive. Parliamentary oversight is far
from robust because MPs from the ruling party look forward to potential
ministerial appointments.
Both the electoral system and the presidential system have favoured
the two main parties and disadvantaged the small parties. This effect has
been exacerbated by the fact that Ghana holds concurrent parliamen-
tary and presidential elections, which means that the terms of office for
the president and MPs overlap. The concurrent elections have created a
situation in which the two main parties command all the attention of
the media and the public.
In sum, the constitutional and institutional architecture has con-
tributed to the entrenchment of Ghana’s two-party system The only
institutional measures that could perhaps lead to a change in the current
party system configuration are the adoption of an electoral system based
on proportional representation (PR) in combination with a lifting of the
ban on ethnic, religious or regional parties. The 1992 Constitution guar-
antees the right of every citizen of voting age to form a political party
but also mandates that ‘Every political party shall have a national char-
acter, and membership shall not be based on ethnic, religious, regional,
or other sectional divisions’ (Republic of Ghana 1992: 48). Furthermore,
‘the party’s name, emblem, colour, motto or any other symbol has no
ethnic, regional, religious or other sectional connotation or gives the
appearance that its activities are confined only to a part of Ghana’ (Ibid:
48). To abolish this ban would no doubt transform the party political
landscape, especially if the electoral system would also be changed to a
system of PR. However, it is highly unlikely that the two main parties
would embrace this type of reform.
The other avenue of possible change lies in a future growth of the
CPP and PNC. In 2004 and 2008, it looked promising when the CPP
fielded a few relatively competent candidates and seemed poised to
make inroads. If the CPP, alone or in combination with the PNC, could
have bumped its electoral support up to about 10 per cent and had
picked up a few more parliamentary seats, it could have pushed the
two main parties below the 50 per cent mark and would have become
kingmaker. Given the near-parity of the two main parties, a stronger
CPP/PNC could have provided the additional members needed to form
a parliamentary majority. In this way, the Ghanaian party system could
evolve into a two-plus system. However, this eventuality is now a long
way off, particularly because the CPP and PNC have since lost electoral
ground to the NDC and the NPP.
As the foregoing analysis has shown, Ghana’s institutional architec-
ture has nurtured its two-party system. In fact, the electoral system and
the party system have been mutually reinforcing. So has the particular
executive-legislative nexus that has been prescribed by the constitution.
By allowing the president to appoint a majority of cabinet ministers
from parliament, the constitution ensured that the president and his
ruling party would have full power to get their policies enacted into
law. These institutional arrangements and Ghana’s two-party system
thus establish a clear line of responsibility for policy-making, making
it easier for citizens to demand accountability from their government.
To be sure, there are structural and cultural barriers to demanding social
accountability. Nevertheless, the public is in a good position to assign
responsibility or blame for promises not kept and for policy failures.
In the Ghanaian context, this has been empowering: It has allowed
the public to choose an alternative government at the polls, on the
basis of party ideology and traditions, government performance and
the believability of promises proffered by the two main political parties.
Thus, Ghana’s party system seems to have contributed to its democratic
success (see also Fobih 2011).
Ghana’s democratic success
It must be recalled that Rawlings and the PNDC were initially not in
favour of multiparty politics. However, under intense pressure from
Ghanaian civil society backed by key international donors, Rawlings
initiated a regime-guided transition process that culminated in transi-
tional elections in 1992. The official results had Rawlings, as the NDC
candidate, winning with 58.4 per cent of the votes, against 30.3 per
cent for the NPP’s Professor Adu Boahen. The opposition parties rejected
the results as fraudulent and opted to boycott the parliamentary vote
(see New Patriotic Party 1993; Boahen 1995). While the parliamentary
election boycott robbed the new NDC government of the legitimacy
it craved, it essentially created a rubber-stamping parliament that hin-
dered the further development of competitive party politics. It also
deprived the country of a ‘loyal opposition’ and the kind of vigorous
policy debate in parliament that it deserved (Daddieh 2011).
Relations between the NDC government and opposition parties and
their leaders remained tense and acrimonious until the government,
the EC and the political class joined forces with other stakeholders,
120 Ghana
including civil society and international development partners, to

devise mechanisms for defusing tension and improving electoral man-
agement in order to enhance public confidence in the democratic
process. The EC needed to convince the political parties that it was an
appropriate, effective and impartial arbiter of political competition in
Ghana’s emerging democratic order. Following the installation of a new
election management body, the EC took a number of trust-building mea-
sures aimed at enhancing transparency in its operations and creating a
better working relationship with the political parties.
In August 1993, the EC began to compile a new voter register.
In March 1994, it created an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC)
that brought together the EC, representatives of political parties and
international donors to consult and negotiate around issues concerning
elections and election administration. IPAC meetings were held behind
closed doors to enable political parties to search for common ground
or mutual accommodation and consensus and avoid unnecessary polit-
ical posturing or grandstanding (Jeffries 1998: 197–199; Agyeman-Duah
2005). Through the IPAC consultations and negotiations, the parties
reached agreements on a whole host of issues including photo IDs,
replacement of opaque ballot boxes with transparent ones, open polling
stations, table-top cardboard voting screens, the holding of presiden-
tial and parliamentary elections simultaneously to avoid a repeat of
1992, vote counting at each polling station after the polls close, the
monitoring of voting, counting and collating by political party agents
and domestic and international election observers, counter-signing of
‘results forms’ by party agents, public announcement of polling results
at the polling station and their conspicuous display onsite. IPAC has
now become a permanent feature of inter-party relations.
As a result of the IPAC consultations and the subsequent measures,
public confidence in the electoral process increased and political parties
decided to fully participate in the election process. All elections from
1996 onwards have been keenly contested and have produced record
turnouts, signifying both voter interest and legitimacy. Moreover, candi-
dates and political party supporters have begun to accept election results
with greater equanimity.
As Svanikier (2007: 115) has pointed out:
A consensus for democracy has existed amongst Ghanaian politi-

cal elites since Ghana’s formal transition to democracy under the
4th Republican Constitution in 1992 and particularly in the period
between 1996 and the present. This is evidenced by a dramatic
expansion of political freedoms, successive free and fair elections,

the gradual institutionalization of constitutional bodies, the peaceful
alternation of power and public shows of unity amongst politicians
from opposing sides.
A pair of related issues – candidate selection and party financing –

deserves some commentary here since they impact on citizen partic-
ipation as well as internal party democracy and the accountability
of political parties. Ghanaian political parties have developed demo-
cratic candidate selection processes allowing candidates to be more
or less freely selected through closed primaries. All Ghanaian political
parties have now adopted the primary as the method of candidate selec-
tion (Daddieh and Bob-Milliar 2012). This is a marked departure from
the early years of the new dispensation when the NDC’s method of
selecting candidates had only a thin veneer of democracy and lacked
transparency. Back then, the national and local executives imposed
candidates on constituencies and then claimed they were ‘consensus’
candidates. However, as democracy deepened and the party system
institutionalized, the processes of candidate selection had to conform
to the democratic ethos. After all, in addition to the proscription of
political parties that lack a national character, the constitution expects
Ghanaian political parties to conform to democratic principles. To wit,
‘the internal organization of a political party shall conform to demo-
cratic principles and its actions and purposes shall not contravene or be
inconsistent with this Constitution or any other law’ (Republic of Ghana
1992: 48). Consequently, the NDC abandoned the so-called consensus
method of nominating candidates for parliament.
By comparison, the NPP instituted a formal procedure for parliamen-
tary candidate selection early on. However, the practice was fraught
with shenanigans. There were allegations of vote-buying, interference
by party executives at local, regional and national levels, the wining and
dining of delegates in hotels in order to gain their support and so on,
as in the case of Nigeria (Olarinmoye 2008: 069). Primaries have peri-
odically been postponed, sometimes on multiple occasions, allegedly to
allow the party hierarchy sufficient time to either convince some aspir-
ing candidates to withdraw from a race in favour of preferred candidates
or, failing that, to impose candidates from above (Daddieh 2011).
Some constituencies have reacted negatively to the perceived usurpa-
tion of their democratic rights by revolting against their political parties.
In such cases, alienated primary candidates and their supporters have
gone solo or independent in the general election. On the few occasions
122 Ghana
when independents have won parliamentary elections, it is largely

because they came from one of the main parties, had name recog-
nition and earned the sympathy votes of constituents who saw an
injustice committed by the party hierarchy and wanted to redress it.
Such independents tend to caucus with or reintegrate into the main
party they temporarily abandoned in pursuit of their candidacy. In any
event, the occasional alienation also helps to at least partially explain
the phenomenon of ‘skirt and blouse’ voting: when voters cast their
ballots strategically, splitting their votes between a presidential and a
parliamentary candidate belonging to two different parties.
Another related issue is the phenomenal rise in the cost of running for
office. Money seems to be crowding out otherwise attractive candidates
and giving undue advantage to the ‘moneyed’ class and its clients. The
development of ‘moneycracy’ also seems to be a driving force behind
corruption and the penchant of the Ghanaian political class to use polit-
ical office for private accumulation of wealth. These developments have
brought urgency to the debate about the need to upgrade the democratic
credentials of Ghanaian political parties by instituting public financing
of political parties. So far, the issue of public financing of parties has
been debated but not resolved. The current absence of such financing
has had an especially dissuasive effect on the creation of new political
parties and also on the growth and development of small extant parties.
On a more positive note, inter-party relations have continued to
improve. Political parties regularly extend invitations to observe each
other’s primary elections and to bring fraternal greetings or to deliver
any remarks. This is a clear sign not only of political maturity but
also of growing elite consensus and an emerging culture among the
political elite characterized by healthy competition, mutual respect
and growing accommodation despite the occasional outrageous public
pronouncements on the air or at political rallies.
Above we have already observed that the two-party system seems
to have contributed to clear responsibility for policy choices and a
sense of responsiveness. The fact that voters may abandon a govern-
ment because of instances of corruption or failed policies and effect
an alternation of power seems to have fostered reasonably responsive
and accountable governments in Ghana. The pressure of elections in a
highly competitive political environment has helped to bridge the ideo-
logical gap between the NDC and the NPP and has pushed both of them
more to the middle of the political spectrum. The two main parties and
their respective administrations have pursued policies aimed at poverty
reduction and especially at bridging the development gap between the
country’s northern and southern regions and at mediating growing

social inequalities between rural and urban areas through a wide variety
of social, employment and infrastructural programs. Given this policy
convergence, voters oftentimes base their party choice on perceptions of
relative equity or even-handedness in the distribution of development
and infrastructural projects, as well as government appointments. The
opportunity cost of this pressure to deliver immediate material benefits
to voters is the long-term strategic thinking that may be necessary but
may not produce immediate effects and is therefore neglected (Whitfield
2009: 640).
The current party system configuration and its intense competition
between the two main parties has resulted in policy convergence but
has also generated a huge interest in and tremendous enthusiasm for
parties and elections. Elections have become unavoidable social events
and most people want to get involved. Elections are also perceived as
‘a time to chop’ (Lindberg 2003). Especially during those presidential
elections in which incumbency is not a salient factor because term limits
apply, voters become more animated. They realize that a relatively small
amount of votes can swing the election. There is a palpable sense that
voters are making history by helping to choose a new president. This
has sometimes sent voter turnout through the roof. It has also boosted
public support for Ghana’s democratic system.
The intensely competitive nature of Ghana’s two-party system has had
a salutary effect on the broadening and enjoyment of civil and political
rights and freedoms. Political parties now seem to campaign on enlarg-
ing and respecting rights rather than curtailing or trampling on them.
Gone are the days when the security forces could act with impunity
partly because of the opening of the airwaves and the continuing
development of a vibrant, garrulous and, at times, irreverent Ghanaian
media. Furthermore, in spite of the highly competitive nature of the
two-party system and the potential oil and gas-based revenue streams
which seem to raise the stakes of the elections game, the political par-
ties have advanced the rule of law and furthered Ghana’s democracy by
increasingly resorting to the courts to resolve election-related disputes
and complying with their rulings rather than taking to the barricades.
Finally, if there is one area where the political parties and the two-
party system have failed, it is gender representation. The political
parties have made a verbal commitment to promote women and gender
equity in political representation. However, they have been unwilling to
embrace ‘special or reserved seats’ or ‘party based quotas’ for women to
achieve the goal of increased representation of women as has happened
124 Ghana
in East and Southern Africa (see Bauer 2008). In the absence of those
institutional reforms and given the apparent disinterest on the part of
Ghanaian women to pursue careers in party politics, the representation
of women in elective office will probably remain dismal.
Is Ghana the African exemplar of an institutionalized

two-party system?
To recap, the interplay between two competing political traditions or

founding myths rooted in Ghana’s history of decolonization, the FPTP
electoral system, coupled with the gradual but increasing cross-party
unity among political elites, growing elite consensus about the rules of
the political game and reasonably good leadership have all contributed
to the country’s stable, institutionalized two-party system (Carbone
2003; Morrison 2004; Svanikier 2007; Gyimah-Boadi 2009; Whitfield
2009; Abdulai and Crawford 2010; Daddieh 2011; Riedl 2014). Whitfield
(2009: 621) has even argued that the country’s apparent survival of
the closest and most intense elections ever in December 2008 (and we
might add, in 2012) is partly due to the institutionalization of the ‘two-
party system where voters and political elites are mobilized around two
political traditions’.
While some have argued that ‘the particular role of these two
longstanding political traditions in political party institutionalization
renders Ghana an exceptional rather than typical case’ (Lynch and
Crawford 2011: 286), others think ‘Ghana’s experience holds out the
possibility that parties in Africa do not have to be based on ideology
to be institutionalized. However, they may need a founding mythol-
ogy based on issues which cut across region and ethnicity’ (Whitfield
2009: 640). We believe that one should not underestimate the challenge
of evolving a durable two-party system in the African context. While
founding myths have had an important impact in the Ghanaian case,
they have been rooted in broader ideological traditions and refracted
through the public policies pursued by the two main political parties.
Ghana’s two-party system is the product of historical developments
that initially produced disunity and instability and was refracted in
the military choosing sides and staging partisan coups. Over time, the
growth and diversity of the elites, the changing make-up of the political
class, the incorporation of new or emerging social groups into the rul-
ing class and the cross-cutting cleavages that exist have contributed to
the growing consolidation of Ghana’s democracy around two poles with
different political traditions or philosophies of governance. However,
these traditions have not been so rigid as to not open themselves up

to infiltration or cross-fertilization from the rival camp. They have also
been flexible enough to accommodate emerging interests and factions
on their left and right flanks.
As a consequence, a stable two-party system has been firmly
entrenched, one that produces responsiveness and accountability, along
with a political culture of public support for the political system and
opposition to non-democratic forms of government, and huge enthusi-
asm for the dramaturgy of political campaigns and elections. Ghanaians
continue to turn out in large numbers to vote. With the exception of
the flawed transitional elections in 1992 when only 50.2 per cent of
registered voters turned up at the polls in the presidential election and
an even more dismal 20.1 per cent participated in the parliamentary
election – no doubt influenced by the opposition parties’ boycott – voter
turnout has been consistently high. In 1996, when all political parties
were back in the electoral game, the turnout was a remarkable 78.3 per
cent; it dropped to 61.7 and 60.4 per cent in the first and second rounds
of the 2000 presidential election and 62.0 per cent in the 2000 parlia-
mentary election. In 2004, the turnout shot up to 85.1 per cent, only
to descend to 69.5 and 72.9 per cent in the first and second rounds of
the 2008 presidential elections and rebound to 80 per cent in the 2012
presidential elections (see http://africanelections.tripod.com/gh.html).
In addition to the relatively high voter turnout, Ghanaian voters seem to
be developing a penchant for turning over the government every eight
years or after each two-term cycle when the ruling party is perceived to
have underachieved or worse.
Thus, Ghana is in our opinion the African exemplar of a two-party
system that presents an enviable record of democratic consolidation.
However, it is an exemplar that is difficult to emulate since it requires
careful constitutional engineering, political parties with transcenden-
tal founding values and traditions and political elites willing to imbibe
democratic values and develop a genuine democratic political culture.
We refuse to argue that other African countries cannot achieve similar
results but will issue the warning that it will not be a walk in the park.
Finally, is it possible that Ghana’s democratic prospects change? The
enduring nature and beneficial effects of its party system are not in dis-
pute but the situation could change if an alternation of power no longer
occurs perhaps because the governing party makes use of new oil- and
gas-based resources to cement its position. Indeed, one of the reasons
why the 2012 election was so fiercely contested was the potential profit
from future oil and gas production. With increased profits from mineral
126 Ghana
wealth and more resources coming into the government’s coffers, the
party in power would be in a position to expand the distribution of
patronage, employment opportunities and infrastructural development,
thus enabling it to consolidate its hold on power for the foreseeable
future. As far back as 2008, Nana Akufo-Addo, then Ghana’s foreign
minister and the NPP’s presidential candidate in both 2008 and 2012,
acknowledged the importance of the oil discovery. He said ‘the person
who, as it were, gets hold of these resources and uses them well, could be
in power for a very long time. You’re playing for probably more than one
election in December. You’re playing for power for a generation’ (Gary 2009;
Daddieh and Bob-Milliar unpublished; our emphasis). So far, President
Mahama and the NDC do not appear to be in such a strong position. Per-
haps one of the reasons is the political culture and attitudes of Ghanaian
voters and their proclivity to challenge the ruling party when it comes
to issues of probity and accountability. Ghanaians value their kokromoti
(thumb) power to throw the incumbent party out of office and replace
it with the opposition, especially as more money flows into government
funds.
Notes
1. The NPP ceded the Ellembele constituency in the Western region to a maverick
CPP ally and Deputy Speaker of Parliament who went on to lose to a young
NDC candidate; the NDC made a strategic decision to concede the Asokwa
constituency in the Ashanti region.
2. The NDC won in eight of the country’s 10 regions, although its overwhelming
support in the Volta region reinforced the popular perception that this region
is where the party’s core support lies. The NPP enjoyed strong support across
the country but struggled to make inroads in the Volta region. Ashanti and
Eastern regions proved to be the NPP’s regional strongholds.
3. In 1952, Nkrumah’s title was changed to prime minister.
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621–641.
7
Benin: A Pulverized Party System in
Transition
Rachel M. Gisselquist
Benin has seen a rapid proliferation of political parties since the

country’s democratic transition in 1990. Recent counts suggest that over
a hundred political parties are registered in this nation of just over 9 mil-
lion people. No single party dominates the political landscape. Thus,
compared to the one-party-dominant systems elsewhere on the African
continent, the Beninese party system configuration shows an interesting
contrast. This chapter seeks to answer two interrelated questions: First,
how exactly does Benin’s party system compare to other party systems
and, more specifically, how should it be classified? Second, what does
the Beninese case suggest about the relationship between party system
configurations and democratic outcomes?
Variation in the ‘format’ or ‘morphology’ of a party system – in
particular, the number of parties and their relative sizes – can influ-
ence democratic outcomes in important ways (see Caramani 2008). This
chapter shows that since 1990 Benin’s party system has been one of
extreme multipartyism, which is rare on the African continent. Follow-
ing Sartori’s (1976) typology, one could call it a pulverized party system.
The literature suggests that such fragmented party systems can have
important consequences for democratic outcomes, yet in the case of
Benin the influence of the party system seems to have been limited
by its transitional nature. The Beninese party system is an intermedi-
ate outcome of other factors, rather than a causal factor in its own right.
More generally, the Beninese case suggests that party system configu-
rations may play only a minor role in effecting democratic outcomes,
especially in countries with very weak levels of party system institu-
tionalization. Nevertheless, in countries with weakly institutionalized
party systems like Benin, extreme multipartyism may be associated not
129
130 Benin
only with electoral instability but also with incentives for moderation
through inter-party coalition-building.
The first part of this chapter presents a brief overview of the theo-
retical and empirical literature and an extended description of Benin’s
party system for the period from 1991 to 2011. The literature shows that
Benin’s party system during the 1990s was relatively unique in terms of
its high levels of fragmentation and ‘pulverization’. Results from subse-
quent elections support the characterization of Benin’s party system as
pulverized, but also indicate that the system has been in transition over
the past two decades, showing a steady decline in party fractionalization
over time. The discussion further highlights the weak institutionaliza-
tion of Benin’s political parties and party system, even in comparison to
others on the continent.
The second part of this chapter is more explorative and deals with the
relationship between party systems and democracy. Benin is generally
considered to have had one of the more successful democratic transi-
tions in sub-Saharan Africa. The country has held multiple competitive
elections, enjoyed three successful alternations of executive power and
avoided the extreme ethnic divisions and conflict that have charac-
terized politics in many of its neighbouring countries (see Gisselquist
2008). While it is tempting to attribute Benin’s exceptional democratic
success to its ‘outlier’ party system, this chapter suggests that Benin’s
party system, given its weak and transitional nature, has not played
a decisive role in effecting the country’s democracy. Indeed, the party
system configuration itself seems to be well explained by electoral
rules, ethnic cleavages, patronage incentives and the country’s post-
authoritarian status, all of which have also arguably been decisive in
bringing about democratic outcomes.
Benin’s transition to multipartyism
This chapter focuses on the party system in Benin’s current democratic

period, which began in 1990, following almost two decades of authori-
tarian rule under General Mathieu Kérékou. Benin’s first political parties
emerged in the 1940s, prior to its independence from France in August
1960 (see Morgenthau 1964; Staniland 1973a, 1973b). Although the
regional divisions expressed in these first political parties are echoed
in politics today, Benin’s early periods of multiparty competition were
short lived and their legacy ambiguous. From 1960 until Kérékou took
power in 1972, the country experienced a succession of coups d’états,
alternating between brief periods of constitutional and military rule.
Rachel Gisselquist 131
With the exception of the Beninese Communist Party, no pre-1990

parties continued to operate after the democratic transition.
Benin returned to democracy through a historic National Conference
held in February 1990 – called a ‘civilian coup d’état’ by Kérékou – which
led to a new government the following month and a new constitution
passed in a referendum at the end of the year. Under the new constitu-
tion, Benin became a presidential republic. The President is elected every
five years and the unicameral legislature (National Assembly) every four
years. Since 2002, Benin has also held communal elections every six
years. The National Assembly initially counted 64 deputies in 1991 and
has since 1995 included 83 deputies.
The country’s first multiparty legislative and presidential elections
were held in February and March 1991, respectively. Subsequently, leg-
islative elections have been held in 1995, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011,
and presidential elections in 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2011. Despite some
irregularities, election results have been endorsed by the international
community.
What is a pulverized party system?
Methods of measuring fragmentation of a party system typically take

into account both the number of parties and their relative sizes and
strength, measured in terms of vote share or legislative seats. The most
commonly used method, Laakso and Taagepera’s (1979) effective number
of parties, is calculated as the inverse of the Herfindahl–Hirschman index
of concentration (Hirschman 1945; Herfindahl 1950).1 Thus, the higher
the value, the more fractionalized the system. Mozaffar and Scarritt
(2005: 399) identify relatively low party system fragmentation2 as one
of the two ‘puzzling features’ of African party systems – the other is high
electoral volatility. Looking at 101 elections in 36 African countries, they
put the mean effective number of legislative parties (ENLP) at 2.06 and
the mean effective number of electoral parties (ENEP) at 2.88 (Mozaffar
and Scarritt 2005: 403). Kuenzi and Lambright (2005: 430) similarly find
a mean ENLP of 2.36 for 33 African countries, with a high of 5.93 in
Benin.
The effective number of parties, however, sometimes fails to distin-
guish certain key characteristics of a party system. For instance, an
ENLP of 2 could describe a two-party system, but also a multiparty sys-
tem composed of one dominant party and a number of small parties.3
Sartori’s (1976) party system typology, which is relevant to the African
context and one of the most commonly used, allows us to distinguish
132 Benin
among such possibilities (Bogaards 2004). For ‘fluid’ or emerging poli-

ties, that is, most political systems in the African context, the typol-
ogy identifies four types of party systems: a ‘dominant-authoritarian’
party system operating in authoritarian regimes and ‘dominant non-
authoritarian’, ‘non-dominant’ and ‘pulverized’ party systems operating
in democratic regimes. Generally, in a ‘dominant non-authoritarian’
party system, one party holds a majority of parliamentary seats; in a
‘non-dominant’ party system, there are up to five parties in parliament
without one having a majority; and in a ‘pulverized’ party system, there
are more than five political parties with parliamentary seats. Relations
between political parties and whether parties are necessary for gov-
ernment formation also matter in Sartori’s classification. This can be
operationalized in terms of the number of parties needed to form a
majority in parliament and/or the number of parties that actually form
the government (Erdmann and Basedau 2007: 21).4
Several studies provide comparative classifications of African party
systems according to Sartori’s typology. Bogaards (2004) classifies the
party systems of all sub-Saharan African countries that had at least three
consecutive multiparty legislative elections at the end of 2002, thus pro-
viding comparative classifications for 18 African countries. Following
Sartori, he considers at least three consecutive elections to be necessary
to classify a party system. Bogaards’ analysis identifies Benin (based on
the 1991, 1995 and 1999 elections) as having the only ‘pulverized’ party
system on the African continent. By comparison, nine countries have
either ‘dominant-authoritarian’ or ‘dominant non-authoritarian’ party
systems, while seven are considered ‘non-dominant’. Erdmann and
Basedau (2007) similarly identify Benin as having the only pulverized
party system in Africa.
Party system institutionalization
In Sartori’s typology, different categorizations are made for party systems

in ‘fluid’ versus ‘structured’ polities.5 This distinction is closely related to
the level of party system institutionalization.6 Categorizing systems into
these two groups, however, can mask the variation that exists in levels
of institutionalization across ‘fluid’ polities. As Lindberg (2007) summa-
rizes, higher levels of institutionalization are considered to be conducive
to democracy because ‘parties can only satisfactorily fulfil many of their
presumed democratic functions – such as recruitment of future leaders,
aggregation of interests, and accountability – if the configuration of par-
ties remains relatively stable’ (215; see Huntington 1968). Higher levels
of institutionalization are also associated with lower levels of electoral

volatility and higher electoral legitimacy, both factors tied to democratic
consolidation.
In Mainwaring and Scully’s (1995) classic framework, an institution-
alized party system meets four conditions: (1) the rules and nature of
inter-party competition are stable; (2) major parties have stable roots in
society; (3) major political actors treat the electoral process as legitimate;
and (4) parties are organized, not subordinate to leaders, and territorially
comprehensive. Kuenzi and Lambright (2001) extend this framework
from its original application in Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa, pro-
viding comparative data for 30 African countries that had at least two
consecutive elections. In their analysis, party system institutionalization
is measured using a modified scale based on eight indicators designed
to capture Mainwaring and Scully’s first three criteria. The fourth crite-
rion, party organization, is not included in their analysis because the
data available allowed only for impressionistic rather than systematic
comparison.
Kuenzi and Lambright (2001) measure Mainwaring and Scully’s first
criterion, the stability of inter-party competition, using Pedersen’s
(1979) index of volatility for both legislative (lower chamber) and
presidential elections, along with a measure of presidential–legislative
difference calculated as the percentage of votes captured by a party in
a presidential election minus the percentage of seats won by the same
party in the corresponding legislative election.7 The second criterion of
party system institutionalization is assessed using the percentage of leg-
islative seats held by parties formed by 1970 and either the average age
of the parties that obtained at least 10 per cent of seats in the last par-
liamentary election or the average age of the two parties that received
the most votes. Kuenzi and Lambright (2001) assess the third crite-
rion by using three indicators: whether any major party boycotted the
election, whether losers accepted results and whether the international
community accepted the results as free and fair.
Kuenzi and Lambright (2001) find that the majority of African coun-
tries have ‘inchoate’ party systems. Based on the period 1991–1999,
Benin’s aggregate score of 5 places it on the low end of the scale of party
system institutionalization, with other scores ranging from a low of 3
(Comoros, least institutionalized) to a high of 9 (Botswana, most institu-
tionalized). Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Mauritania and Zambia
join Benin with aggregate scores of 5. In terms of the first criterion,
Benin’s mean rate of electoral volatility was exceeded only by that of
Mauritius and Lesotho, while the presidential–legislative difference was
134 Benin
the highest at 68. In terms of the second criterion, Benin’s parties are
clearly among the youngest. No parties that held legislative seats were
formed before 1970 and the average age of the parties that won at least
10 per cent of seats was just seven and a half years. By comparison, the
average age for more than half of the countries in the study was at least
twice that, with a high of 48.5 years for South Africa. Only six coun-
tries had an average party age that was less than Benin’s, with a low of
5 for Niger. Benin’s aggregate score was boosted by the relatively strong
acceptance and perceived legitimacy of its elections.
Erdmann and Basedau (2007), by comparison, classify party systems
in 32 African countries using different but related indicators of insti-
tutionalization and identify 16 party systems (including Benin’s) as
‘inchoate’ and 16 as ‘institutionalized’.8 Lindberg (2007) identifies eight
(of 21) African electoral democracies as ‘fluid’ (including Benin), two as
‘de-stabilized’ and 11 as ‘stable’. ‘Fluid’ party systems furthermore tend
to have a higher number of legislative parties than ‘stable’ systems – an
average of 8.5 versus 4.0 (Lindberg 2007: 239).
In addition, Erdmann and Basedau (2007) identify the level of polar-
ization as an important party system characteristic that is tied to
democratic outcomes. Among African parties, ideological and program-
matic differences tend to be minor (Manning 2005). However, observers
have expressed concern about ethnic polarization, in particular, the pos-
sibility that elections will become ‘winner-take-all exercises between
polarised communities, rather than the arena for multi-ethnic nego-
tiations that result in broad governing coalitions, either within or
across parties’ (van de Walle and Butler 1999: 24). van de Walle and
Butler (1999: 24), for one, find that in the 1990s this concern did not
become a reality, with Congo-Brazzaville and Burundi being important
exceptions.
How should the Beninese party system be classified?
Building on the literature summarized above, this section focuses on

three aspects of the Beninese party system: the number of political par-
ties, the type of party system according to the typologies of Sartori
and van de Walle and Butler and the institutionalization of party
organizations.
Counting parties
As noted above, the sheer number of political parties participating in
Beninese elections is remarkable. In 1991, 79 parties were officially
registered (Degboe 1995: 75–76). By 1998, that number was 118 (Creevy
Table 7.1 Number of parliamentary groups in Benin since 1991
Election Total nr of Nr of groups Nr of groups Nr of seats – Effective nr of

year parliamentary winning seats winning seats in largest legislative
groups in two or this election only parliamentary parties – ENLP
more elections group∗
1991 12 4 8 12∗∗ 8.79

1995 18 10 8 21 6.68
1999 16 8 8 27 6.16
2003∗∗∗ 12 8 4 31 4.79
2007 12 5 7 35 3.89
2011 8 1 7 41 2.64
Notes: ∗ In all elections the smallest parliamentary group won one seat, except in 2011 when
the smallest group counted two seats.
∗∗ In 1991, the total number of parliamentary seats was 64; since the 1995 elections it has
been 83.
∗∗∗ In 2003, eight parliamentary groups, with a total of 52 seats, supported or were part of
the so-called Presidential Movement, while the opposition included four groups together
holding a total of 31 seats.
et al. 2005: 473). In 2007, 106 political groups were registered with the
Ministry of the Interior (Stroh 2008: 56–57, based on République du
Bénin, Direction des Affaires Intérieures, 14 June 2007).
Table 7.1 shows the number of political groups (i.e. political parties
as well as party alliances) that managed to win seats in Benin’s legisla-
tive elections since 1991. A number of these parliamentary groups won
seats in two or more elections. This is included in the third column
of the table.9 As Table 7.1 shows, more than half of all parliamentary
groups earned representation in only one election, signifying high levels
of electoral volatility. The relatively high number of newly represented
groups in the elections of 2007 and 2011 illustrates changes in the party
political landscape since the election of President Thomas Yayi Boni
in 2006.
Overall, the absolute number of political groups with representation
in the legislature has declined over time from 12 in 1991 and 18 in 1995
to eight in 2011.10 The ENLP based on the Laasko–Taagepera calculation
also shows a clear pattern of decline, from a high of 8.79 in 1991 to a
low of 2.64 in 2011. Indeed, Benin’s ENLP for 2011 is similar to mean
ENLPs calculated for the Africa region as a whole (Kuenzi and Lambright
2005; Mozaffar and Scarritt 2005).11
A pulverized party system?

Since 1991, Benin has clearly had what van de Walle and Butler call
a ‘fragmented’ party system. As Table 7.2 shows, no single party has
won a majority of seats in any parliamentary election, although the
136 Benin
Table 7.2 Results of parliamentary and presidential elections in Benin since

1991
Year Winning party Vote share Seat share Seat share

winner, winner, par- runner-up,
presidential liamentary parliamentary
1991 UTRD 36.3∗ 18.8 14.1

1995 PRB – 25.3 22.9
1999 PRB – 32.5 13.3
2001 FARD – Alafia 45.4∗ – –
2003 UBF – 37.3 18.1
2007 FCBE – 42.2 24.1
2011 Independent – FCBE 53.1 49.4 36.1
Notes: – indicates that only parliamentary elections or only presidential elections were
held in that year. In Benin, members of parliament serve a four-year term, while the
president is elected for a five-year term, thus the variation in the years of election.
∗ In some presidential elections a second round was needed for a presidential candidate
to gain more than 50 per cent of the votes. The vote shares of the winner of the second
round were as follows: Benin 1991 67.7 per cent; Benin 1996 52.5 per cent; Benin 2001
83.6 per cent; Benin 2006 74.6 per cent.
UBF, Union for the Benin of the Future; UTRD, Union for the Triumph of Democratic
Renewal.
Cauri Forces for an Emerging Benin (FCBE) came very close in 2011.
Similarly, using Sartori’s party system typology, Benin’s party system
should be classified as pulverized. Every parliamentary election has seen
more than five political parties win seats in the National Assembly.
The number of parties needed to form a majority in parliament and
the number of parties that actually formed the government has also
exceeded five.
However, there are some signs of change, in particular a possible shift
towards less fragmentation. In 2003, the Presidential Movement, a coali-
tion composed of multiple smaller parties, won an absolute majority in
parliament (52 of 83 seats) and in subsequent elections similar coali-
tions have won a plurality of parliamentary seats. In 2007, 42 per cent
of parliamentary seats were won by the FCBE, a coalition in support of
President Yayi, who was elected in 2006. In 2011, Yayi won a second
term – the first president elected without the need for a second round
of voting – and the FCBE won just under 50 per cent of the seats in the
National Assembly.
Weak institutionalization
As described above, the literature indicates that Benin’s party system is
weakly institutionalized in terms of the stability of inter-party competi-
tion and of party roots in society, even in comparison with other ‘fluid’
polities in sub-Saharan Africa. On the other hand, the electoral pro-
cess has been generally respected as legitimate by key political actors.
The 2001 presidential election was the exception. The camp support-
ing Nicéphore Soglo (including the Renaissance Party of Benin – PRB)
claimed there had been electoral fraud and refused to participate in the
second round of the presidential polls, thus paving the way for a contest
between Kérékou and Bruno Amoussou.
The characterization of Benin’s party system as very weakly institu-
tionalized is underscored by the data in Table 7.1, which illustrate how
dramatically the party landscape has shifted over time with the emer-
gence of new parties and new alliances in each election. Indeed, of
the groups that earned representation in the 2011 elections only the
FCBE had seats in a previous legislature, but the FCBE was itself a relative
newcomer, having entered the political scene only in 2007.
Most literature has focused on the first three of Mainwaring and
Scully’s criteria for party system institutionalization but evidence sug-
gests that Benin’s party system is also weakly institutionalized according
to the fourth criterion. As Kuenzi and Lambright (2001: 441) state,
‘in an institutionalised party system, parties are generally not subordi-
nate to other political or private entities, have routinised procedures,
are relatively cohesive, have an independent and sufficient resource
base, and are “territorially comprehensive” ([Mainwaring and Scully]
1995: 5)’. Benin’s parties, by contrast, are subordinate to individual lead-
ers, adopt ad hoc procedures (or are so new that procedures have not yet
been developed), lack cohesion, frequently dissolve or divide to form
new electoral entities, are reliant on their leaders and a small group
of supporters for financing and are clearly linked to ethno-regional
fiefdoms.
Even the strongest political parties in Benin have been closely asso-
ciated with the individual ambitions of their leaders. These have
included former President Soglo and his wife Rosine Soglo of the
PRB, Adrien Houngbedji of the Democratic Renewal Party (PRD) and
Bruno Amoussou of the Social Democratic Party (PSD). Former President
Kérékou was not technically a member of any party, but the Action Front
for Renewal and Development (FARD-Alafia) was closely identified with
him. Although party congresses are held, the elected party leaders are
rarely a surprise, and the internal organization of parties is not regulated
138 Benin
by law (Engels et al. 2008). The lack of cohesion within parties can also
be seen in the regular movement of politicians between parties, which
is popularly referred to as ‘political transhumance’ (Bierschenk 2009:
18–19).
In terms of funding, parties have been legally required to make their
sources public and relatively modest funding limits have been estab-
lished under the Electoral Code. All candidates who receive a certain
minimum percentage of the vote can expect partial reimbursement of
campaign expenses from the state. In practice, however, political par-
ties do not receive state funding and laws regulating party funding are
routinely violated (see Akpovo 1997). A significant portion of campaign
spending is off the books, coming in from campaign supporters in cash
and kind. Support by business people who rely on government contracts
has contributed significantly to the rise of corruption among politicians
(Bierschenk 2009: 19; Bako-Arifari 1995).
As in many other African countries, Beninese parties are virtually
indistinguishable in ideological terms (see Stroh 2008: 66–68). Further-
more, comparative surveys in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana and
Niger suggest that perceived differences among Beninese parties are even
smaller than in other West African countries (Stroh 2008: 68–69).
However, Beninese parties can be distinguished by their ethno-
regional support bases (Degboe 1995; Banegas 2003). The PRB of the
Soglos is based in the south and centre and especially in the depart-
ment of Zou. The PRD is based in Ouémé and the southeast. Its leader,
Houngbedji, is from Ouémé’s capital, Porto Novo. The PSD, with its
leader Amoussou coming from Couffo, is based in the southwest. FARD-
Alafia and the other Kérékist parties have been strongest in the north,
Kérékou’s home base.
Notably, despite the ethno-regional bases of most political parties,
ethnic polarization has not been pronounced. Divisive ethnic issues
that have occurred in other countries, such as territorial autonomy
or national language policy, have not played a central role in the
competition between Benin’s political parties. Rather, ethno-regional
support revolves around promises of jobs, public services and other
financial incentives. Furthermore, in many ethno-regions there has
been competition between parties. While the main political parties
draw most of their support from a particular region, in all regions
several parties compete for votes. This means that factors other
than ethno-regional identity are relevant to voters’ choices, including
financial incentives and electoral promises, the personal qualities of
candidates and organizational capital (Lalèyè 2008; see also Battle and
Seely 2007).
What are the consequences for democracy in Benin?
The theoretical and empirical literature suggests that African countries

with fragmented party systems eventually display one of two outcomes:
democratic breakdown or, if democracy survives, a higher quality of
democracy with stronger respect for civil and political liberties (Sartori
1976; van de Walle and Butler 1999). In both outcomes, the crucial
mechanism is political competition, which is expected to be more
intense in a fragmented party system.
In the Beninese case, which is generally considered to have had one
of the more successful democratic transitions in sub-Saharan Africa, the
first outcome has clearly not come to pass. There is some evidence
of the second outcome. The quality of democracy and the degree of
respect for civil and political liberties can be assessed using Freedom
House data. These data show relatively good scores for Benin since
1991. Although Benin’s record has not been perfect, it ranks as ‘free’
throughout the period and compares well to many other countries on
the continent.
The fragmentation of the Beninese party system appears to have
played a role in facilitating coalition politics, creating incentives for
moderation and inter-ethnic collaboration through inter-party alliances
that would be less likely in other party systems. For instance, all pres-
idential elections since 1991 – with the exception of the 2011 polls –
have been won in a second round of voting in which the winning
majority was achieved through coalition-building. Thus, presidential
candidates fashioned together electoral and governing majorities from
a multitude of parties with their own ethno-regional bases. More-
over, the fragmented nature of the party system has meant that party
alliances have shifted frequently, which has arguably forced political
collaboration among diverse groups and helped to reduce ethnic polar-
ization. On the other hand, despite Benin’s democratic success, it seems
unlikely that the role of the party system structure has been decisive
in bringing about democratic outcomes. For one, political competition
in Benin has not been as rigorous as one might expect in a pulver-
ized party system. Although power may be less centralized than in
countries where a founding leader has dominated politics, power is
more centralized than the party system structure suggests. For instance,
140 Benin
from 1991 until 200612 Soglo (PRB) and Kérékou (FARD-Alafia) were
the only clear contenders for the presidency, and since 2006, Yayi
(FCBE) has dominated Beninese politics. As Bierschenk (2009:17–18)
summarizes:
There are in fact two types of political parties in Benin: Only a hand-
ful dominates national political life and accounts for 80 per cent of
the seats in Parliament. [ . . . ] The other 100 parties or so do not aspire
to win elections and do not even seriously aim at being represented
in Parliament. The creation of a party and the participation in an
election are, in the majority of cases, rather a means for individual
local political leaders and their followers to measure their political
weight in the hope of being granted positions in government after
the elections.
Variation over time in the structure of the Beninese party system also
suggests that its role has not been decisive. As the previous section
demonstrated, since 1991 there has been a decline in party system
fragmentation, measured in terms of the effective number of parties.
However, as noted above, there seems to be little change in the quality
of democracy over time. If we accept that moderate levels of fragmen-
tation are most conducive to democracy, we would have expected an
improvement in the quality of democracy as fragmentation declined,
but there is little evidence of this relationship between the party system
and democratic success as yet.
Moreover, given the fluid nature of Beninese post-transition politics,
it may simply be too early to classify the party system as ‘pulverized’
or extremely ‘fragmented’ on the basis of only three consecutive elec-
tions. Indeed, in 2011, the FCBE supported by President Yayi won a
plurality of the vote, and along with four other parties13 achieved a
pro-Yayi majority in parliament. If such trends continue, the Beninese
party system may have to be classified differently and would cease to
be an outlier on the African continent. It is important to note that this
sort of evolution of the party system is not surprising given its relative
youth and low level of institutionalization. Indeed, new party systems in
other post-authoritarian democracies have similarly changed or rather
consolidated over time (Olson 1998).
Finally, it is problematic to expect Beninese parties in their current
state to fulfil the traditional party functions of representation, inter-
est mediation, political recruitment and so on, that is, the roles that
make parties important contributors to democratic governance and
consolidation. As noted above, the level of party system institutional-

ization in Benin is extremely low, even relative to other sub-Saharan
African countries. Indeed, given the low levels of party membership and
affiliation, the role parties have played in politics in the first few decades
of Benin’s democracy appears to have been fairly limited. According to a
2006 survey, for instance, only a quarter of respondents identified them-
selves as members of a political party, while 62 per cent agreed that
parties had minor influence on public policy (Olodo and Sossou 2008:
115). According to the 2005 and 2008 Afrobarometer surveys, only 33
and 36 per cent of Beninois, respectively, feel close to any particular
party.14
The party system as an intermediate outcome
The transitional nature of the Beninese party system, together with its
institutional weakness, suggests that it has not played a decisive role
in Benin’s democratic outcomes. Indeed, although the focus of this
chapter is on the characterization and consequences of the Beninese
party system, and not on its causes, the system itself might be bet-
ter understood as an intermediate outcome. It is worth briefly noting
several factors that, according to the literature and political observers,
might explain the structure of the Beninese party system and in turn
may also have influenced the country’s democratic outcomes. These
include the magnitude of electoral districts, the high ethno-political
fractionalization combined with geographic concentration, the dynam-
ics of post-authoritarian politics, the lack of thresholds for legislative
representation and patronage incentives.
In their study of African party systems, Mozaffar et al. (2003) offer
a clear explanation for Benin’s party system that hinges on the first
two factors mentioned above. They find that the number of parties
is a function of district magnitude as well as ethno-political fragmen-
tation and concentration. According to the authors, if ethno-political
fragmentation is high and groups are geographically concentrated,
as in Benin, large district magnitudes tend to increase the num-
ber of parties (Mozaffar et al. 2003: 387).15 This argument builds on
the well-established finding that the number of parties and party
fractionalization increases with district magnitude (Rae 1971; Taagepera
and Shugart 1989; Lijphart 1994; Ordeshook and Shvetsova 1994;
Cox 1997).
The analysis of Mozaffar et al. (2003) focused on Benin’s earli-
est parliamentary elections, when district magnitude was high. It is
142 Benin
interesting to note that in later elections, district magnitude was reduced

(Erdmann and Basedau 2007: 13;). Carey and Hix (2008) give the district
magnitude at 10.67 in 1991, 4.67 in 1995 and 4.61 in 1999. As Mozaffar,
Scarritt and Galaich’s argument predicts, the period 1991 to 1995
saw a decline in the effective number of parties as district magnitude
was reduced, while ethno-political fractionalization and concentration
remained constant.
Creevy et al. (2005) highlight the importance of Benin’s post-
authoritarian status for the proliferation of parties, arguing that, as a
result of the political restrictions under authoritarian rule, candidates
and parties in early competitive elections had very little informa-
tion about their electoral support and mobilization strategies. Thus,
they typically relied on ‘familiar sources of information’, in particu-
lar knowledge about diverse ethnic groups and their geographic dis-
tribution (Creevy et al. 2005: 273–274). As this explanation would
predict, the effective number of parties in Benin has declined over
time as more varied information has become available to political
actors.
Finally, political observers in Benin highlight the final two factors
mentioned above – the lack of thresholds for legislative representation
and patronage incentives. Both of these factors tend to increase the
rewards of party formation relative to the costs. Given a lack of electoral
thresholds, even political parties with just a few percentages of the vote
have won legislative seats in Beninese elections. And in Benin’s frag-
mented system, even a few seats can be important for coalition-building.
Thus, relatively minor candidates and parties can hold valuable bargain-
ing power and secure government positions and other rewards for party
leaders. The two factors help to explain Benin’s relatively high rates of
party fractionalization overall, but because both have been present since
1991, they do not explain very well why these rates have declined over
time. In recent years, the government has undertaken some steps to
change the status quo through the passage of new legislation which
introduces obstacles for candidates with very low vote shares. For the
2006 presidential elections, for instance, the National Assembly agreed
that all candidates would be required to make a financial deposit upon
the declaration of their candidacy and that the amount would be
returned to candidates receiving at least 10 per cent of the vote in the
first round.16 Whether such measures are enforced and whether they
will work to discourage new party formations over time remain open
questions.
Conclusion
The literature highlights several ways in which Benin has been an

outlier in sub-Saharan Africa. First, its party system has been extremely
fragmented. It is the only country on the continent with a pulverized
party system and has seen some of the highest rates of party system
fractionalization, measured in terms of the effective number of parties.
Benin’s party system is also very weakly institutionalized, with some of
the highest rates of electoral volatility and the youngest parties in Africa.
Second, Benin stands out in terms of its democratic transition, which
was one of the first in the fourth wave of African transitions since 1989
and is considered to have been one of the most successful.
This chapter has highlighted these two important aspects of Beninese
politics, and their relationship, focusing first on characterizing the
Beninese party system and then exploring its consequences for democ-
racy. In characterizing the party system, it builds on and extends existing
analyses, providing new data and a description over time that show
not only that the Beninese party system can be categorized through
the 2000s as fragmented and pulverized, but also that the system is in
transition. In particular, declining rates of fractionalization over time,
measured in terms of the effective number of parties, are notable.
The literature suggests that the level of party system fragmentation
may influence democratic outcomes, particularly through party compe-
tition and instability. Given Benin’s extreme fragmentation, we would
expect such predictions to hold up, but Benin’s party system appears to
have had a limited effect on democratic outcomes. Indeed, because of
its weak and transitional nature, it is better understood as an intermedi-
ate outcome, influenced by other factors that have also directly affected
Benin’s democratic outcomes. These factors include its electoral system,
the country’s ethnic cleavage structure, patronage politics and its post-
authoritarian status. However, in spite of its weakness, the Beninese
party system has played a role in facilitating political moderation by cre-
ating incentives for coalition-building across parties with diverse ethnic
constituencies.
Benin’s party system has been more fragmented and less institution-
alized than perhaps any other on the continent, but it may nevertheless
highlight dynamics evident in less extreme cases. One example is
Mauritius which seems to have experienced incentives for political mod-
eration through coalition-building similar to Benin (Bräutigam 1997:
53). The extent to which dynamics that encourage coalition-building
144 Benin
and inter-party cooperation occur in other fragmented party systems,

and whether they also exist in other party systems, is a point worthy of
further investigation.
Notes

1. Calculated as 1/ i p2 , where p is the proportion held by the ith party.
2. Measured in terms of the effective number of legislative parties (ENLP),
effective number of electoral parties (ENEP) and four other indicators.
3. For instance, if one party receives 70 per cent of seats and six parties receive
5 per cent of seats each, the ENLP is 1.98.
4. They note: ‘In cases (e.g. Benin) where the winning party was already a coali-
tion on a joint list and three or four other parties were necessary to obtain
an absolute majority in parliament, we classified them as “pulverized” ’ (21).
5. Analogous classifications are made (e.g. ‘pulverized’ corresponds to ‘atom-
ized’), and the ‘non-dominant’ category is further disaggregated.
6. More precisely, the key distinction for Sartori (1976) is whether a solidly
entrenched mass party exists.
7. Pedersen’s index is calculated as the sum of the net changes in the percentage
of seats (or votes) won by each party from election to election, divided by
two.
8. In their classification, a party system is ‘inchoate’ if there have been fewer
than three consecutive elections; if there has been a period of undemocratic
rule or civil unrest, or a coup or civil war; or the volatility of seats measured
using Pedersen’s (1979) index is less than 40, and the average party age is
less than 15 years or less than the years since the post-1990 founding elec-
tions (pp. 9–10). Benin is classified as inchoate because of the third set of
indicators.
9. Some of the remaining groups are alliances that include parties that have
won seats individually or in other alliances in other elections; however, they
have not previously won seats together.
10. High numbers of candidates are also seen in presidential elections. Thirteen
candidates competed in the 1991 presidential elections, seven in 1996, 17 in
2001, 28 in 2006 and 14 in 2011.
11. It is worth noting that the definition of a political party adopted in these
calculations as well as in this chapter follows Sartori’s approach: Parties are
‘any political group identified by an official label that presents at elections,
and is capable of placing through elections (free or non-free), candidates
for public office’ (Sartori 2005 [1976]: 56). Thus, party alliances that partic-
ipated in elections for which vote and seat shares cannot be disaggregated
are treated as indistinguishable from ‘parties’ in the calculation of ENLP and
ENEP.
12. In 2006, age limits in the constitution prohibited both Soglo and Kérékou
from participating in the presidential race.
13. Amana Alliance, Strength in Unity Alliance (AFU), Cauris 2 Alliance, Union
for Benin (UB).
14. Based on Online Data Analysis at www.afrobarometer.org, last accessed
3 August 2012.
15. By contrast, if ethno-political fragmentation is high but groups are not con-
centrated, as in South Africa, large district magnitudes tend to reduce the
number of parties.
16. Article 12 of Loi no. 2005–2026 définissant les règles particulières pour l’élection
du president de la République, voted by the National Assembly on 18 July 2005,
and author’s observation of Assembly discussions on 18 July 2005.
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8
Zambia: Dominance Won and Lost
Dan Paget
The Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) was formed to end

almost 20 years of single party rule by the United National Inde-
pendence Party (UNIP) and reinstate a democratic regime in Zambia.
In 1991, in the first elections since Zambia’s reintroduction of multi-
partyism, the MMD won an overwhelming majority and its victory was
hailed as a sign of a brighter future (Chikulo 1993). However, in the
subsequent years that the MMD was in power the party used less demo-
cratic and clientelist methods to preserve its position as Zambia’s ruling
party. By 2011, when the MMD lost the presidency to the Patriotic Front
(PF), it had become a party much like the one it had been formed to
displace.
This chapter traces the political strategies of the MMD since 1991 and
describes how it won and lost its dominant position in the Zambian
political landscape. During its first decade in power, from 1991 until
2001, the MMD won its dominance at the ballot box. The party subse-
quently lost its electoral dominance in the 2001 elections but remained
in power and managed to maintain its dominant position by other, less
democratic means until its defeat in the elections of 2011. This chapter
examines the different strategies the MMD used to ensure its continued
dominance before and after the watershed elections of 2001. It shows
the hubris of the ruling party and how its actions undid the effective-
ness of its strategies and ultimately led to its defeat. The chapter also
sheds light on the rise of the PF and argues that the MMD had a hand
in creating the party which would eventually defeat it. In sum, this
chapter describes how Zambia’s party system has changed over time,
showing how complex it can be to classify party systems in the African
context.
148
Dan Paget 149
The MMD’s dominance and its attrition
The length of the MMD’s rule – from 1991 to 2011 – marks it as a dom-
inant party. A number of scholars define one-party dominance in terms
of longevity: the ability of a party to win control of political institutions
consistently over time. The MMD controlled Zambia’s presidency for
four terms, which means it passes the 15-year benchmark employed by
Bogaards (2004) as well as the 20-year benchmark discussed by Blondel
(1968), Greene (2011) and Dunleavy (2011). However, the MMD does
not qualify as a dominant party according to Ware’s (1996) definition,
which states that the party in question should ‘usually win’. As Table 8.1
shows, after winning a more than two-thirds majority in the 1991 and
1996 elections, the MMD fell short of a parliamentary majority in the
elections of 2001 and managed to hold on to the presidency with only
29 per cent of the votes.
Most definitions of dominance do not include the outcome of presi-
dential elections although the spirit of most theories seems to suggest
that a dominant party should control both the presidency and the
legislature (Bogaards 2004). Thus, some might argue that the MMD’s
dominance ended in 2001 and indeed, Rakner and Svasand do this
(2004). However, while the MMD did not win a majority in the National
Assembly in 2001, it was soon able to form one. The party quickly man-
aged to get its preferred candidate for the position of Speaker of the
National Assembly elected, and subsequently acquired a parliamentary
majority by co-opting opposition MPs into the party.
Table 8.1 Results of parliamentary and presidential elections in Zambia
Year Winning party Vote share Seat share Seat share

winner, winner, par- runner-up,
presidential liamentary parliamentary
1991 MMD 75.8 83.3 16.7

1996 MMD 72.6 87.3 3.3
2001 MMD 29.2 46.0 32.7
2006 MMD 43.0 48.0 29.3
2008 MMD 40.6 – –
2011 PF 42.9 40.0 36.7
Notes: – indicates that only presidential elections were held in 2008, due to the death
of sitting president Mwanawasa.
150 Zambia
Most definitions of dominance, including those by Sartori (1976),

Ware (1996) and Bogaards (2004) speak to the importance of the dom-
inant party winning control of political institutions. Consequently, the
MMD’s poor showing in 2001 and its vote and seat shares thereafter –
the highest of which was 48 per cent of the seats in the 2008 parlia-
mentary elections – do not necessarily mean that the party was not
dominant. After all, it controlled both the presidency and the legisla-
ture until 2011. The MMD’s weak election results during its last decade
in power do set the party apart from the dominant parties in Botswana,
Namibia and South Africa, discussed elsewhere in this volume, which
achieved their dominance at the ballot box. Admittedly, the MMD’s loss
in the 2001 elections signifies the collapse of its electoral support. Thus,
the party had to achieve its continued dominance by other means.
In some party systems with one dominant party, policy preferences
play an important role. Dunleavy (2011) offers a concept of one-party
dominance that is based on policy preferences. In his analysis, a dom-
inant party holds a particular position on a policy spectrum, and this
position is aligned to a cluster of policy preferences held by voters;
the dominant party acquires ways to prevent other parties from cap-
turing these votes. This type of policy alignment did not occur in
Zambia. In fact, the MMD’s means of attaining a dominant position
were markedly different. Instead of aligning the policy position of the
party to policy preferences of voters, the preferences of the MMD seem
to have drifted away from the preferences of the electorate.
Bogaards (2004) follows Sartori (1976) in distinguishing between
dominant parties and dominant-authoritarian parties, the latter being
political parties that achieve dominance by using authoritarian meth-
ods. He notes that some authors have identified the MMD as such an
authoritarian dominant party, while others have not. Simutanyi (2013),
for example, describes the MMD as having ‘manufactured’ its dominant
position by co-opting opposition party members and using clientelist
exchanges to become ‘artificially’ dominant. The differences in these
characterizations of the MMD show not only the extent to which
Zambia’s ruling party and its party system have been in flux but also
how difficult it can be to classify African party systems. They also reflect
differences in time. While less democratic methods were used by MMD
between 1997 and 2001 to secure its position in power, the party aban-
doned these tactics in the early 2000s and turned to clientelist methods
instead.
Be that as it may, the methods the MMD employed to maintain its
position as Zambia’s ruling party from 1991 to 2011 were part of a
Dan Paget 151
broader struggle over the quality, rules and practice of democracy in

Zambia. Lindberg (2009) argues that elections can best be understood in
the context of a larger competition aimed at contesting electoral rules
and defining the way in which elections are conducted. As the MMD
faced electoral challenges in the course of its two decades in power,
it has turned from one strategy to another. At first, the party’s use of
less democratic methods was infrequent and often clumsy and heavy
handed. This gave the MMD’s opponents opportunities to mobilize pub-
lic opinion against the party’s abuse of power. When public opinion
turned against the MMD, the ruling party shifted to clientelist tactics
that required more discretion and exposed it to fewer confrontations
with civil society. However, as time passed, criticism of the clientelist
methods of the MMD grew, and civil society and opposition parties
rallied against such tactics until they too became too costly and less
effective.
While the MMD’s dominance had ramifications for democracy in
Zambia, the ways in which the party achieved its dominance did too.
By using undemocratic measures to defend its position in the 1990s,
it directly violated the democratic process. After its electoral defeat
in 2001, the MMD was careful not to interfere with the democratic
process directly, but instead used indirect methods including break-
ing up the opposition and nurturing clientelist linkages with voters.
These indirect tactics employed after 2001 were equally damaging to
the quality of democracy in Zambia. Scholars of dominant parties in
sub-Saharan Africa have observed different ways in which dominant
parties can divide, weaken or co-opt opposition parties (van de Walle
2003; Rakner and van de Walle 2009). In Zambia, the MMD under-
mined several opposition parties in turn through the co-option of party
leaders. By increasing the rate at which political elites moved between
parties, the MMD undermined not only public trust in the opposition
but also the viability of the opposition parties. But the ruling party itself
also became less democratic in the process. By increasingly relying on
clientelist strategies to mobilize the electorate, the MMD encouraged
a type of voter–party linkage that is non-programmatic and ultimately
undemocratic in nature.
In 2011, the MMD’s dominance came to an end when it lost the pres-
idency and its position as the largest party in the National Assembly
to the main opposition party, the PF. Despite the MMD’s willingness to
adapt – which it had demonstrated throughout its 20 years in power –
the party proved unable to contain the PF. The main reason for this lies
in the MMD’s change of tactics. The MMD’s shift to clientelist strategies
152 Zambia
after 2001 opened up new spaces for opposition politics, which the
PF was well suited to take advantage of. Specifically, the MMD’s poli-
cies and actions in government and the party’s ethno-regional choices
in the course of 2002 and 2003 left room for a challenge from a left,
populist and Bemba-speaking opposition party. The MMD provided the
PF with an opportunity to grow and, in this way, fashioned the oppo-
nent that eventually defeated it. The PF, in turn, operated and developed
its support in a party system dominated by the MMD and was shaped
by opportunities provided by the dominant party.
The inherent weakness of the MMD
Dominance came naturally to the MMD in its early years. The party
was formed in 1990, with the express intent of dislodging UNIP and
its single-party regime. UNIP oversaw the economic decline of Zambia
since copper prices collapsed in 1974. By 1987, the country had already
undergone two rounds of structural adjustment, neither of which was
completed, and the economy was in a state of crisis. The protests and
civil disorder of 1983 and 1987 and a failed coup attempt in 1990 were
visible signs of the regime’s falling support. In 1990, the MMD was sup-
ported by a broad coalition united primarily by its desire to oust UNIP
and establish a multiparty democracy. UNIP’s crushing defeats in the
elections of 1991 and 1996 are representative of the widespread disap-
proval of UNIP and an expression of the desire for change. The MMD
became the natural champion of that change, and its landslide victo-
ries reflect the support it attained as the flagbearer of the new regime.
However, while there was some consensus among elites of what the
substance of the change might be – neo-liberal economic reforms –
there is little evidence that this consensus was shared by the population
at large.
A number of authors have commented that the MMD did not win
support on the basis of its ideological or policy position (Burnell 2001;
Erdmann 2007). Larmer and Fraser (2007) go as far as to suggest that
MMD voters were consistently at odds with the policy agenda that the
MMD pursued. Supporters of MMD were united more by what they were
against – UNIP and economic decline – than by what they were for. As a
consequence, the almost natural support that the MMD seemed to have
in 1991 and 1996 faded away, and the party had to find other ways to
garner votes. This proved difficult especially because the MMD’s own
party infrastructure was anaemic, unable to effectively access resources
or reach out to voters to mobilize support. The party’s organizational
Dan Paget 153
weakness was built deeply into its relationships with the state and civil
society. In this respect, the MMD differed from other dominant parties.
Until 1990, in the face of an authoritarian state and efficient secret
police, opponents of UNIP were reluctant to make their opposition
public (Cheeseman 2006). Thus, the MMD only started to build its orga-
nizational infrastructure once its founding members dared to register
the movement in the run up to the 1990 referendum about the rein-
troduction of multiparty elections in Zambia. Early on, the movement
was run by a small group of leaders which meant that there was lit-
tle in the way of party structures and mobilization channels. Although
the MMD benefited from UNIP’s unpopularity and a long economic cri-
sis (Bates and Collier 1995), its effective mobilization relied heavily on
trade union resources and the personal networks of its leading members.
Consequently, the MMD as a political party was formed in a relatively
short period of time and developed only loose and informal organiza-
tional structures. Frederick Chiluba, the MMD’s first elected president,
was previously the president of the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions
(ZCTU), and through him and other trade union associates in the party,
the MMD was able to rely on extra-party trade union resources in the
run up to the 1991 elections (Lebas 2011). In subsequent years, how-
ever, the MMD, instead of building on these linkages, marginalized its
early support base.
In the past, UNIP had brought the trade unions and other parts
of civil society, including business groups, into corporatist structures
through which demands could be channelled (Rakner 1992; Akwetey
1994). These structures also provided ways for the party to prevent trade
union opposition and to tie the unions to the party. By contrast, the
MMD disentangled itself from civil society organizations, in particular
trade unions, in two ways. Inside the party, unions were granted no
form of direct inclusion or representation and so their presence in the
MMD was never institutionalized (Bartlett 2002). Moreover, the MMD’s
neo-liberal policies, in particular the privatization of state-owned enter-
prises, antagonized the unionized workforce and emphasized the policy
differences between the party and the unions (Rakner 2011). By the late
1990s, the trade unions had separated from the MMD, leaving the party
organizationally weaker.
At the same time, the MMD did not invest in its party structures
nor seek to increase the organizational strength of the party. Follow-
ing Chiluba’s re-election in 1996, the MMD overlooked party reforms
(Lebas 2011). Given the party’s overwhelming parliamentary majority
there seemed little need to build a stronger party infrastructure. Indeed,
154 Zambia
party leaders faced disincentives to do so. By building the party organi-

zation, they would transfer power to institutionalized party structures
that could become gatekeepers, thus threatening their personal power
bases. Instead, the MMD’s mode of voter mobilization revolved around
its parliamentary candidates, who were often rich and connected to
networks of local notables. MPs normally funded their own election
campaigns (Simutanyi 2005). Thus, the MMD relied on the personal
wealth and networks of its candidates to win votes, which reinforced
the power of wealthy party members and those with access to state
resources. The reliance on personal power bases also undermined the
party’s own organizational capacity for voter mobilization, thus leaving
it ill-placed to run a strong campaign, particularly in difficult elections.
By the turn of the decade, the MMD’s party structures were underfunded
and poorly staffed, and depended on the patronage of MPs or local
patrons (Simutanyi 2005).
This organizational weakness eventually undermined the MMD’s elec-
toral strength and was compounded by the party’s limited connections
to the state. Although the MMD as the ruling party found ways to use
state resources to its benefit, it was constrained by the type of state it had
created and by its own commitments to a separation of party and state.
The MMD followed a neo-liberal policy agenda and unravelled the inter-
ventionist state that in the past had been used to distribute goods to key
constituents (Cheeseman 2006). These reforms and policies of the MMD
shaped how it made use of its access to state resources. At first, episodes
of corruption were sporadic but they soon became more frequent and
more ambitious (van Donge 2008). In any event, the MMD developed
a contradictory and exploitative relationship with the state in which it
extracted resources, but in limited and hidden ways. The MMD’s public
policies sealed off discretionary access to the state and made instances
of state corruption exposable and punishable, and so the means with
which the MMD could sustain its initial dominance were limited. When
its popularity declined, the party had to turn to other ways of preserving
its power.
Less democratic means of maintaining dominance
During the 1990s, the overwhelming majorities the MMD received at

the ballot box gave the party a sense of security. Its position seemed
authoritative and stable. Consequently, the MMD did not invest in a
strong electoral machine. In fact, there are some signs that the party
was not concerned with its support base. As described above, the party
Dan Paget 155
spurned its connections with the trade unions. Moreover, between 1992
and 1995, the party lost a number of senior members (Burnell 1995).
More than 22 MPs, including several cabinet ministers, resigned or were
expelled from the party in that period. Because of its large majority, the
party could afford to lose them (Paget 2010) but that did not prevent the
MMD from subsequently reacting to more serious threats by exercising
state powers in increasingly undemocratic ways.
After its victory in 1991, the MMD feared a resurgence of UNIP (Phiri
2006). Zambia’s former president, Kenneth Kaunda, was widely seen as
the strongest possible contender, competing with Chiluba for the pres-
idency. He was also seen as the figurehead around whom opponents
of the MMD and the new regime might gather. The MMD became
more fearful in 1993, after state agents allegedly uncovered a plot to
overthrow the government called ‘Zero Option Plan’. In order to neu-
tralize Kaunda as a challenge, the MMD subsequently changed the
constitution. It introduced a ban on presidential candidates without
Zambian parentage, which targeted Kaunda and excluded him from the
presidential race (Mphaisa 2000).
After the 1996 elections, which were boycotted by UNIP, the MMD
leadership moved to take greater advantage of state powers. State control
of the media, inherited from UNIP’s single-party regime, was preserved
by the MMD (Mphaisa 2000), while journalists were selectively harassed
and brought before the courts (Erdmann and Simutanyi 2003). When
Ben Mwila, a senior member of the MMD, left to form an opposition
party, state security forces searched his house in an attempt to intimidate
him (Erdmann and Simutanyi 2003).
In the run up to the 2001 elections, Chiluba and the MMD infringed
democratic rights in a different way by launching the ‘third term bid’ –
an attempt to lift the clause in the Zambian constitution that forbids the
president to serve more than two terms. Chiluba used a range of powers
of patronage to ensure the passage of the required constitutional amend-
ment. Presidential powers of appointment were used in an attempt to
engineer consensus in the MMD and in public life at large (Mphaisa
2000). These moves backfired spectacularly. Within the MMD, the party
leadership sought to clamp down on outspoken opposition to the third
term bid and initiated disciplinary proceedings against dissenting mem-
bers (Malido 2000). However, the internal opposition against the third
term bid was fuelled by MMD members with presidential ambitions of
their own and, as a consequence, determined resistance with strong
grass roots formed against the MMD leadership (Paget 2010). In the
end, party leaders deployed thugs to keep opposing members away from
156 Zambia
the MMD convention (Phiri 2006) where the dissenting members were
expelled from the party. When the dust settled, the MMD had lost the
necessary majority in the National Assembly, thus bringing the attempt
to change the constitution to an end.
The conflict around Chiluba’s third term reached a climax with a
split of the MMD. The dissenting members and indeed their party
branches left the party and joined or established four opposition
parties – the Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD), the United
Party for National Development (UPND), the Heritage Party (HP) and
the Republican Party (RP). The senior party members that left the MMD
took substantial support with them. The loss to the MMD was com-
pounded by the social forces that mobilized against the ruling party to
oppose Chiluba’s third term bid. The Oasis Forum, funded by donors
but comprising church groups, NGOs and other constituents of civil
society, campaigned publicly and vociferously and warned of the dan-
ger of making Chiluba president for life (The Post 2001). They kept
up their campaign until only months before the elections in 2001
(Vondoepp 2005).
Some of the MMD’s most desperate abuses of state power occurred in
the immediate run up to the 2001 elections. The MMD won the pres-
idential contest in a close race: Mwanawasa was elected President with
29.2 per cent of the vote which was just under 2 per cent more than the
runner-up. However, it is widely believed that these results were marred
by serious irregularities and selective vote rigging (Burnell 2002; Carter
Center 2002; Erdmann and Simutanyi 2003). The conduct of the elec-
tions drew criticism from opposition parties, election observers (Carter
Center 2002) and civil society groups including the Law Association of
Zambia (2002) and led to violence in the capital (Phiri et al. 2002).
All in all, the MMD seemed to have turned to the abuse of state
power to ensure the continuation of its rule, but the deployment of
undemocratic tactics was often haphazard and eroded the party’s legit-
imacy. By the time the first Afrobarometer survey was conducted in
1999, trust in parliament and the presidency lay between 33 and 37 per
cent, respectively (Simutanyi 2002). The way in which the third term
bid was managed galvanized social forces against the MMD government
and eroded MMD’s support. In 1999, 27 per cent of respondents said
that Zambia was a democracy with major problems or not a democ-
racy at all, but in 2003 this had risen to 46 per cent (Mulenga et al.
2004).
Whitehead (2008) emphasizes that democratic principles and proce-
dures are constructed norms. Up until the 2001 elections, MMD violated
Dan Paget 157
these norms and principles on a number of occasions in order to defend

its dominant position. This provoked resistance from a wide range of
actors who successfully contested the MMD’s abuse of power. Between
2001 and 2011, the MMD seems to have resorted to less direct infringe-
ments of civil and political rights to sustain its power. Apparently, the
resistance to its earlier methods made them unattractive to the MMD.
Instead, the party made increasing use of other means to sustain its
dominance.
Clientelist means of maintaining dominance
In 2001, the MMD was at a critical juncture. The third term bid had
damaged the party’s democratic credentials. Moreover, the MMD’s pol-
icy agenda of economic liberalization, privatization and conservative
fiscal management of the economy had done substantial harm. A series
of key indicators, including GDP, life expectancy, the level of educa-
tion and poverty levels fell between 1990 and 2000 (Erdmann and
Simutanyi 2003: 64) and Zambia’s UN Human Development Index score
fell from 0.398 – a point of crisis – to 0.376 (UNDP 2014). These negative
outcomes were reflected in approval ratings of the MMD government:
46 per cent of respondents to the Afrobarometer survey conducted in
2002 said they thought the government was managing the economy
fairly badly or very badly, and between 59 and 79 per cent of respon-
dents said that the government was performing fairly or very badly
at addressing malnutrition, price stability, inequality and job creation
(Mulenga et al. 2004). After the MMD had disentangled itself from the
trade unions and alienated civil society with the third term bid, it was
ill-placed to mobilize voters. In fact, the MMD’s neglect of its internal
organization meant that its party structures were ill-fit for the task of
rebuilding popular support.
The change in leadership that had taken place in 2001 gave the MMD
some room to manoeuvre. Levy Mwanawasa had replaced Chiluba as the
MMD’s presidential candidate. Mwanawasa did not have a major role
in the MMD during the 1990s and had less cause for enmity towards
members of the opposition, in particular towards those that had left
the MMD and joined the opposition because of Chiluba’s third term
bid. Soon after his election, Mwanawasa turned on Chiluba and his fol-
lowers and in a series of corruption-busting operations, demotions and
retirements drove them from the party (Paget 2010). This gave the new
president the space to invite former members of the party back into the
fold. By turning on Chiluba and portraying the MMD as separate from
158 Zambia
Chiluba’s past, Mwanawasa was able to restock the party. He replenished

the party organization with MPs, regional gatekeepers and funders.
In the process, Mwanawasa also divided the opposition. The MMD
depleted the FDD and UPND, which had been the MMD’s leading rivals
in the 2001 elections. The ruling party continued to use such divide-and-
rule tactics for the remainder of its time in office. In the 2006 elections,
the MMD made a former UNIP leader the party’s vice-presidential
candidate and managed to access dormant or hitherto unused UNIP
mobilization networks (Paget 2010). In the run up to the 2008 presiden-
tial election, and the 2011 elections, two opposition parties, the UPND
and the PF, tried to form electoral pacts. The MMD successfully man-
aged to derail these elite agreements. In this regard, the MMD emulated
what other dominant parties were doing across Africa (van de Walle
2003).
The MMD’s change in leadership went together with a change in
political geography and mobilization strategy. Until the 2001 elections,
the MMD had performed well in Bemba-speaking provinces, in par-
ticular Northern, Copperbelt and Luapula provinces; and in Central
Province. It had won some support in Lusaka, Western and North-
Western provinces, while taking little support from Southern and
Eastern provinces. In 2006, the MMD polled well in Western, Eastern,
North-Western and Central provinces, while losing ground in North-
ern, Copperbelt, Luapula and Lusaka provinces (Larmer and Fraser
2007). These changes partly reflected the ethno-regional make-up of the
factions that had passed in and out of the MMD.
Although Zambian politics is not overtly or explicitly ethnic (Osei-
Hwedie 1998; Phiri 2006; Simutanyi 2013) there is nevertheless an
ethno-regional undercurrent (Erdmann 2007; Posner 2005). Parties
build reputations for being in favour of certain ethnic groups or for
excluding particular ethnic groups. In either case, parties lose or gain
votes accordingly. Chiluba and his supporters tended to hail from
Bemba-speaking provinces, which is where the MMD lost support in
2006. Likewise, MMD dissidents that left in 2001 but returned before
the 2006 elections included some key gatekeepers to Western Province,
while Banda, who was appointed vice-president after the 2006 election,
brought former UNIP networks in Eastern Province to the MMD.
Behind these ethno-regional shifts lay an MMD strategy to move its
focus to rural areas and to use targeted clientelist tactics that would
effectively mobilize rural support. In the 2008 presidential election, the
MMD candidate won none of the high-population-density constituen-
cies, and just 17 of the 39 medium-population-density constituencies
Dan Paget 159
(Cheeseman and Hinfelaar 2010). In contrast, the ruling party won 56 of

the 98 low-density constituencies. Rural constituencies present receptive
sites for patron–client mobilization strategies. Compared to Zambia’s
urban areas, rural areas display lower average levels of education (Banda
et al. 2011), lower levels of radio use (Afrobarometer 2009), lower levels
of government expenditure (Akroyd and Smith 2007) and higher levels
of poverty (Chapoto et al. 2011).
It is not clear whether the scale of extraction of state resources by
the MMD increased from 2001 onwards; research into clientelism in
Zambia is inconclusive. However, some evidence indicates that more
state resources were directed to aid the MMD’s election campaign, both
in the form of the use of state facilities for logistical support and in terms
of benefits directed via MPs to constituents. Not only were government
vehicles used to distribute campaign materials, but state resources were
amassed and distributed during the campaign (Simutanyi 2013). The
old custom of distributing food and tshenge (cloth) at rallies (Simutanyi
2005) was extended by attempts to distribute much larger volumes of
goods.
The MMD responded to the dramatic fall in its support in 2001 by
shifting its electoral base away from urban areas that proved elusive
and malcontented, towards rural areas where the party could channel
state resources into patron–client relationships. The MMD started to
deploy stronger clientelist strategies than in the past. In 2011, large
amounts were spent to distribute a variety of materials to constituen-
cies, including vehicles and bicycles (Africa Confidential, 21 October
2011). The MMD also used direct forms of state benefits, such as pro-
grammes of road-building, and targeted these to maximize electoral
gain. Moreover, the MMD made occasional use of electoral violence.
At several by-elections in 2010, MMD cadres – often hired youths bussed
in especially – were used to intimidate voters and break up PF rallies
(Kalaluka 2010; Chanda 2011). Overall, between 2001 and 2011, the
MMD saw a broad change in electoral tactics.
In sum, the MMD became focused on rural areas and clientelist in its
approach. In this way, the party strengthened its support base, while
splitting those of its opponents. The re-energizing of the MMD did
not, however, include strengthening the party’s formal structures, which
remained disorganized and unable to contribute to voter mobilization
(Paget 2010). Instead, the ‘new’ MMD established routine ways to use
the party’s powers of patronage, to secure and strengthen extra-party
mobilization networks and to target state benefits to the right con-
stituencies and time the delivery well. In this regard, the MMD in the
160 Zambia
period between 2001 and 2011 differed considerably from the MMD
of the 1990s. Although the MMD had been involved in incidents of
corruption during its first decade in power and selectively used state
power to harass the press and its opponents, the party mainly relied
on its natural legitimacy as the party of democracy to deal with chal-
lenges to its authority until 2001 when there were election irregularities.
After 2001, the MMD’s division of the opposition and its mobilization
of rural constituencies by clientelist means were the main pillars of its
dominance.
The fall of the MMD and the rise of the PF
Using its new tactics, the MMD was able to reassert itself in the 2006
elections. It did not regain the unassailable electoral position it had
enjoyed in the 1990s, but it did increase its vote share in the presiden-
tial race by 14 per cent. Moreover, the economic climate had become
kinder and the MMD’s reforms seemed to bear fruit. Economic growth in
Zambia averaged 5.3 per cent between 2000 and 2010, and the country’s
score on the UN Human Development Index rose from 0.376 in 2000 to
0.438 in 2010 (UNDP 2014). Given these positive outcomes, one would
expect the MMD’s position to be strong and stable. However, after 20
years in power, the ruling party lost the 2011 elections to the PF. The
opposition party had seen its vote share rise steadily over the years and
had become the largest opposition party with 29.4 per cent of the vote
in the 2006 presidential race. In 2008, it closed the gap with the MMD
by taking 38.6 per cent of the presidential vote. In the 2011 elections,
the PF won the presidency with 42.9 per cent of the vote, compared to
the MMD’s 36.2 per cent.
Even though the MMD suffered from a poorly run election campaign
(Africa Confidential 2011) and fielded an uncharismatic, unpopular can-
didate (Cheeseman and Hinfelaar 2010), the PF’s victory was remarkable
given the MMD’s seemingly dominant position. In fact, the PF’s rise
defies expected patterns in party systems with one dominant party.
Opposition parties in one-party-dominant systems are characteristically
weak because dominant parties typically deploy several techniques to
divide and undermine the opposition (Rakner and van de Walle 2009).
As described above, the MMD successfully split or weakened several
opposition parties and found ways to use state resources to mobilize
voters and impede the opposition. In many ways, the PF seems to have
been a product of the MMD’s rule and was able to successfully challenge
a dominant party that was losing its legitimacy.
Dan Paget 161
The PF was founded in 2001 by Michael Sata, a former MMD minister,

and received 3.4 per cent of the vote in the 2001 presidential elections,
while winning just one seat in the National Assembly. At the time, the
party was poorly resourced and weakly organized and could claim no
advantages over the other opposition parties. However, the PF was able
to develop into a populist and popular party because of opportunities
provided by the MMD. The MMD’s change in tactics executed after 2001
offered the PF a chance to appeal to types of voters that the MMD was
not or no longer targeting. These primarily urban and Bemba-speaking
areas became the building blocks of a strong opposition party. In this
respect, the PF was built on the MMD’s own change of strategy.
During the co-optation of opposition leaders in 2002 and 2003, the
MMD had driven out a number of its own leaders from Bemba-speaking
areas, one of which was former president Chiluba, and brought in MPs
and political leaders from other areas (Paget 2010). The effects were
twofold. First, the MMD lost mobilization networks that could deliver
votes in Bemba-speaking areas. Second, the MMD inadvertently sig-
nalled that Bemba-speaking areas would be prioritized less, and other
areas more.1 This presented the PF with three distinct advantages.
First, the PF benefited from the mobilization networks that were
driven out of the MMD in 2002 and 2003 by positioning itself as a new
champion for Bemba speakers (Paget 2010). The PF was well placed to
do so since its leader Michael Sata is a Bemba speaker from a Bemba-
speaking area. Thus, the PF was able to mobilize voters in areas that the
MMD was neglecting.
Second, voters in Bemba-speaking areas are more likely to take issue
with the neo-liberal policies of the MMD. Bemba-speaking regions are
the main sites of the Zambian copper industry and therefore contain
large cities, a highly unionized workforce and a legacy of radical union
politics (Larmer 2006; Lebas 2011). On the Copperbelt, for example,
there is a long history of radical politics. Survey-data research shows
that Bemba speakers are indeed more likely to be critical of the MMD’s
track record (Cheeseman et al. 2014).
Third, the Bemba-speaking regions include more urban areas than
other regions in Zambia (with the exception of Lusaka Province). While
the MMD had an advantage in rural areas, where clientelist mobiliza-
tion is effective, the PF made effective use of the charisma of its leader
(Larmer and Fraser 2007; Cheeseman and Larmer 2013). The charismatic
appeal of Sata worked particularly well in urban areas where the PF was
able to reach large groups cheaply by using radio broadcasts and rallies.
Holding rallies in densely populated areas proved an effective campaign
162 Zambia
strategy. Radio broadcasts were similarly effective to attract urban vot-

ers, given the fact that the proportion of urban residents who listen to
radio news at least a few times per week – 75 per cent – is significantly
higher than the proportion in rural areas – 56 per cent (Afrobarometer
2010).
In sum, the PF’s mobilization strategies mirrored those of the dom-
inant party. The MMD broke the strength of Bemba-speaking elites in
the party in order to bring clientelist brokers and potential vote-winners
from other provinces on board. In doing so, the MMD alienated both
leaders and voters in Bemba-speaking areas. By contrast, the PF posi-
tioned itself as a party for Bemba speakers. The MMD shifted its focus
to rural voters; the PF sought to mobilize urban voters. The MMD used
clientelist methods; the PF mainly relied on radio and rallies. These dif-
ferences in strategy are reflected in the distribution of the vote shares
of the PF and the MMD. In the 2008 presidential by-election, the PF
won support in urban and peri-urban areas (Cheeseman and Hinfelaar
2010). In the 2011 presidential election PF won large numbers of votes
in Northern, Copperbelt and Luapula provinces and in Lusaka, the cap-
ital, while the MMD won most of its votes in Central, Eastern, Western
and North-Western provinces.
The MMD’s strategy focused on rural areas, alienated Bemba speak-
ers and continued to pursue a neo-liberal policy agenda that urban and
Bemba-speaking voters were particularly adverse to. In this way, the rul-
ing party created the political space for an opposition party to grow in
urban and Bemba-speaking areas. The MMD also shaped the discourse
of the PF which was characterized by fierce criticism of the dominant
party.
The actions of the MMD in power gave rise to a negative narra-
tive of the ruling party that was tightly woven into the PF campaign.
The PF’s critique of the MMD government had clear populist charac-
teristics. Larmer and Fraser (2007) argue that the PF fits a particular
mode of populism conceptualized by Laclau (2005). In this conceptu-
alization, the party creates a narrative in which it is connected to the
people and opposed to a corrupt status quo. Indeed, the PF emphasized
the corruption under the MMD government and the ruling party’s col-
laboration with international investors. It also drew attention to links
between the MMD and what it portrayed as intrusive and exploita-
tive Chinese business in Zambia. In particular, the PF criticized Chinese
labour practices, claimed that Chinese businesses were allowed to com-
pete with Zambian vendors of consumer produce and alleged that the
MMD received money to let them do so (Cheeseman and Larmer 2013).
Dan Paget 163
Sata successfully underscored the connection between the deprivation

of Zambians and the corruption of the MMD. He juxtaposed it to the no-
nonsense, action-not-words government that the PF sought to embody
(Larmer and Fraser 2007).
In line with this message, the PF urged Zambians to resist the MMD’s
increasingly clientelist strategies. The vice-president of the PF, Guy Scott,
told voters at a rally that if they were given money to vote for the MMD,
‘donchi kubeba’ which means ‘don’t tell them’ [and vote for whoever
you want] (Mwewa 2011). This sentiment proved hugely popular and
was echoed in church groups across Zambia. ‘Donchi kubeba’ gained
such momentum that a campaign song was made about it (Mwewa
2011). When the MMD held rallies in the Copperbelt, they were met
by groups of people who would chant the slogan as they accepted gifts
from the party. The PF was joined by a new wave of civil society actors
who condemned the use of clientelist methods, such as Father Frank
Bwalya who developed a campaign of red cards as a way of showing
discontent with the MMD’s corruption.
The PF’s support base was shaped by the strategies of the MMD and
its discourse developed in response to the MMD’s actions in govern-
ment. Moreover, the PF-led criticism of the MMD practices in power
and its apparent vote-buying constituted a new struggle over the rules
of the democratic game similar to the protests against election rigging
and the third term bid. By leading public criticism of vote-buying and
by focussing on voters that the party could win without deploying a
clientelist strategy of its own (for which it did not have the resources),
the PF wore down the effectiveness of the clientelist method of voter
mobilization that the MMD relied upon.
Conclusion
Students of one-party dominance should take note of how quickly dom-

inant parties can adopt new strategies. Friedman and Wong (2008)
discuss how dominant parties can learn to lose or adapt, and the
MMD in Zambia indeed proved highly adaptable. Once its status as the
guardian of the new democratic regime was lost, it could not rely on
its own organizational capacity or mobilizing ability to win elections.
The MMD responded, first by employing methods that directly inter-
fered with the democratic process. Later, as those methods became less
tenable, the MMD turned increasingly to clientelist strategies.
The manner in which the MMD exhausted one strategy and moved
to the next is a sign of its inherent weakness. While the party aspired to
164 Zambia
dominance, its public agenda drove it to neglect its ties with civil soci-
ety and to separate the party from the state. This self-imposed abstinence
left the MMD without a reliable flow of income except what its members
could extract from the state without public detection. All the while, the
MMD pursued a neo-liberal policy agenda which was slightly tempered
under Mwanawasa’s ‘New Deal’ but found opposition in many parts of
Zambia. All this amounts to the underlying contradictions between the
MMD’s desire to stay in office and the multiparty neo-liberal principles
at its foundation. With this in mind, it is surprising that the MMD stayed
in power as long as it did. If anything, the fortunes of the MMD show
us how changeable party systems can be, and thus how difficult it some-
times is to classify African party systems using the analytical frameworks
from the current party system literature.
The trajectory of the MMD is intimately linked to the state of democ-
racy in Zambia. The fortunes of the MMD, the struggles of the Zambian
opposition and the struggle around democracy in Zambia are related
in ways that Schedler (2009) and Lindberg (2009) have described else-
where. The opposition joined forces with some sections of civil society
and international donors to dispute how the MMD won support at
two moments during the MMD’s rule. First, in 2001, when there was
widespread condemnation of election rigging, and subsequently in
2011, when there was criticism of widespread clientelism. On each occa-
sion, the outcomes of these contestations in turn affected the prospects
of the opposition by raising the costs and lowering the benefits of using
these methods.
Note
1. Bemba speakers are most common in Northern, Copperbelt and Luapula
provinces. Although ethnic identities are fluid and many people in these
provinces have other supplementary or alternative identities, Bemba is the
common language. Bemba speakers also dominate in several large urban areas.
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Part III
Conclusion
9
Do Party Systems Help or Hinder
Democracy in Africa?
The preceding chapters offered in-depth analyses of different party

systems in sub-Saharan Africa. By analysing three African coun-
tries with one-party-dominant systems – South Africa, Namibia and
Botswana – and three African country cases with different party system
configurations – Benin, Ghana and Zambia – we gained new insights
into the relation between party systems and democracy. In this conclud-
ing chapter, we will focus on answering the question: In which way do
party systems contribute to or impede the development of democracy
in Africa?
At the outset, it is important to note the existing variation in party
systems across the continent. African democracies are clearly rich in
diversity and include many different types of political parties and party
systems.1 What is remarkable is that one-party dominance is relatively
common on the continent. Thus, Africa includes not only a two-party
system, a pulverized party system and various multiparty systems, but
also quite a few one-party-dominant systems. The relative widespread
presence of one-party dominance calls for a reconsideration of how we
define a party system, as well as a fresh look at the consequences of party
systems for democracy.
Party systems are systems of interactions between political parties.
Different types of party systems signify different types of interactions
and have varying consequences for democracy (see also Bardi and Mair
2008). In the first chapter of this volume, we have already observed
that the existing literature on party systems is only of limited assis-
tance in exploring the question whether party systems matter for the
development of democracy in Africa. Most studies on party systems and
democracy deal with the advantages and disadvantages of two-party ver-
sus multiparty systems. There is little comparative work on the pros and
171
172 Conclusion
cons of various party systems that includes one-party-dominant sys-

tems. Furthermore, procedural aspects of democracy such as political
participation and representation are the main focus of the existing lit-
erature, while the consequences of party systems for more substantive
aspects of democracy are often overlooked.
In the light of these shortcomings, our country chapters presented
us with a number of important findings. The first is that one-party
dominance, which is fairly common across the continent, does affect
the development of democracy. The chapters on Botswana, Namibia
and South Africa showed that although one-party dominance often has
an initial positive effect, the unlikeliness of an alternation of power
decreases the quality of democracy in the longer term. Despite the fact
that the dominant party continues to win its hegemonic position at the
ballot box, the improbability of an alternation of power greatly dimin-
ishes the effectiveness of elections as an instrument to hold government
to account and decreases overall government accountability and respon-
siveness. Another finding is that more conventional party systems such
as two-party systems are very rare, and African party systems are often
difficult to classify. Many of them are still in flux two decades after the
wave of democratization reached the continent in the 1990s. In the
remainder of this chapter we will discuss our findings in more detail,
while highlighting evidence from the six country cases.
One-party dominance and democracy: Insights from our

country cases
One-party-dominant systems are quite common in Africa (e.g. see

Bogaards 2004; Erdmann and Basedau 2013), but their effects on democ-
racy have been largely under-researched, particularly from a compara-
tive perspective. As the emergence of one-party-dominant systems in
African democracies is a relatively new phenomenon, there is not yet
much knowledge about how these systems help or hinder democracy.
Notable exceptions are the studies by Kuenzi and Lambright (2001,
2005) which show the relevance of party system competitiveness for
democracy, but these studies do not capture the more nuanced and com-
plex relations between party systems and democracy we have found in
this volume.
Moreover, as we have noted in our first chapter, the existing lit-
erature tends to focus on the distinction between two-party systems
on the one hand and multiparty systems on the other hand, which
is not of much help if one seeks to understand the consequences of
one-party-dominant systems. The current consensus in the literature

presents a nuanced picture of multiparty systems and two-party systems
having different strengths and weaknesses in relation to democracy. This
picture proved particularly relevant to our analysis of Ghana’s party
system (see below, pp. 178–180). However, it has obscured important
phenomena related to African party systems and, more specifically, does
not contribute to our understanding of one-party-dominant systems
and their particular effects on democracy.
Do one-party-dominant systems help or hinder democracy? Our
chapters discussing the one-party-dominant systems of Botswana,
Namibia and South Africa showed that one-party dominance is having
negative effects in these three countries, particularly in the longer term.
The lack of party system competitiveness is diminishing government
accountability and responsiveness. Because an alternation of the party
in power is highly unlikely, elections have become less effective as an
instrument to hold government to account. In other words, the domi-
nant parties in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa face little electoral
incentives to be responsive to the people who continue to vote them
into power. All three countries show signs of growing public dissatisfac-
tion and a widening gap between party elites and the electorate, albeit
in different forms.
On the other hand, we also found some positive consequences of one-
party dominance depending on the stage of development of the party
system. Our three country chapters showed that one-party dominance
initially had positive effects on the development of democracy, particu-
larly on aspects such as political stability and popular satisfaction. At the
same time, in the longer run the dominant parties discussed in this
volume seem vulnerable to internal tensions which could ultimately
threaten their survival. Our chapters presented a complex picture of
internal competition and factionalism within the respective dominant
parties, resulting in breakaway parties that are potentially dangerous.
Whether such parties will manage to change the status quo and spell
the end of one-party dominance in our three country cases remains to be
seen. Their respective strengths will be tested when people in Botswana,
Namibia and South Africa go to the polls again in 2014.
Botswana
In their chapter on Botswana, Christian John Makgala and Shane Mac
Giollabhuí clearly showed the positive, negative and factional aspects
of the one-party-dominant system, which have played a large role in
both the historic resilience of Botswana’s democracy and the current
174 Conclusion
charges of democratic decline. The Botswana Democratic Party’s (BDP)

dominance is striking: The party has won ten consecutive parliamentary
elections since independence and has won, on average, just under two-
thirds of the popular vote. Initially, the effects of the dominant BDP
on democracy in Botswana were quite positive, as Makgala and Mac
Giollabhuí explain: ‘In the early years of independence, at least, the BDP
exerted a stabilizing influence on the fledgling democracy. In addition to
its responsible stewardship of the economy, epitomized in the restraint
of its first president, Sir Seretse Khama, the BDP acted as an integrative
vehicle.’
While one-party dominance had a stabilizing effect just after inde-
pendence, over time, the BDP has suffered the same decline as seen in
one-party-dominant systems elsewhere in the world.2 The development
of the party system in Botswana seems to confirm Duverger’s seminal
words which were written more than 50 years ago: The dominant party
‘wears itself out in office, it loses its vigour, its arteries harden. It would
be possible to show that every domination bears within itself the seeds
of its own destruction’ (Duverger 1954: 312). Makgala and Mac Giol-
labhuí showed that Botswana’s democracy is now threatened not only
by a dominant political party that does not face a credible threat from
the opposition, but also by the combination of a weak legislature, a
strong executive and a very powerful president who is, according to the
authors, ‘almost completely insulated from popular discontent’. While
the dominance of the BDP was initially at the centre of Botswana’s
often praised democratic and economic stability, it now gives rise to
increasingly frequent accounts of illiberal and authoritarian behaviour
and factional infighting.
South Africa
In his chapter on South Africa, Steven Friedman also emphasized the
longer term negative consequences of one-party dominance for democ-
racy. Since the end of apartheid and South Africa’s founding elections in
1994, the country has held five national elections. In all five, the African
National Congress (ANC), which led the fight against the apartheid
regime, won convincing victories and received no less than 62 per cent
of the vote. Friedman argued that despite these overwhelming majori-
ties South Africa’s one-party-dominant system is not responsive to the
majority of poor black people and continues to protect minority inter-
ests. According to Friedman, one-party dominance has done little to
eradicate inequality and is now negatively affecting democracy in South
Africa. Friedman seems to take issue with the ANC for being more
responsive to racial minorities than the black majority, and for giving
more voice to the affluent than to the poor.
Friedman also argued that the improbability of a turnover has ‘cre-
ated an environment in which ANC leaders are far more accountable to
each other than they are to the millions who vote for it’. He pointed
to the ‘pervasive and potentially damaging’ trend in the ruling ANC
towards ‘a self-seeking and sometimes corrupt politics’ in which politi-
cal positions are regarded as a source of patronage and personal wealth
rather than a public service. The internal tensions, infighting and jock-
eying for positions in the ANC seems to be exacerbated rather than
limited by its internal processes for the (s)election of party leaders.
As a result, grass-roots protests have become endemic and ANC vot-
ers have become disenchanted with the party leadership. However,
according to Friedman, their ‘unhappiness will not acquire an electoral
vehicle until the better resourced elites currently within the majority
party decide that the time has come to abandon it and to establish an
alternative’.
Namibia
In Namibia, the likelihood of an alternation of power seems even more
remote than in South Africa and this has had a detrimental effect on
democracy. As Henning Melber documented in his chapter, one-party
dominance has become a threat to democracy in Namibia, with South
West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) cultivating its status as the
sole representative of the Namibian people and showing worrying signs
of an increasing intolerance to dissent.
After Namibia’s independence in 1990, the party’s hegemonic posi-
tion was strengthened by the people’s enduring belief that SWAPO
is the government and the government is the state. Namibians con-
tinue to believe that there is no legitimate alternative to SWAPO and
keep returning the liberation movement to power with overwhelming
majorities. Melber mentioned the possibility that the so-called born
frees – younger voters born after independence – might change voter
loyalties in the future and identified a lack of service delivery to a part
of the Namibian population as a ticking time bomb. However, SWAPO
is still firmly entrenched as the dominant party, despite the emergence
of two successive breakaway parties.
As a result, the quality of democracy is deteriorating. The real dan-
ger of Namibia’s one-party-dominant system is, according to Melber,
that it has created a ‘culture of intolerance’ and ‘hostility to dis-
sent’ which has strengthened SWAPO but is increasingly weakening
176 Conclusion
democracy. The political culture of the dominant party breeds intol-

erance, as is exemplified by what the Swapo Party Youth League said in
2008: ‘We have a political religion called Swapo and the political heaven
is Swapo, and the political hell is where all the other political parties are.’
The impact of one-party dominance on procedural and substantive

aspects of democracy
Previous studies on the link between party systems and democracy seem
to emphasize the procedural aspects of democracy. In the analysis above,
we implicitly did the same by recounting the decreased accountabil-
ity and diminishing government responsiveness in one-party-dominant
systems. The authors of the three chapters, however, did not only refer
to procedural aspects of democracy such as accountability or the unlike-
liness of an alternation of power. When discussing the consequences
of their respective party systems, they also mentioned more substan-
tive aspects such as socio-economic and political equality and citizens’
satisfaction.
Interestingly, our case studies showed that it is not unusual for a coun-
try to perform well in certain aspects of democracy but not in others.
The Namibian democracy under SWAPO, for example, seems to display
largely negative outcomes in terms of procedural aspects of democracy,
but this is not reflected in indicators of perceived democratic quality.
In other words, despite problems around accountability and signs of
political intolerance, Namibia shows high levels of citizens’ satisfaction.
This confirms Diamond and Morlino’s (2005: xxxii–xxxiii) idea that
there can be different levels of democratic quality in one country, or
as they put it, ‘To be sure, all good things do not go together smoothly.
[ . . . ] A high-quality democracy thus is not indefinitely high in every
democratic quality’.
The chapters focusing on one-party-dominant systems (chapters 3,
4 and 5) showed that one-party dominance negatively affects democ-
racy, particularly its procedural aspects. Other scholars who have written
about the phenomenon of one-party dominance in the African context
also tend to emphasize the negative side of the story.3 However, those
reservations do not seem to be shared by the majority of the people liv-
ing in the countries with one-party-dominant systems. Melber stated it
clearly in his chapter: ‘While identifying this culture of intolerance and
hostility towards dissent, one needs to remember that reality lies in the
eye of the beholder.’ This discrepancy between observations and pub-
lic perceptions also shows the possibility of tensions between different
aspects of democracy.
60%
48%
36%
24%
12%
0%
Not a A democracy, A democracy, A full Do not Do not know Missing

democracy with major but with minor democracy understand
problems problems question/democ
racy
Botswana Benin Ghana Namibia South Africa Zambia
Figure 9.1 Public opinion about democracy in six African countries (In your
opinion how much of a democracy is your country today?)
Source: Afrobarometer Round 5 (2010–2012).
Despite the negative effects of one-party dominance on democracy

observed by our country experts, people in one-party-dominant systems
do not seem to think such systems hinder democracy in their coun-
try. For example, people living in one-party-dominant systems do not
believe that their country is less democratic than people living in other
types of party systems. In fact, as Figure 9.1 shows, the percentage of
people who believe that their country is fully democratic is highest in
Botswana and Ghana, countries with a one-party-dominant and a two-
party system, respectively. The percentage is lower in Benin (pulverized
system) and Namibia (one-party dominant), while it is lowest in South
Africa (one-party dominant) and Zambia (not a one-party-dominant
system).
In sum, while our three country chapters observed important neg-
ative effects of one-party dominance, especially in the longer term,
most people living in countries with one-party-dominant systems do
not consider such systems problematic for democracy. Analyses of
Afrobarometer surveys show that only a small minority of respon-
dents in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa believes one-party dom-
inance to be undemocratic (3, 7, 13 per cent, respectively).4 This
could indicate that procedural aspects of democracy, such as party
178 Conclusion
competition and alternation of power, are less important to voters

than other more material aspects. On the other hand, despite the pos-
itive public perceptions about one-party dominance that are evident
in these survey results, all three countries included in our analysis
show signs of alienation between political elites and the electorate,
and outbursts of public discontent over impaired government per-
formance. Clearly, we need to know more about the way people
evaluate their respective party systems. One interesting avenue for
future research would be to study the dynamics of public perceptions
on parties and party systems, and the extent to which they are
influenced by the way governments perform and deliver services in
Africa.
Other party systems on the continent: Exceptional and

in flux
Party systems in Africa differ from party systems elsewhere (see also our
first chapter). First, one-party-dominant systems are fairly common on
the African continent and our chapters show that such systems hinder
the development of democracy in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.
Second, African party systems are often difficult to classify and more
conventional party systems, such as two-party systems, are rare.
Ghana: Africa’s only two-party system

At the moment, Ghana is the only country on the continent with a
two-party system. As Cyril Daddieh and George Bob-Milliar pointed out
in Chapter 6, Ghana’s experience ‘has diverged from the African norm’.
Ghana seems to be unique in that it has two distinct political traditions
or ideologies that continue to shape its current party system. In their
chapter, Daddieh and Bob-Milliar not only described these historical
and cultural foundations and how they assist the institutionalization
of Ghana’s two-party system, but also highlighted the importance of
Ghana’s institutional architecture in this respect. Ghana’s first-past-
the-post electoral system, its constitutional ban on ethnic, regional or
religious parties, its powerful president and the prominence of the pres-
idential elections have all contributed to a party system configuration
revolving around two main parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and
the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
With regard to its consequences, Ghana’s two-party system conforms
to theoretical expectations. Ghana has experienced two successful alter-
nations of the party in power, and its two-party system has enhanced
government accountability. It has also generated a sense of political
maturity and a growing consensus among the political elite about the
rules of the game. The competitive nature of the party system has
increased enthusiasm for elections and public support for the political
system. Voter turnout is relatively high and the media is increasingly
vibrant. Although Ghana’s two-party system has had a positive impact
on these aspects of democracy, there are negative consequences as well.
In particular, the lack of representation of women might be seen as
problematic for democratic quality.
The Ghanaian case not only shows us how the characteristics of its
two-party system have contributed to the country’s democratic success,
but also demonstrates that we must not overestimate the party system’s
influence. As Daddieh and Bob-Milliar pointed out in their chapter of
this edited book:
Ghana’s two-party system is the product of historical developments

that initially produced disunity and instability and was refracted in
the military choosing sides and staging partisan coups. Over time,
the growth and diversity of the elites, the changing makeup of the
political class, the incorporation of new or emerging social groups
into the ruling class and the cross-cutting cleavages that exist have
contributed to the growing consolidation of Ghana’s democracy
around two poles with different political traditions or philosophies
of governance.5
It is also important to note how difficult it would be to emulate

Ghana’s democratic success by replicating its party system, specifically
because of the historical roots of Ghana’s two-party system. Indeed, the
potential for ‘institutional engineering’ – the crafting of specific politi-
cal institutions to achieve certain objectives – is limited, particularly in
relation to party systems.
The idea to influence the development of a political system via insti-
tutional design has been quite popular among political scientists. It is
now widely accepted that both in established and new democracies
some political institutions can be engineered in order to achieve par-
ticular outcomes, such as higher levels of political participation or more
accountability (Sartori 1994; Diamond 1999). Particularly in countries
with ‘divided societies’ – societies with salient social cleavages – the care-
ful design of political institutions has been seen as crucial for democracy
(Lijphart 1977, 1999; Horowitz 1991; Sisk 1996). Some studies focus
on the engineering of electoral systems (Taagepera and Shugart 1989;
Reilly 2001), while others concentrate on the strengths and weaknesses
of presidential versus parliamentary systems (Lijphart 1992; Shugart and
180 Conclusion
Carey 1992) or on attempts to change a country’s party system (Reilly

2002).
Most political scientists consider the engineering of party systems
as highly complex if not impossible, because political parties – at
least in established democracies – are considered to be the political
expression of underlying societal cleavages (Lipset and Rokkan 1967).
On the other hand, ‘elite-based parties with relatively weak societal
roots are usually viewed as more pliable, and the growing promi-
nence of such parties may thus portend a greater degree of attempts
to engineer contemporary party systems’, according to Reilly (2002:
702). As many African political parties are elite-based and lack strong
ideological foundations,6 African party systems might be more adapt-
able and open to some form of engineering. Ghana, however, is the
exception. It is unique among African party systems in that it has
two distinct ideological traditions on which its two-party system is
based. This means that Ghana’s party system is difficult to replicate
elsewhere.
Benin: Africa’s only pulverized party system

Not only Ghana’s two-party system, but also Benin’s party system is an
exceptional case or ‘outlier’ in Africa – albeit in a different way. Benin
is the only African country with a so-called pulverized party system:
a party system characterized by a high level of fragmentation, that is,
a very high number of political parties. As Rachel Gisselquist showed
in Chapter 7, Benin does not readily confirm theoretical expectations.
The pulverized nature of its party system seems not as detrimen-
tal to its democracy as expected. Generally, highly fragmented party
systems hold the risk of political instability and sometimes even demo-
cratic breakdown. This has not occurred in Benin. On the contrary,
as Gisselquist pointed out, ‘Benin is generally considered to have had
one of the more successful democratic transitions in sub-Saharan Africa.
The country has held multiple competitive elections, enjoyed three suc-
cessful alternations of executive power and avoided the extreme ethnic
divisions and conflict that have characterized politics in many of its
neighbouring countries.’
In the Beninese case, the negative effects of extreme party system frag-
mentation seem to be counteracted by the system’s incentives for mod-
eration through inter-party coalition-building. Especially, the pivotal
role of presidential elections seems to incentivize coalition-building.
In fact, Gisselquist observed a steady decline of party system fragmenta-
tion in Benin over time. She also noted that the effect of Benin’s party
system on its democracy is not as negative as expected, because the

party system is not so much a direct influence as an intervening vari-
able. As Gisselquist put it: ‘Indeed, the party system configuration itself
seems to be well explained by electoral rules, ethnic cleavages, patronage
incentives and the country’s post-authoritarian status, all of which have
also arguably been decisive in bringing about democratic outcomes.’
Such a limited effect of the party system configuration on democracy
cannot be seen elsewhere. In our three country cases with one-party-
dominant systems – Botswana, Namibia and South Africa – as well as in
Ghana we have noted important direct consequences of the respective
party systems. One-party dominance has predominantly negative effects
especially in the longer term, while Ghana’s two-party system seems to
directly contribute to its democratic success. In Zambia, the effects of
the party system are equally direct, albeit more difficult to evaluate.
Zambia and the difficulty of party system classification

As Dan Paget described in Chapter 8, Zambia experienced a period of
two decades in which one party dominated the political landscape. Dur-
ing its first decade in power, from 1991 until 2001, the Movement for
Multiparty Democracy (MMD) won its dominance at the ballot box. The
party lost its electoral dominance in the 2001 elections, but it remained
in power for another decade and managed to maintain its dominant
position by other, less democratic means. Simutanyi (2013) called this a
period of ‘manufactured dominance’ which shows that Zambia’s party
system configuration differs from the three one-party-dominant sys-
tems discussed in this volume. Moreover, as Paget argued, the ways in
which the dominant party managed to hold on to power has negatively
affected Zambia’s democracy. By interfering in the democratic process,
breaking up and co-opting the opposition and nurturing clientelist
linkages with voters, the MMD damaged the quality of democracy in
Zambia.
However, Paget also showed that the MMD’s strategies to stay in
power ultimately proved unsuccessful. The party was defeated in the
elections of 2011, when it lost the presidency to the Patriotic Front (PF).
Whether the alternation of power has improved accountability and gov-
ernment responsiveness in Zambia remains to be seen. The PF did not
win an outright majority at the polls; and – rather than building a coali-
tion with other parties – the PF seems to have used co-optation to form
a majority in parliament, just like the MMD before it.
What the chapter on Zambia also demonstrates is that African party
systems are often difficult to classify. In the Zambian case, its party
182 Conclusion
system was dominated by one political party for 20 years but cannot be
classified as a one-party-dominant system, because the dominant party
failed to win the required parliamentary majorities in three successive
elections. Moreover, the nature of the dominant MMD differs from the
other dominant parties discussed in this volume. As a prodemocracy
movement that gained power in the early 1990s, the MMD did not
have a distinct nation-building agenda and faced a far more compet-
itive context in which it had to establish itself as a ruling party and
gain a position of dominance (Rakner 2010). By contrast, dominant
parties such as SWAPO and the ANC have their roots in the struggle
for independence. Their long and illustrious history as liberation move-
ments enabled them to transform into dominant parties that continue
to appeal to the electorate as the embodiment of nationalist politics.
Zambia is not the only African country that is difficult to classify.
As Erdmann and Basedau (2013) and Bogaards (2004) can testify, clas-
sifying African party systems is not an easy task. Perhaps this is so
because African party systems are different from party systems else-
where and do not fit easily into the conventional categories of party
systems. As we have already observed in Chapter 1, African party sys-
tems emerged in a different historical context than the Western party
systems on which most of the literature is based. Or perhaps classifica-
tion is difficult because many party systems on the continent are in flux
and functioning in relatively young democracies.
Conclusion: The importance of party system change
There is one common thread that is obvious in all six country chapters:
the importance of party system change. Some party systems such as in
Benin and Zambia are clearly in flux because they are currently chang-
ing form and shifting from one shape to another, but even the systems
we identified as one-party dominant are not as static as the literature
suggests.
There are a number of comparative studies of one-party-dominant
systems which explain one-party dominance by referring to a ‘cycle of
dominance’.7 Not surprisingly, most of these studies tend to emphasize
the reinforcing mechanisms which strengthen the one-party-dominant
system further, and tend to overlook any underlying dynamics that may
break the cycle. However, in other work, we have found that sometimes
institutional factors – most notably problematic leadership succession
and a lack of party institutionalization – counteract the self-reinforcing
mechanisms of one-party dominance and move a party system in a
different direction (Doorenspleet and Nijzink 2013). Interestingly, pres-

idential elections proved to be the turning point of these dramatic
party system changes. In the three chapters on one-party dominance
in this book, similar underlying dynamics of change are evident and
the authors identified these as possible causes for the end of one-party
dominance in their respective countries. Duverger’s observation (1954:
312) ‘that every domination bears within itself the seeds of its own
destruction’ might very well be true.
Thus, party systems, including one-party-dominant systems, do
change. In fact, many party systems are still in transition after the wave
of democratization in the 1990s, especially in Africa. The problem is
that political scientists tend to focus on specific changes in individual
political parties when trying to understand party system change (see
Bardi and Mair 2008).8 And, as Bardi and Mair (2008) have already
touched upon, Sartori’s widely used framework for classifying party
systems makes it difficult to take changes in party systems into account.
At first glance, the now numerous studies on party institutionaliza-
tion and party system institutionalization (e.g. see Mainwaring and
Scully 1995; Kuenzi and Lambright 2001; Randall and Svasand 2002;
cf. Hicken and Kuhonta 2011) do seem to address the issue of party
system change and how it affects democracy but, unfortunately, the
studies suffer from the same problem as the literature on one-party
dominance. They tend to focus on stability and not on change. The
underlying assumption seems to be that stability is ‘good’ for democ-
racy. Rooted in Huntington’s work (1968),9 most studies concentrate on
explaining why party institutionalization is necessary for political sta-
bility and democratic consolidation. They argue that in institutionalized
party systems ‘there is more accountability, greater stability of interests,
and more broadly targeted policy programs – all of which augur well for
democracy’. By contrast, democracies without institutionalized parties
or with a weakly institutionalized party system are viewed as systems in
which ‘party politics is often simply an arena for charismatic or clien-
telistic politicians to gain power without any real advancement of the
public good’ (Hicken and Kuhonta 2011: 573).
However, our chapters show that a certain fluidity in party systems
might actually have a positive effect on democracy. It is widely accepted
that democracy can benefit from political parties with strong histori-
cal roots and a party system with a high degree of institutionalization,
as seems to be the case in Ghana. However, our chapters on one-party
dominance show that strongly rooted parties with enduring historical
legacies can also be detrimental for democracy. By contrast, a weakly
184 Conclusion
institutionalized party system might provide a much needed window

of opportunity for further democratization, as the cases of Benin and
Zambia demonstrate. Together, these findings suggest that in order
to fully grasp the effect of party systems on democracy we need to
reconsider our definitions of a party system: We need to incorporate
the notion of party system change and understand party systems as
trajectories.
The chapters in this volume have all pointed to interesting ways
in which party system trajectories in Africa revolve around political
leadership. In both parliamentary and presidential systems, powerful
presidents seem to shape the direction in which party systems evolve.
Although some political parties on the continent such as the ANC
in South Africa and the BDP in Botswana have a long and illustri-
ous history, most African parties do not use ideology as the primary
means to distinguish themselves from other parties. In fact, African
party systems – at least the ones included in this volume – are not
characterized by strong ideological differences. Instead, political lead-
ers play a key role. African political parties tend to be leadership-centred
with clientelist networks, rather than ideology being used as the main
mechanism to gain voter support. Whether this means there is no
‘real advancement of the public good’ (as suggested by e.g. Hicken and
Kuhonta 2011: 573) should be a topic of empirical verification rather
than assumption. To what extent party systems that revolve around
charismatic or clientelistic politicians are able to deliver in terms of pro-
cedural and/or substantive aspects of democracy is a key question for
further research. Still, if the aim is to promote democracy in Africa, our
book has shown that party systems cannot be neglected. Party systems
influence democracy in Africa albeit in unexpected ways.
Notes
1. As discussed in Chapter 1 of our book, we only included African countries
that are relatively democratic and excluded authoritarian regimes from our
analysis. When analysing party system developments in Africa – and par-
ticularly the consequences of one-party dominance and other party system
configurations – we need to make this distinction.
2. See for example, Pempel (1990), that is, the chapters on Sweden and Japan,
which focus on the decline of dominant parties. See also the 2008 book edited
by Wong and Friedman, which focuses exclusively on the question what hap-
pens when dominant parties lose or face the prospect of losing, and see, that
is, the chapters focusing on democracies with one-party-dominant systems
such as India, Japan and South Africa.
3. For general studies on one-party dominance, see the edited books by Bogaards
and Boucek (2010), Wong and Friedman (2008), Giliomee and Simkins (1999)
and Pempel (1990). For studies focusing more specifically on Africa, see the
edited book by Salih (2003) and see Southall (2005), Schlemmer (2006) and
the comparative study by Spiess (2009) and see Doorenspleet and Nijzink
(2013).
4. The main question in these analyses is as follows: ‘[Person B] lives in a country
with regular elections. It has one large political party and many small ones.
People are free to express their opinions and to vote as they please. But so
far, elections have not led to a change of ruling party. In your opinion, how
much of a democracy is [Person B] country?’ The results of Afrobarometer
Round 4 (2008–2009) show that only a small minority thinks such systems
are undemocratic (3, 7, 13 per cent in respectively, Botswana, Namibia and
South Africa), while only 9 per cent of the people in Botswana think this is a
democracy with major problems. In contrast, 36 and 29 per cent of the people
in Namibia and South Africa think this is a democracy with major problems.
There is a clear difference between peoples’ perceptions in Botswana on the
one hand (e.g. 42 per cent think this is a full democracy) and South Africa
and Namibia on the other hand (only 13 and 18 per cent) think this is a full
democracy.
5. Interestingly, in Ghana the initial effect of the two-party system was an
increased risk of instability, while the one-party-dominant systems in this
volume show an initial positive effect and increased stability. This seems to
reverse in the longer term. While the two-party system in Ghana has predomi-
nantly positive effects for democracy in the longer term, one-party dominance
in Botswana, South Africa and Namibia affects democracy negatively as time
goes by.
6. Although some political parties on the continent such as the ANC in
South Africa and the BDP in Botswana have a long and illustrious history,
most African parties do not use ideology as the primary means to distin-
guish themselves from other parties. In fact, African party systems – at
least the ones included in this volume – are not characterized by strong
ideological differences. Instead, political leaders play a key role. African
political parties tend to be leadership centred with clientelist networks
rather than ideology being used as the main mechanism to gain voter
support.
7. See, that is, Pempel (1990: 16); see also Arian and Barnes (1974) and our notes
1 and 2 for other studies. Pempel (1990: 16) argues that one-party-dominant
systems are mainly characterized by a ‘virtuous cycle of dominance’ during
which the dominant position is (mis)used to ensure further dominance, and
thereby reinforcing the stability of the one-party-dominant system itself. His
ideas contradict Duverger’s observations (1954) and also our previous findings
(Doorenspleet and Nijzink 2013) that there are not only self-reinforcing but
also counteracting mechanisms which break the cycle of dominance in such
party systems.
8. There is still a lack of studies focusing on party system change. Examples
of important exceptions are Mair’s work on established democracies (see, i.e.
Mair 1997, 2006) and Coppedge’s work on Latin America (e.g. see Coppedge
1998; see also Coppedge 1994).
186 Conclusion
9. Existing measurements of party system institutionalization are based on

Huntington, who claimed that institutionalization is the process by which
organizations and procedures acquire value and stability (Huntington 1968:
12) and who focused on four criteria (adaptability, complexity, autonomy and
coherence).
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Index
accountability, 2–3, 13–14, 52, 56, 62, coalition, 7, 13, 14, 34, 50, 111, 113,
63, 65, 83, 108, 119, 121, 125, 114, 130, 134, 136, 139, 142, 143,
126, 132, 172, 173, 176, 179, 152, 180, 181
181, 183 CoD - Congress of Democrats
AFRC - Armed Forces Revolutionary (Namibia), 91, 97
Council (Ghana), 115 colonialism, 90, 100
Afrobarometer surveys, 96, 97, 98, COPE - Congress of the People (South
141, 156, 157, 159, 162, 177 Africa), 56, 59, 62, 63, 64
ANC - African National Congress corruption, 57, 58, 70, 122, 138, 154,
(South Africa), 10, 11, 47–68, 93, 157, 160, 162, 163
94, 174–5, 182, 184 CPP - Convention People’s Party
apartheid, 47, 48, 50, 52, 56, 62, 88, (Ghana), 109, 110, 113–19
100, 174 culture, 2, 15, 88, 90, 91, 92, 96, 101,
AU - African Union, 1 122, 125, 126, 175, 176
authoritarian regimes, 4, 9, 27, 28, 29, cycle of dominance, 182
30, 35, 36, 38, 132
DA - Democratic Alliance (South

Banda, Rupiah, 158
Africa), 48, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64
BDP - Botswana Democratic Party
(Botswana), 9, 10, 69–86, 174, 184 democracy
Bemba, 152, 158, 161, 162 conditions for democracy, 1–3, 23,
Benin, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 15, 24, 26, 32, 71, 82
108, 129–47, 171, 177, 180–1, definition of democracy, 25
182, 184 effects on democracy, 2, 4, 7, 9, 11,
Black Economic Empowerment, 50 12, 15–16, 27–8, 29–30, 73, 91,
BMD - Botswana Movement for 123, 130, 132, 139–41, 143,
Democracy (Botswana), 82, 84 151, 164, 171–84
BNF - Botswana National Front electoral democracy, 28, 30, 33, 34,
(Botswana), 70, 83, 84 36, 61
born free, 97, 98, 175 internal party democracy, 5, 56, 74,
Botswana, 3, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 25, 32, 78, 82, 121
69–86, 108, 133, 150, 171, 172, level of democracy, 25
173–4, 177, 178, 181, 184 liberal democracy, 28, 30, 36, 108
promotion of democracy, 1, 37
CERD - Convention on the public opinion about democracy,
Elimination of all Forms of Racial 96, 156, 177–8
Discrimination, 93 representative democracy, 2, 13, 83
Chiluba, Frederick, 153, 155, 156, 157, stability of democracy, 13, 31–6, 83,
158, 161 124, 173, 174
civil society, 2, 7, 48, 50, 51, 55, 60, transition to democracy, 2, 6, 9,
61, 69, 80, 88, 92, 119, 120, 151, 31–6, 38, 47, 120, 131, 152
153, 156, 157, 163, 164 democratization, 1, 2, 3, 4, 15, 22–44,
clientelism, 28, 159, 164 107, 108, 172, 183, 184
188
Index 189
DFP - Democratic Freedom Party FARD-Alafia - Action Front for

(Ghana), 110 Renewal and Development-Alafia
DPP - Democratic People’s Party (Benin), 10, 136, 137, 138, 140
(Ghana), 110 FCBE - Cauri Forces for an Emerging
Benin (Benin), 10, 11, 136,
EC - Electoral Commission, 110, 137, 140
119, 120 FDD - Forum for Democracy and
ECN - Election Commission of Development (Zambia), 156, 158
Namibia, 91 FPTP - First Past The Post, 108,
ECOWAS - Economic Community of 117, 124
West African States, 1 Freedom House, 24, 29, 30, 31, 34,
elections, 1–2, 7, 8, 9, 13, 15, 35, 139
22–38, 183
in Benin, 10, 26, 32, 130, 131, 132, GBA - Ghana Bar Association
133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, (Ghana), 116
140, 141, 142, 180 GCP - Ghana Congress Party (Ghana),
in Botswana, 10, 11, 32, 70, 76, 80, 114, 116
81, 172, 173, 174 GDP - Gross Domestic Product, 157
free and fair elections, 1, 23, 24, 25, Ghana, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11–12, 15, 22, 25,
26, 38, 88, 121 30, 31, 32, 34, 35–6, 37, 107–28,
in Ghana, 10, 11–12, 30, 31, 32, 34, 133, 138, 171, 173, 177, 178–9,
36, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 180, 181, 183
113, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, government accountability, 13, 14, 52,
122, 123, 124, 125, 178, 179 65, 172, 173, 179
in Namibia, 10, 11, 32, 88, 90, 91, government performance, 13,
92, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 172, 173 119, 178
parliamentary elections, 10, 12, 24,
27, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37, 70, 90,
hegemony, 88, 97
109, 110, 118, 120, 122, 131,
HP - Heritage Party (Zambia), 156
132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 141–2,
Human Development Index, 157, 160
149, 150, 174
presidential elections, 10, 11, 12, 24,
26, 27, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37, 90, IFP - Inkatha Freedom Party (South
109, 117, 118, 120, 125, 131, Africa), 63
133, 136, 139, 142, 149, 161, incumbency, 57, 74, 123
178, 179, 180, 183 independence, 7, 11, 23, 35, 69, 70,
in South Africa, 10, 11, 32, 47, 49, 71, 73, 75, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91,
54, 56, 60, 62, 63, 172, 173, 174 92, 96, 101, 107, 111, 113, 114,
in Zambia, 10, 12, 33, 35, 148, 149, 130, 174, 175, 182
150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, institutional architecture, 72, 118,
156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 119, 178
181, 182 IPAC - Inter-Party Advisory
ENEP - effective number of electoral Committee (Ghana), 120
parties, 131
ENLP - effective number of legislative Kaunda, Kenneth, 155
parties, 131, 135 Kedikilwe, Ponatshego, 76–9
ethnicity, 4, 107, 114, 124 Khama, Ian, 69, 70, 77–83
ethnic divisions, 11, 130, 180 Khama, Seretse Sir, 70, 73, 77, 79, 82,
ethnic party bans, 4 83, 174
190 Index
liberation movement, 55, 87, 89, 93, in South Africa, 172, 173, 174, 176,
94, 97, 99, 175, 182 177, 181
one-party-dominant system, 12, 14,
MAP - Muslim Association Party 15, 173, 175, 177, 182
(Ghana), 114 OPO - Ovamboland People’s
Mbeki, Thabo, 53, 56 Organisation (Namibia), 88
media, 2, 6, 23, 38, 48, 51, 58, 60, 63, opposition, 4, 14, 16, 24, 25, 27, 28,
64, 69, 72, 74, 80, 81, 97, 100, 29, 34, 38, in Benin, 135
118, 123, 155, 179 in Botswana, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75,
Mexico, 27, 34 76, 78, 80, 82, 83
MMD - Movement for Multiparty in Ghana, 114, 115, 119, 125, 126
Democracy (Zambia), 10, 12, in Namibia, 88, 90–5, 97, 98, 101
148–67, 181, 182 in South Africa, 48, 49, 50, 54, 56,
MP - Member of Parliament, 76, 77 59, 60, 61, 62, 64
multiparty democracy, 9, 152 in Zambia, 149, 150–2, 153, 155–8,
multiparty politics, 110, 119 160–2, 164
party institutionalization, 124, 183

Namibia, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 25, 32,
party system, 3–7, 8, 15–16, 83,
87–104, 108, 150, 171, 172, 173,
132, 164
175–6, 177, 178, 181
consequences of party systems, 3, 4, 9,
NCBWA - National Congress of British
12–14, 129, 171–84
West Africa (Ghana), 111, 112
cycle of dominance, 182
NDC - National Democratic Congress
one-party-dominant system, 12, 14,
(Ghana), 10, 11, 107, 109–11,
15, 173, 175, 177, 182
116–17, 119, 121, 122, 126, 178
party system change, 143, 148, 150,
Neo-patrimonialism, 71 181, 182–4
NIP - National Independence Party party system stability, 8, 111, 125,
(Ghana), 109 133–4, 137, 183
NLC - National Liberation Council pulverized party system, 8, 11, 15,
(Ghana), 115 129–47, 171, 177, 180–1
NLM - National Liberation Movement single party regime, 34, 148, 152, 155
(Ghana), 114, 116 two-party system, 11–12, 13, 14, 15,
Non-dominant party system, 132 105–26, 131, 171, 177,
NPP - New Patriotic Party (Ghana), 10, 178–80, 181
11, 108–11, 116–17, 119, 121, patronage, 57, 73, 74, 78, 81, 126,
122, 126, 178 130, 141, 142, 143, 154, 155, 159,
NRC - National Redemption Council 175, 181
(Ghana), 115 PF - Patriotic Front (Zambia), 10, 12,
NUNW - National Union of Namibian 148, 149, 151–2, 158–63, 181
Workers (Namibia), 95 PHP - People’s Heritage Party
(Ghana), 109
one-party dominance, 4, 8, 9, 14, 62, PNC - People’s National Convention
73, 149, 150, 163, 171, 172–3, (Ghana), 109, 110, 117, 118, 119
176, 177, 178, 181, 182, 183 PNDC - Provisional National Defence
in Botswana, 70, 71, 73, 172, 173, Council (Ghana), 109, 115,
174, 176, 177, 181 116, 119
in Namibia, 15, 88, 172, 173, 175, PNP - People’s National Party
176, 177, 181 (Ghana), 109
Index 191
PP - Progress Party (Ghana), 115, 116 SWAPO - South West African People’s
PR - Proportional Representation, Organisation (Namibia), 10, 11,
90, 118 87–104, 175–6, 182
PRB - Renaissance Party of Benin
(Benin), 10, 136, 137, 138, 140 TC - Togoland Congress (Ghana), 114
PRD - Democratic Renewal Party Two-party system, 11–12, 13, 14, 15,
(Benin), 137, 138 105–26, 131, 171, 177,
presidential movement, 135, 136 178–80, 181
presidential system, 108, 117, 118,
180, 184 UBF - Union for the Benin of the
PSD - Social Democratic Party (Benin), Future (Benin), 10, 136
137, 138 UGCC - United Gold Coast
pulverized party system, 8, 11, 15, Convention (Ghana), 112–14, 116
129–47, 171, 180 UN - United Nations, 96, 157, 160
UNIP - United National Independence
race, 47, 48, 52, 62 Party (Zambia), 148, 152, 153,
RDP - Rally or Democracy and Progress 155, 158
(Namibia), 91, 92, 95, 97, 98 UP - United Party (Ghana), 114, 116
RP - Republican Party (Zambia), 156 UPND - United Party for National
RPD - Reformed Patriotic Democrats Development (Zambia), 156, 158
(Ghana), 110 UTRD - Union for the Triumph of
rule of law, 79, 95, 123 Democratic Renewal (Benin),
10, 136
SADC - Southern African
Development Community, 1, 95 voters/voting, see elections
Sata, Michael, 12, 161, 163
Senegal, 4, 22, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, women, 112, 113, 123–4, 179
36, 37
single party regime, 34, 148, 152, 155 Zambia, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 25, 33,
SOE - State Owned Enterprise, 73, 75, 35, 65, 108, 133, 148–67, 171,
93, 153 177, 181–2, 184
South Africa, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 25, ZCTU - Zambia Congress of Trade
32, 47–68, 108, 134, 150, 171, Unions (Zambia), 153
172, 173, 174–5, 177, 178, Zimbabwe, 4, 23, 32, 65, 87
181, 184 Zuma, Jacob, 64, 94

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Party Systems and Democracy in Africa

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Renske Doorenspleet and Lia Nijzink

List of Tables and Figures vii

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xiii

1 Do Party Systems Matter for Democracy in Africa? 1

2 Multiparty Elections in Africa: For Better or Worse 22

Part I One-Party-Dominant Systems

3 South Africa: Electoral Dominance, Identity Politics and

4 Botswana: Presidential Ambitions, Party Factions and the

5 Namibia: From Liberation to Domination 87

Part II Other Party Systems

6 Ghana: The African Exemplar of an Institutionalized

7 Benin: A Pulverized Party System in Transition 129

8 Zambia: Dominance Won and Lost 148

Part III Conclusion

1.1 Results of parliamentary and presidential elections in six

9.1 Public opinion about democracy in six African countries

We wish to thank the Development Partnerships in Higher Educa-

Renske Doorenspleet is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics

Lia Nijzink is a political scientist based in Cape Town, South Africa.

George M. Bob-Milliar received his PhD from the University of Ghana

issues (Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) 2012,

Matthijs Bogaards is Professor of Political Science at the Jacobs Univer-

Cyril K. Daddieh (PhD Dalhousie) is Professor of Political Science

Steven Friedman is Director of the Centre for the Study of Democ-

Rachel M. Gisselquist is a political scientist and is currently a Research

Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT,

Shane Mac Giollabhuí is Departmental Lecturer in the Politics of Africa

Christian John Makgala is Associate Professor of History at the Uni-

Henning Melber is a political scientist and sociologist and Direc-

Dan Paget studies political parties in sub-Saharan Africa. He currently

at St Cross College, University of Oxford. His primary interests are politi-

AFRC Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (Ghana)

NCBWA National Congress of British West Africa (Ghana)

After a wave of democratization reached Africa in the early 1990s,

for democratization’, because that would lead to the ‘anti-electoralist’

in the development of democracy by reinforcing crucial aspects of it:

A party system is precisely the system of interactions resulting from

What do we know about party systems in Africa?

The institutionalist trend in political science research has

2007). Some have argued that in order to enhance our understanding

negotiations that characterize relations between political parties in the

governmental arena, the parties and party systems in newer democra-

Whereas the emergence of Western parties was contingent on the

Generally, political parties on the continent cannot be regarded as

Party systems in Africa: Our case selection

Sartori’s typology not only distinguishes between party systems in sta-

Table 1.1 Results of parliamentary and presidential elections in six selected

Botswana 1965 BDP – 90.3 9.7

Do party systems matter for democracy?

Party systems are configurations of political parties. Different types

and theoretical conclusions are best understood within their historical

multiple parties governing together in a coalition government promote

Outline of the book

In Chapter 2, Matthijs Bogaards investigates the claim that Africa dis-

the strategies of the opposition party and Zambia’s democratic track

literature on the formation of European party systems (Lipset and Rokkan

L. Diamond (1999) Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns

A. Lijphart (1994) Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven

Most regimes around the world conduct multiparty elections on a regu-

and our policy recommendations reconsidered. If the aim is to promote

Elections and democratization: Lindberg’s analysis