from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.
PARTY POLITICS VOL 7. No.4 pp.437-468
Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi
PARTY SYSTEM
INSTITUTIONALIZATION IN
30 AFRICAN COUNTRIES
Michelle Kuenzi and Gina Lambright
ABSTRACT
In their study of 12 Latin American countries, Mainwaring and Scully
develop a framework to assess levels of party system institutionalization
and explore the impact of the degree of party system institutionalization
on democratic consolidation. In this paper, we provide a description of
the levels of party system institutionalization in the African context.
Employing three criteria adapted from the framework of Mainwaring
and Scully, we systematically measure the level of party system institutionalization
in 30 African countries. More specifically, we examine
(1) regularity of party competition; (2) extent to which parties manifest
roots in society; and (3) institutionalization, or the extent to which
citizens and organized interests perceive that parties and elections are
the means of determining who governs in the 30 countries. Our findings
indicate that the level of party system institutionalization is generally
lower in African countries than in those of Latin America. However, we
find that the length of time during which a country has experience with
democracy is an important factor in determining the level of party
system institutionalization. The difference in performance between the
five long-standing African democracies and those countries new to
multipartyism was notable on all of the criteria.
KEY WORDS _ Africa _ party system institutionalization _ party systems _ political
parties
Introduction
In the 1990s, democratic movements have emerged to challenge authoritarian
rule in countries across Africa. However, many of the democratic
advances remain vulnerable. The events have led observers to ask: 'Will the
new democratic regimes survive?' Yet, this begs a more general question:
what factors facilitate the survival and consolidation of democratic regimes?
1354-0688(200107)7:4;437-468;015882
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
One factor thought to affect the establishment and survival of democratic
forms of government is the level of party system institutionalization. Yet,
does party system institutionalization facilitate the establishment of democratic
processes? Mainwaring and Scully (1995) explore the impact of the
degree of institutionalization of party systems on democratic consolidation
in Latin America. On the basis of their 12-country study, they conclude that
a high level of institutionalization fosters democratic consolidation.
However, attention to this question has been scant and erratic with reference
to Africa.l In order to begin to fill this lacuna in the literature we
provide a description of the level of party system institutionalization in the
African context. To accomplish this goal, we apply the framework developed
by Mainwaring and Scully to a sample of African countries.
Theoretical Foundations
Political parties have long been recognized as a requisite for any democratic
political system (e.g. see Schattschneider, 1942; Duverger, 1954; Downs,
1957; Key, 1964; Aldrich, 1995). Political parties are thought to perform
numerous roles critical to the functioning of a democracy. They are said to
aggregate interests, thereby translating '... mass preferences into public
policy' (Key quoted in Sartori, 1988: 254) and serve as both tools of representation
and 'channels of expression' (p. 253). Key notes that it is only
through party competition that governmental successions have occurred as
a function of popular decision (1964: 200). Hence, parties allow diverse
groups to pursue their interests in a peaceful, systematic fashion within a
political system.
Mainwaring and Scully define a party system as '... the set of patterned
interactions in the competition among parties' (1995: 4). According to Key,
a party system must, '... extend its leadership over considerable areas or
over large numbers of people' (1964: 200). Initially, political parties were
seen as potentially divisive forces for the very fact that they provide citizens
with a mechanism through which they can pursue their particular interests.
Parties were perceived as being capable of undermining the unity of a nation
and encouraging the myopic pursuit of particular interests on the part of a
citizenry to the detriment of the general welfare of society.
Slowly, the perception of parties as being inherently threatening to the
political order began to recede, and people realized that the expression of
diverse and dissenting views would not necessarily have destructive effects
on society (Sartori, 1988: 253). Yet, this does not negate the possibility that
the existence of multiple political parties can generate political and social
disorder. It is the consensus around the political system's rules and norms
for settling differences that prevents parties from exhibiting some of their
more noxious effects (Sartori, 1988). Nonetheless, whatever dangers the
existence of multiple political parties poses, the critical role political parties
438
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
play in promoting political stability (e.g. see Huntington, 1968) and democratic
consolidation has been affirmed and reaffirmed by scholars through
the present time (e.g. see Dix, 1992; Mainwaring and Scully, 1995). Mainwaring
and Scully contend that 'building a party system' is necessary, but
not sufficient, for the maintenance of democratic stability (1995: 27). The
key features of institutionalized party systems, such as stability in party competition,
allow democracies to operate smoothly, yet do not guarantee
democratic governance.
Political Parties in Africa
The democratization movements throughout Africa in the early 1990s gave
rise to multifarious political associations and parties. New political parties
have emerged in large number in many of the democratizing countries. This
onslaught of political activity is reminiscent of that which preceded independence
in many sub-Saharan African countries. The importance attached
to the parties burgeoning at that time is reflected in the literature on African
politics which emerged in the immediate post-independence period.
Observers of Africa during the period duly followed and noted the activities
of political parties. Morgenthau observes that political parties are one
of the oldest national political institutions in West Africa2 and constitute
one of the first political institutions to be 'wholly Africanized' (1964: 330).
Apter sees political parties as one of the most important 'instruments of
modernization' (1965: 3).
The political configuration that emerged during the struggle for independence
reflected the tendency of various political groups to rally around a
dominant party in an effort to defeat a common enemy. The tendency for
the leading parties to use their prominent role in these movements to eliminate
political competition and consolidate power after achieving independence
was the subject of a great deal of the scholarship on Africa. Apter
attributes the high frequency with which distinctions between governments
and ruling parties were quickly blurred to the 'multiplicity of functions'
taken on by parties both before and following independence (1965: 167).
Zolberg (1969) aptly describes the way the Parti Democratique de Cote
d'Ivoire consolidated its hold on state power in Cote d'Ivoire:
The Parti Democratique de Cote d'Ivoire began its career as a protest
movement within a framework that afforded but limited opportunities
for political participation by Africans (1946-1951); it was transformed
into a political party during the period of terminal colonialism
(1952-1958); and it became synonymous with government when the
Ivory Coast Republic was founded (1959- ).
(1969: 322-3)
This pattern seems reflective of the evolution of one-party rule in many other
African countries. However, Lewis observes that single-party dominance did
439
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
not emerge as a result of consensus during the movements for independence
(1965: 17). In fact, many of the parties that monopolized power during the
past couple of decades in Africa were voted into office in free elections. Once
in office, these parties seized power and many went so far as to ban any
opposition in an effort to maintain a monopoly on power (1965: 34-5).
Early on, Lewis perceived the one-party state's inability to fulfil its purported
roles: 'The single-party thus fails in all its claims. It cannot represent all
the people; or maintain free discussion; or give stable government; or above
all, reconcile differences between various regional groups' (1965: 63).
Observers note that, for the most part, these parties were not seamless
monoliths, but were composed of diverse political groupings and tendencies
(Bienen, 1978). They also find that there was not one particular type of
single-party state (e.g. Lewis, 1965; Bienen, 1978), and many scholars have
attempted to build classificatory schemes of the systems.
Many have questioned the depth and significance of the regime changes
which have taken place during the 'third wave' of democratization in Africa.
For example, Claude Ake observed that multi-party elections provided wellknown
autocrats with the opportunity to engage in a democratic credentialing
process (1996). Few observers are optimistic about the prospects for
democratic consolidation in those African countries touched by the third
wave of democratization. According to Crawford Young, 'In only a handful
of instances can one speak with reasonable confidence of a beginning of consolidation
...' (1996: 60). Bratton and van de Walle note that the organizational
weakness of parties in those African countries having undergone
transitions 'bodes poorly for the consolidation of democracy' (1997: 252).
Nonetheless, even if the prospects for democratic consolidation do not
seem especially propitious, most do not dispute the importance of the recent
wave of democratic liberalizations and transitions. Given the tenuous nature
of democratic consolidation in Africa, those factors that could facilitate or
impede consolidation are of acute interest. Today, however, our level of
understanding of the way in which party system institutionalization and
democratic consolidation relate to each other in the African context remains
low. In this paper, we layout a framework that can be used to track the
relationship between different aspects of party system institutionalization
and democratic consolidation so that we can better understand the magnitude
and nature of the relationship between these phenomena.
Theoretical Form for the Study
In Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America, Mainwaring
and Scully follow an institutional approach, looking at the characteristics
of party systems as opposed to only the characteristics of the
component parties. They devise a framework to assess the level of party
system institutionalization in individual countries. Mainwaring and Scully
440
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
outline four criteria against which they evaluate level of party system institutionalization
in 12 Latin American countries: (1) regularity of party competition,
(2) the extent to which parties have 'stable roots in society', (3) the
extent to which citizens and major political actors accept that 'parties and
elections are the means of determining who governs', and (4) the extent to
which parties are organized (1995: 5, 14).
According to their first criterion, in order for a party system to be institutionalized,
'Patterns of party competition must manifest some regularity .. .'
(1995: 5). With the second criterion Mainwaring and Scully assert that the
principal parties must have at least fairly stable roots in society. In an institutionalized
party system, one would expect parties to remain consistent
with respect to platform and ideology and therefore maintain a fairly stable
level of citizen support. Hence, one would not expect parties to appear
and disappear from election to election (1995: 5). According to the third
criterion, '... citizens and organized interests must perceive that parties and
elections are the means of determining who governs, and that the electoral
process and parties are accorded legitimacy' (1995: 14). The fourth criterion
they layout is party organization. That is, in an institutionalized party
system, parties are generally not subordinate to other political or private
entities, have routinized procedures, are relatively cohesive, have an independent
and sufficient resource base, and are 'territorially comprehensive'
(1995: 5).
Based on these four criteria, the authors create a classification scheme
with two principal categories: institutionalized party systems and inchoate
party systems. These two classifications, institutionalized and inchoate,
should not be viewed as discrete categories, but rather as the endpoints of
the continuous variable, institutionalization. A third, residual category,
labeled hegemonic systems in transition, is created for countries which can
be appropriately categorized neither as institutionalized nor inchoate.
Institutionalized versus Inchoate Party Systems
In reference to the criteria outlined by Mainwaring and Scully, an institutionalized
party system implies a high degree of stability in interparty competition,
the existence of parties that have 'somewhat stable roots in society',
the acceptance of parties and elections as the means of transferring political
power and determining who governs, as well as political parties that are
highly organized with reasonably stable rules and structures (1995: 5). In
an institutionalized party system, populist or demagogic leaders are normally
shunned by parties, and citizens tend to vote on the basis of parties.
Institutionalized parties tend to employ peaceful, democratic means in their
quest for power (1995: 23).
Mainwaring and Scully note that in inchoate systems, '... party organizations
are generally weak, electoral volatility is high, party roots in society
441
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
are weak, and individual personalities dominate parties and campaigns'
(1995: 20). Mainwaring and Scully point out that citizens do not have
strong party attachments and hence, parties do not drive the vote in the way
that they do in institutionalized systems.
Hegemonic Party System in Transition
For Mainwaring and Scully, 'hegemonic party system in transition' constitutes
a residual category because, they claim, it implies a type of system as
opposed to the level of institutionalization (1995: 20). In the case of Africa,
this category is important. While the level of true electoral competition may
not be that high in several of these countries, they may achieve fairly high
scores on level of institutionalization, given the way this concept is operationalized.
Mainwaring and Scully note that 'the existence of old, well-established,
and well-organized parties means that in some respects the process of
institutionalizing a party system is more advanced than in several countries
that already have competitive politics' (1995: 21). However, Mainwaring
and Scully also point out that hegemonic systems cannot be considered completely
institutionalized because of the lack of party competition (1995).
Extension of Mainwaring and Scully'S Party
System Institutionalization Study to Africa
We employ the party system institutionalization framework to assess the
level of party system institutionalization in the 30 African countries that use
multiparty competitive elections to determine who governs. More specifically,
we use three of the four criteria employed by Mainwaring and Scully
in their study of 12 Latin American countries to evaluate the level of party
system institutionalization in these countries. Thus, we look at (1) regularity
of party competition, (2) extent of societal roots, and (3) institutionalization
or the extent to which, in the words of Mainwaring and Scully,
'citizens and organized interests perceive that parties and elections are the
means of determining who governs' (1995: 14). While we assess the above
criteria in a systematic fashion, we were only able to examine our fourth
dimension of interest, level of party cohesion and organization, in an impressionistic
manner.3 Hence, we have decided not to include this variable in our
analysis.
Since our goal was to replicate Mainwaring and Scully'S study in the
context of Africa, we adhered to their framework as closely as possible.
However, we found the way in which they assessed some of their concepts
of interest problematic. They do not make explicit their method of scoring
the countries on the various indicators, nor do they fully operationalize all
of the criteria. We therefore use different indicators than they do in certain
442
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
cases and make explicit our method of scoring. Hence, our study is more an
extension of Mainwaring and Scully'S study than a replication.
Criteria of Party System Institutionalization
and their Operationalization
Mainwaring and Scully score institutionalization on a scale from one to
three. The scale is as follows:
3.0 = high level of institutionalization
2.5 = medium high level of institutionalization
2.0 =medium level of institutionalization
1.5 =medium low level of institutionalization
1.0 =low level of institutionalization
Each country is assigned one of the above scores on each criterion, and then
the scores on the criteria are summed to yield the aggregate scores, which
are used to classify the 12 Latin American party systems as institutionalized,
inchoate or hegemonic.
Selection of Cases
In this study, we look at the 30 African countries that have had at least two
multiparty elections, including those that have recently undergone transitions
to democracy as well as the five long-standing democracies. While we
decided that our analysis should focus on those sub-Saharan African countries
that have had two consecutive elections, we recognize that in some of
our countries of interest no alternation of power has ever occurred, and the
competitiveness of the elections and extent to which political rights and
liberties are extended to the citizenry are questionable. We include all of
those countries which have had at least two consecutive multiparty elections
because we think it is important to track party system institutionalization
in countries at different stages of the democratization and democratic consolidation
processes. This allows us to discern how party systems evolve and
shape democratization and democratic consolidation. As Mainwaring and
Scully (1995) observe, 'In order to move toward a democracy, some aspects
of party politics - especially the intertwining of hegemonic party and state
- must be deinstitutionalized' (20).
A few of the countries experienced democratic reversals subsequent to the
elections included in our study. For example, despite a democratic reversal
in 1994, Gambia's long history of competitive democratic elections since
independence warrants its inclusion. Indeed, Gambia's past experience with
democratic elections may reveal important points about the process of party
system institutionalization.4 Congo is now under military rule and Cote
443
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
d'Ivoire has just experienced a democratic reversal. However, we feel that
these countries' recent interludes with democratization and multipartyism
are potentially illuminating.
We were concerned that some of our indicators, such as legislative volatility,
might be measuring different underlying phenomena in the more democratic
systems. For example, within a democratic system low legislative
volatility may reflect quite stable patterns of party competition. On the other
hand, in a less democratic system, a low level of volatility may indicate a
lack of competitiveness. We, therefore, decided to separate the countries
according to the level of democracy and then compare party system institutionalization
across these different categories. In order to assess the levels
of democracy, we looked at the quality of their last two elections and their
Freedom House Score. However, we found that our variables of interest
behaved in much the same way among the more democratic countries and
less democratic countries. Although level of democracy proved to offer little
analytic leverage with regard to party system institutionalization, length of
experience with democracy does appear to be important, as we shall show.
Criterion One: Regularity of Party Competition
Like Mainwaring and Scully, we use Pedersen's index of volatility to calculate
legislative volatility and presidential volatility for the 30 African cases.
Pedersen's index measures the net change in each party's seat or vote share
from election to election. It is calculated by summing the net changes in the
percentage of seats (or votes) won or lost by all of the parties from election
to election and dividing by two (Mainwaring and Scully, 1995: 6).5
However, we add a third indicator under this criterion: the difference
between the percentage of votes captured by a party in a presidential election
and the percentage of lower chamber seats won by that same party in
the corresponding legislative election (presidential/legislative difference).
Mainwaring and Scully use this indicator to measure the extent of party penetration
into society under their second criterion. They claim that small sum
total differences in presidential and legislative voting reflect a tendency for
voters to identify with a particular party label. While we agree that this indicator
reflects a tendency for people to vote on the basis of party labels, we
feel that it belongs with the first criterion. Voting on the basis of party label
is integrally related to the regularity of party competition. We would expect
greater regularity in cases where people tend to identify with a particular
party label than in cases where they do not.
To assess the extent to which our intuition was correct, we examined the
inter-item correlations between the other two indicators of criterion one
(presidential and legislative volatility), the two indicators of criterion two
(see description of this criterion below), and this indicator. We found that
the inter-item correlations for the three indicators we propose to use for
444
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
Legislative Pearson
volatility correlation
Sig.
(2-tailed)
N
Presidential Pearson
volatility correlation
Sig.
(2-tailed)
N
Pres.!leg. Pearson
difference correlation
Sig.
(2-tailed)
N
Mean age Pearson
of parties correlation
with 10% Sig.
seats (2-tailed)
N
Percent of Pearson
seats won correlation
by parties Sig.
founded by (2-tailed)
1970 N
Legislative
lIolatility
1.000
30
.589*
.004
22
.889*
.000
26
-.131
.491
30
-.173
.360
30
Table 1
Presidential
volatility
.589*
.004
22
1.000
22
.629*
.002
22
-.235
.294
22
-.072
.750
22
* * Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Pres./leg
difference
.889*
.000
26
.639*
.002
22
1.000
26
-.307
.127
26
-.217
.287
26
Mean age
of parties
with 10%
seats
--.131
.491
30
-.235
.294
22
-.307
.127
26
1.000
30
.847*
.000
30
Percent of
seats won
by parties
founded by
1970
-.173
.360
30
-.072
.750
22
-.217
.287
26
.847*
.000
30
1.000
30
criterion one are extremely high (see Table 1). However, presidential/legislative
difference is not highly correlated with the indicators of criterion two.
A factor analysis further confirmed our notion that the three indicators we
use for criterion one all measure one underlying dimension, whereas those
for criterion two measure a different dimension.
We are able to look only at one electoral period for the majority of our
cases, since most of the African countries have only had two consecutive
democratic elections.6 For those five countries considered long-standing
'polyarchies', we included data on all of the multiparty, competitive legislative
elections since independence. We allocated points for mean electoral
volatility and mean presidential/legislative difference as follows:
3.0 =0-10%
2.5 =11-20%
2.0 =21-30%
445
1.5 =31-40%
1.0 = over 40%
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
Each country was assigned two scores, one based on its mean electoral
volatility, the other on its mean presidentiaVlegislative difference. These two
scores were then averaged to give an overall score for criterion one.7
Criterion Two: Stable Roots in Society
One variable Mainwaring and Scully employ is age of party to indicate the
extent to which parties have stable roots in society. As noted earlier, a party's
ability to survive reflects its ability to maintain support in the population. In
order to measure this variable, they look at percentage of lower-chamber seats
held by parties founded by 1950. Second, they look at the age of the parties
that have received more than 10 percent of the vote in the most recent legislative
election. They also include the presidentiaVlegislative difference, which,
as noted above, we placed among the other indicators for criterion one. For
the first indicator of age, we look at the percentage of lower-chamber seats
held by parties formed by 1970. This slight departure from Mainwaring and
Scully was necessary for a couple of reasons. Very few parties were formed
by 1950 in the African cases. In order to capture the parties with roots on
or around independence, which the majority of the African countries
obtained around 1960, we set our date at 1970. Had we set the date earlier,
we would have had very little variance on this indicator. Since making intraAfrican
comparisons is an important part of our task, we use the date of
1970 as our cut-off point. Should one want to conduct a study that includes
countries from multiple world regions, this indicator may need to be
adjusted accordingly. We scored the countries on this indicator as follows:
3.0 =80-100%
2.5 =60-79%
2.0 =40-9%
1.5 =20-39%
1.0 =below 20%
We alter the second measure of age slightly so that we look at average age
of the parties that obtained 10 percent or more of the seats in the last election
or the average age of the top two competitors. It was necessary to do
so because of the hegemonic nature of many of Africa's party systems. Had
we not made the provision to look at the top two competitors in cases where
no or only one party received at least 10 percent of the vote, there would
have been many cases where we looked at the age of only one party.
We scored the countries as follows:
3.0 =above 30 years
2.5 =25-30 years
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KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
2.0 = 19-24 years
1.5 = 13-18 years
1.0 =below 13 years
In order to come up with a final score on the second criterion, we added
the two scores for each country and calculated the average.
Criterion Three: Institutionalization
Mainwaring and Scully do not operationalize their third criterion, institutionalization,
or the extent to which 'citizens and organized interests perceive
that parties and elections are the means of determining who governs'
(1995: 14). They contend that survey data would best allow one to measure
this concept, and then go on to make impressionistic determinations of how
countries rank on this criterion. However, we wanted to evaluate this variable
in a systematic fashion with reference to the 30 African countries. We
use three indicators which allow us to ascertain the level of acceptance of
parties and elections as the primary routes to power. For the past two elections,
we look at: (a) whether the opposition boycotted the election, (b)
whether the losers accepted the results, and (c) whether the elections were
deemed free and fair by international observers.
For each election, we then used our indicators to assign a point value.
First, one point was assigned if there was not an opposition boycott to an
election, and zero points were assigned if there was. Second, if the losers
accepted the results of a particular election, a point of one was assigned,
while zero points were assigned if they did not.8 Third, one point was
assigned if an election was free and fair, and zero points were assigned if it
was not. Therefore, for each election, points were allocated as follows:
(1) Did any major party boycott the election?
yes =0 points
no =1 point
(2) Did the losers accept the results?
yes =1 point
no =0 points
(3) Was the election free and fair?
yes = 1 point
no =0 points
In order to calculate the percentage of possible points each country's
respective party system earned, we divided the points associated with each
country by the total number of points possible, which was six. Based on
these percentages, we assigned the final scores on the third criterion according
to the following scale:
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PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
3.0 =100% (6/6)
2.5 = 83% (5/6)
2.0 =66% (4/6)
1.5 = 33-50% (2/6 - 3/6)
1.0 =below 33% (0 or 1/6)
Aggregate Score
Finally, we summed the scores on our three criteria for each country. We
then ranked the countries according to these aggregate scores and categorized
the countries as institutionalized, hegemonic and inchoate.
Results
Criterion 1: Regularity ofParty Competition
As noted above, our indicators for regularity of party competition are legislative
volatility, presidential volatility and the difference in presidential/legislative
voting. Table 2a shows the mean electoral volatility of the 30 African
countries. Included in this table are the mean legislative volatility, the mean
presidential volatility and the mean electoral volatility, which is the average
of legislative and presidential volatility.9 The election periods range from
1966 to 1999 (see Appendix A for the elections included in our study). The
countries in Table 2a are arranged from lowest to highest mean electoral
volatility, where a lower volatility score indicates a higher level of party
system institutionalization. The range of values on these indicators is quite
large. The difference between Cape Verde, which reports the lowest legislative
volatility, and Lesotho, which reports the highest legislative volatility,
is 98 percent. While the range of values for presidential volatility is not
nearly as dramatic, it is still close to 60 percent. The high variability in
volatility scores in the 30 African countries reflects the varying levels of stability
in party competition in these countries. The electoral volatility for four
countries, Malawi, Botswana, Burkina Faso and Gambia, is equal to or less
than 10 percent. In these countries, electoral competition exhibits a high
degree of regularity.
With mean electoral volatility for 13 countries falling between 10 and 20
percent, 'moderately stable' constitutes the modal category for criterion one.
As noted earlier, presidential volatility and legislative volatility are highly
correlated, and so we are not surprised that most of the countries falling in
this range have moderate levels on both indicators of volatility. It is telling
that in over a third of our cases, 11 of the 30 countries, patterns of party competition
can be described as extremely unstable. In these countries, the parties
that gain access to power change dramatically from one election to the next.
448
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
Table 2a. Electoral volatility in thirty African countries
Mean
Mean Mean electoral
No. of legislative presidential volatility
electoral volatility volatility (A+B)
Country Time span periods} (A) (B) -2Malawi
1994-99 1 4 2 3
Burkina Faso 1992-97 1 12 8 10
Botswana 1969-94 5 10 NA 10
Gambia 1966-92 5 9 11 10
Cape Verde 1991-95 1 1 23 12
Senegal 1983-98 3 12 13 13
Cote d'Ivoire 1990-95 1 9 18 13
Djibouti 1992-97 1 17 11 14
Congo 1992-93 1 14 NA 14
Zimbabwe 1980-95 3 10 19 14
Equatorial Guinea 1993-99 1 15 NA 15
Seychelles 1993-98 1 9 23 16
CAR 1993-98 1 16 NA 16
Mauritania 1992-96 1 3 32 17
South Africa 1994-99 1 18 NA 18
Namibia 1989-94 1 19 NA 19
Zambia 1991-96 1 12 28 20
Ghana 1992-96 1 33 9 21
Kenya 1992-97 1 28 35 31
Gabon 1990-96 1 25 42 33
Sao Tome 1991-98 2 24 47 35
Mali 1992-97 1 32 52 42
Niger 1993-97 2 46 52 49
Togo 1994-99 1 56 45 50
Madagascar 1993-98 1 64 39 51
Cameroon 1993-97 1 43 60 51
Comoros 1992-96 2 81 30 56
Benin 1991-99 2 59 54 56
Mauritius 1976-95 5 72 NA 72
Lesotho 1993-98 1 99 NA 99
Mean 28.36 29.60 29.44
Coefficient of variation 0.8931 0.5831 0.7614
1 The number of electoral periods refers to legislative electoral periods.
Sources: Africa South of the Sahara (1990-9); Bratton and van der Walle (1996); Day and
Degenhardt (1996); Europa World Year Book (1996); Keesing's Contemporary Archives;
Nohlen, Krennerich and Thibaut (1999); Political Handbook and Atlas of the World
(1996).
449
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
The pre-eminence of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in Zimbabwean politics in the postindependence
period accounts for its low legislative volatility score of 10.28
percent. After Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, ZANU-PF has consistently
captured an overwhelming majority of the seats in the National Assembly,
while opposition parties routinely win only a few seats per election. Like
Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire has a fairly low level of legislative volatility. Given
the late entrance of opposition parties onto the political landscape it is not
surprising that the PDCI-RDA won a huge majority of the seats in both the
1990 and 1995 elections. In both these countries, presidential volatility
scores are higher than legislative volatility scores, reflecting the fact that
opposition parties fared better in presidential elections than in legislative
elections. Nonetheless, Mugabe still drew over 75 and 90 percent of the vote
in Zimbabwe's 1990 and 1996 presidential elections, respectively.
The fluid nature of coalition politics provides a reasonable explanation for
Mauritius's legislative volatility score of 72 percent.lO In 1990, an electoral
alliance between the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), the Mouvement
Socialiste Militant (MSM) and the Mouvement des Travaillistes Democrates
(MTD) secured 57 of the 62 elective seats. In 1995, a shift in coalition
partners resulted in a MMM and Mauritian Labor Party (MLP) alliance
which won 60 of 62 seats, while the MSM lost all of its representation in
the National Assembly. Hence, the tendency toward broad shifts in electoral
alliances in Mauritian politics accounts for the high volatility score.
Lesotho's phenomenally high legislative volatility rate of 99 percent
deserves some attention.11 In the case of Lesotho, the Basotho Congress
Party (BCP) won all of the seats in the 1993 founding election. However,
prior to the 1998 election, one of the BCP leaders resigned from the BCP
and launched the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD). The LCD then
captured all but two seats in the 1998 election. Clearly, votes appear to be
driven by personal as opposed to party attachments in Lesotho.
At 59 percent, Benin perhaps best exemplifies the dynamics of instability
in party competition. In the 1991 legislative election, none of the 24 parties
that contested the election attained a majority of seats. In this election, 12
parties won seats, and 18 parties won seats in the 1995 election. However,
many of the parties that won seats in the 1991 election failed to do so in
the 1995 election. Hence, its legislative volatility for the first electoral period
was 85 percent. Benin's electoral volatility for its second electoral period
was much lower, at 33 percent. While it is too early to say with any certainty,
this decrease in volatility could indicate a trend toward greater regularity in
party competition.
In their study of 12 Latin American countries, Mainwaring and Scully
have similar results on this criterion. These authors find patterns of party
competition are quite stable in three of the Latin American countries, moderately
stable in five countries, quite unstable in only one country and
extremely unstable in four countries. The length of time a country has had
450
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
experience with democracy appears to have some important implications
for the regularity of party competition. If one separates long-standing
democracies from third-wave democracies, some differences become visible.
For example, the mean volatility for the five long-standing democracies is
23.89 percent, which is notably lower than the mean of the other 25 countries
(30.55 percent). If we exclude Mauritius, which is an outlier due to the
nature of coalitional politics, the mean volatility drops to only 12 percent
for the long-standing democracies. Our findings may reflect a scenario in
which party platforms and party preferences stabilize over time, resulting in
consistent voting patterns.
We were concerned that forces other than voting patterns, such as institutional
design, might drive legislative volatility. While likely a contributing
factor, institutional design is unlikely to be the primary force that drives electoral
volatility for a couple of reasons. If legislative volatility were calculated
using votes, we would need to assess the potential effect of electoral
formula on legislative volatility. However, since we use seats to calculate
legislative volatility, district magnitude is the primary factor that must be
considered. First, we do not see any type of consistent relationship between
the countries' district magnitude and legislative volatility levels. If the district
magnitude is the primary determinant of volatility scores, then those
countries with plurality single-member districts should have very high
volatility scores, while those with large, multimember districts and proportional
representation should have lower volatility scores.12 In order to
assess the effects of district magnitude on volatility, we divided the countries
into four categories13 hased on district magnitude and calculated the median
volatility.14 The categories were:
1 Single-member districts
2 District magnitudes ranging from 2 to 5
3 District magnitudes ranging from 11 to 19
4 District magnitudes of or greater than 20
The median volatility levels were 14, 12, 31.5 and 18.5, respectively. These
results do not correspond to what we would expect to find were there a
relationship between district magnitude and legislative volatility.
Moreover, if party system institutionalization was driven by the institutional
design, we would not expect legislative seat volatility and presidential
vote volatility to be highly correlated. However, as mentioned earlier,
these indicators are indeed highly correlated (see Table 1).
Table 2b reports the results for the third indicator for criterion one, the
difference in presidential and legislative voting. IS Table 2b is arranged in
ascending order, where a small difference in presidential/legislative voting
corresponds to a high level of party system institutionalization. Looking
at the table we see that the range of values on this indicator is only 64%
compared to 96 percent for mean electoral volatility. Despite this, the percentage
difference in presidentiaVlegislative voting is quite close to volatility
451
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
Table 2b. Presidential/legislative difference in 30 African countries
No. of electoral Mean pres'/leg
Country Time span periods difference
Malawi 1994-99 1 4
Namibia 1989-94 1 5
Burkina Faso 1992-97 1 11
Zimbabwe 1980-95 3 11
Zambia 1991-96 1 12
Congo 1992-93 1 13
Senegal 1978-98 3 13
Cote d'Ivoire 1990-95 1 14
Equatorial Guinea 1993-99 1 14
Cape Verde 1991-95 1 15
Kenya 1992-97 16
Mauritania 1992-96 1 16
Gambia 1966-92 5 17
Mali 1992-97 1 22
Sao Tome 1991-98 2 23
Seychelles 1993-98 23
CAR 1993-98 1 24
Ghana 1992-96 1 25
Gabon 1990-96 1 27
Djibouti 1992-97 1 31
Cameroon 1993-97 1 38
Niger 1993-97 2 47
Togo 1994-99 1 50
Comoros 1992-96 2 53
Madagascar 1993-98 1 56
Benin 1991-99 2 68
Botswana 1969-94 5 NA
Lesotho 1993-98 1 NA
Mauritius 1976-95 .5 NA
South Africa 1994-99 1 NA
Mean 24.89
Coefficient of variation 0.6817
Sources: Africa South of the Sahara (1990-9); Bratton and van der Walle (1996); Day and
Degenhardt (19961; Europa World Year Book (1996); Keesing's Contemporary Archives;
Nohlen, Krennerich and Thibaut (1999); Political Handbook and Atlas of the World
(1996).
for most countries. In general, the ordinal placement of countries across the
two tables is similar. At 68 percent, Benin reports the largest presidential!
legislative difference. Benin also has one of the highest mean electoral
volatility scores, as shown in Table 2a. The strong relationship between
the different indicators of this criterion increases our confidence that we are
capturing the patterns of party competition in these 30 countries.
452
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
Consistent with our other observations on this criterion, we find that
there is a notable difference between the performance of the long-standing
democracies and the rest of the countries on this indicator. The mean difference
between presidential votes and legislative seats for the five long-standing
democracies is only 13.6 percent, while the remaining 25 countries have
a mean difference that is almost twice as high (24 percent).
Criterion 2: Societal Roots
As noted earlier, we use two indicators to tap our second criterion, the extent
to which parties have fairly stable roots in society. Table 3a shows the percentage
of lower-chamber seats obtained by parties founded by 1970 in the
most recent election in the 30 African countries. In Table 3a, countries are
arranged from highest to lowest percentage, where a higher percentage indicates
a higher level of institutionalization.
As one might expect in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mauritius, older parties
held over 90 percent of the lower-chamber seats in the last election. However,
in almost half of our cases, 13 of the 30 countries, older parties failed to win
any seats, indicating that the leading parties in these countries are still quite
young and have yet to develop stable roots in society. For all but four of our
cases, the percentage shown in Table 2 represents the legislative block of
only one party.16 For example, the percentages for Zimbabwe (98.3 percent)
and Namibia (73.6 percent) reflect the percentage of seats won by the
leading party of each country (ZANU-PF and SWAPO, respectively). The
large percentage of seats held by a single party in these countries reflects the
electoral dominance of the parties that ushered in independence.
The early founding dates of major parties in several of the countries is due
in large part to a ban on all political parties and organizations which, in
many cases, spanned from just after independence to the early 1990s. In
Congo, only one party that won seats was founded before 1970. With the
exception of the Parti Congolais du Travail (PCT), political parties were
banned in Congo until 1990. In Benin, none of the legislative seats were won
by parties founded by 1970. Benin's former ruling party, the Parti de La
Revolution Populaire du Benin (PRPB), was the only legal party since its
inception in 1975 until it voted for its own dissolution in 1990, thereby
opening up political competition. As a result, all of the parties gaining representation
in the National Assembly in 1992 are quite young, formed in
1990 or thereafter.
Mainwaring and Scully's results for this indicator contrast sharply with
those reported in Table 2. In 10 of the 12 Latin American countries, older
parties held more than 20 percent of the seats (1995: 13). While older parties
in nine African countries held at least 70 percent of seats, as noted above,
in 13 African countries, older parties held none. In Mainwaring and Scully's
study, only Brazil, where 0.6 percent of the seats were won by a party
founded before 1950, had a percentage near zero.
453
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
Table 3a. Lower-chamber seats held by parties founded by 1970
Country Parties Election year % of seats held
Botswana BDP, BNF 1994 100
Zimbabwe ZANU-PF 1995 98
Togo RPT 1999 97.5
Mauritius MMM,MLP 1995 97
Cote d'lvoire PDCI-RDA 1995 85
Namibia SWAPO 1994 74
South Africa ANC, NP 1994 73.5
Gabon PDG 1996 71
The Gambia PPP 1992 70
Senegal PS 1998 66
Cameroon RDPC,UPC 1997 65
Kenya KANU 1997 51
Malawi MCP 1999 34
Cape Verde PAICV 1995 29
Congo PCT 1993 12
Burkina Faso UDV/RDA 1997 1.8
Lesotho BNP 1998 1.3
Benin 1999 0
CAR 1998 0
Comoros 1996 0
Djibouti 1997 0
Equatorial Guinea 1999 0
Ghana 1996 0
Madagascar 1998 0
Mali 1997 0
Mauritania 1996 0
Niger 1997 0
Sao Tome 1998 0
Seychelles 1998 0
Zambia 1996 0
Mean 34.18
Coefficient of variation 1.1488
Sources: Africa South of the Sahara (1990-9); Bratton and van der Walle (1996); Day and
Degenhardt (19961; Europa World Year Book (1996); Keesing's Contemporary Archives;
Nohlen, Krennerich and Thihaut (1999); Political Handbook and Atlas of the World
(1996).
The long-standing African democracies exhibit notably higher levels of
party system institutionalization on this indicator than the other countries.
The mean percentage of seats held by older parties for long-standing democracies
is 86.1 percent, while the mean percentage for the other 25 countries
is only 23.8 percent.
Our second indicator for societal roots, the average age of parties with
10 percent of the lower-chamber seats, is presented in Table 3b. As noted
454
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
above, in circumstances where only one party captured over 10 percent of
the seats, we calculated the average age using the top two competitors. This
was the case in 14 of the 30 countries. Those parties that were included in
the calculation of the average age, but that did not win at least 10 percent
of the seats, are marked on Table 3b with an asterisk. Table 3b is arranged
from the highest to lowest average age, which corresponds to increasing
levels of societal-party linkages. Once again, there is tremendous variation.
For example, the average age of parties with at least 10 percent of the seats
in South Africa is 48.5, the highest reported. Mauritius, not surprisingly, has
the second highest average, 46.5 years. Because many of these countries
underwent democratic transitions only in the early 1990s, their political
parties are very young. Hence, in eight of our cases, the average age of
parties winning more than 10 percent of the seats is less than eight years,
and they therefore occupy the lowest positions on the table.
In many cases, the reported average age is not reflective of the age of most
parties in the particular country. The number for this indicator is often an
average of the age of a party founded around independence and the age of
a party founded in the early 1990s. As of 1999, the average age for the top
two competitors in Cote d'Ivoire was 29 years. The PDCI-RDA, which captured
85 percent of the seats in 1995, was formed in 1946. The PDCI-RDA's
closest competitor, the Rassemblement des Republicans (RdR), which won
8 percent of the seats, was formed in 1994. Like RdR, most of Cote
d'Ivoire's opposition parties were formed during or after 1990, and hence
the average age (27 years) is not representative of party age in general.
One might assume that the pattern of electoral dominance of the former
ruling party has been successfully broken by new opposition parties in the
countries that occupy the lowest positions on our table. However, we
caution against an overly optimistic interpretation of these results. In some
cases the results may only reflect the replacement of one dominant party by
another. The case of Zambia, where the MMD appears to have supplanted
the UNIP as a dominant party, is illustrative. In Mauritania and Benin, the
former ruling parties (the Parti du Peuple Mauritanien (PPM) and the Parti
de la Revolution Populaire du Benin (PRPB), respectively) were dissolved
and hence did not compete in the most recent elections.
Our results differ considerably from Mainwaring and Scully's. In 9 of the
12 Latin American countries, the average age of parties winning more than
10 percent of the seats was over 30 years. However, in only 7 of the 30
African countries was the average age at least 30. The averages for Colombia
and Uruguay were 144 years and 112 years, respectively (1995: 15).
These averages are almost three times the average ages of Africa's most institutionalized
party systems. Likewise, while 8 of our 30 countries had an
average age of less than 8 years, no Latin American country had an average
age of even less than 10, and only Brazil had an average age of less than 20.
Once again, if we compare the results on this indicator for the longstanding
democracies with the results for the other 25 African countries, the
455
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
Table 3b. Years since founding of parties with 10 percent of chamber seats, 1999
Country and Years since
election year Parties founding Average age
South Africa, 1999 ANC 87 48.5
DP* 10
Mauritius, 1995 MMM 30 46.5
MLP 63
Botswana, 1994 BDP 37 34.5
BNF 32
Senegal, 1998 PS 41 33
PDS 25
Gambia, 1992 PPP 41 32.5
NCP 24
Namibia, 1994 SWAPO 42 32
DTA of Namibia 22
Togo, 19991 RPT* 30 30
Cote d'lvoire, 1995 PDCI-RDA 53 29
RdR* 5
Zimbabwe, 1995 ZANU-PF 36 29
ZANU-N* 22
Cape Verde, 1995 PAICV 43 26
MPD 9
Lesotho, 1998 LCD 2 21.5
BNP* 41
Cameroon, 1997 RDPC 33 21
SDF 9
Gabon, 1996 PDG 31 20
PGP* 9
Malawi,1999 MCP 40 18
UDF 7
AFORD 7
Kenya, 1997 KANU 39 17
DP 8
NDP 5
CAR,1998 MLPC 20 16
RDC 12
Congo, 1993 UDAPS 8 16
MCDD! 9
PCT 30
Madagascar, 1998 AREMA 24 15
Fanilo 6
Sao Tomt\ 1998 MLSTP 28 15
AD! 7
PCD 9
Djibouti, 1997 RPP 20 14
FRUD 8
Seychelles, 1998 FPPS 21 13.5
OU* 6
456
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
Country and
election year
Equatorial Guinea, 1999
Benin, 1999
Zambia, 1996
Ghana, 1996
Burkina Faso, 1997
Mali,1997
Mauritania, 19962
Comoros, 1996
Niger, 1997
Table 3b. continued
Parties
PDGE
UP*
PRB
PRD
FARD
PSD
MMD
NP*
NDC
NPP
CDP
PDP*
ADEMA
PARENA*
PRDS
AC*
RND
FNJ*
UNIRD
ANDP'c
Years since
founding
12
7
7
9
5
9
9
6
7
7
10
3
9
4
8
4
3
7
3
7
1 In Togo's 1999 legislative elections, only one party, the RPT, won seats.
Average age
9.5
7.5
7.5
7
6.5
6.5
6
5
5
2 In Mauritania's 1996 legislative elections, only the PRDS won more than 10% of the seats.
Two parties tied with 1.3% and we chose one of those two parties in our calculations of
the average age. Both parties winning 1.3% of the seats were formed recently.
Sources: Africa South of the Sahara (1990-9); Bratton and van der Walle (1996); Day and
Degenhardt (1996); Europa World Year Book (1996); Keesing's Contemporary Archives;
Nohlen, Krennerich and Thibaut (1999); Political Handbook and Atlas of the World
(1996).
differences between the two groups are quite substantial. The five longstanding
democracies have a mean age that is markedly higher than that of
the other countries. The mean age of the long-standing democracies is 35.1
years, compared to only 16.5 for the remaining 25 countries.
Criterion 3: Acceptance of Parties and Elections
We have three indicators for the third criterion, the extent to which parties
and elections have been accepted as the means of determining who governs:
whether the opposition boycotted the election, the election was deemed free
and fair, and the losers accepted the results.
The degree to which citizens and political actors perceive parties and elections
as the principal method of gaining political power varies considerably
across the 30 African countries (see Table 4). In fact, 13 of our 30 cases
457
Table 4. Acceptance of parties and elections
Boycott Boycott Free and fair Free and fair Loser accepts Loser accepts Criterion 3
Country election 1 election 2 election 1 election 2 election 1 election 2 score
Benin N N Y Y Y Y 3
Botswana N N Y Y Y Y 3
Cape Verde N N Y Y Y Y 3
":l
;..
CAR N N Y Y Y Y 3 ::<:I
-l
Gambia N N Y Y Y Y 3 -<
Madagascar N N Y Y Y Y 3 ":l
.j:>.
Malawi N N Y Y Y Y 3
0
V, t""'
00
Mauritius N N Y Y Y Y 3 -l
Namibia N N Y Y Y Y 3 -n
Sao Tome N N Y Y Y Y 3 '"
Senegal N N Y Y Y Y 3
---l
.j>.
Seychelles N N Y Y Y Y 3
South Africa N N Y Y Y Y 3
Zimbabwe N Y Y Y Y Y 2.5
Ghana Y N Y Y N Y 2
Lesotho N N Y N N Y 2
Cote d'Ivoire N N Y N N Y 2
7':
C
tTl
Table 4. continued Z
N
Boycott Boycott Free and fair Free and fair Loser accepts Loser accepts Criterion 3
Country election 1 election 2 election 1 election 2 election 1 election 2 score
go
r
Niger N Y Y N Y Y 2
:>
~
Burkina Faso N N N N Y N 1.5 0::1
Congo N Y Y N Y N 1.5 ::0
Djibouti Y N N N Y Y 1.5 0
::r:
Equatorial Guinea Y Y N N Y Y 1.5 -I
""""v, Kenya N N N N Y N 1.5
\0
Mali N Y Y N Y N 1.5 Z
vo
Mauritania Y Y N Y N Y 1.5 -I
......
Zambia N Y Y N Y N 1.5 -I
C
Cameroon Y N N N N N 1 -I
Comoros Y Y N N N N 1 0
Gabon Y Y N N N N Z
Togo Y Y N N N Y 1
:>
r
Sources: Africa South of the Sahara (1990-9); Bratton and van der Walle (1996); Day and Degenhardt (1996); Europa World Year Book (1996); Keesing's N
:>
Contemporary Archives; Nohlen, Krenncrich and Thibaut (1999); Political Handbook and Atlas of the World (1996). -I
......
0
Z
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
scored highly on all three indicators for both elections, which suggests that
parties and elections have not been widely accepted as the means of gaining
political power in many of the 30 African countries. In these 13 countries,
opposition parties did not boycott either election, the elections were deemed
free and fair, and losing parties accepted the results. However, in another
seven cases, the quality of the second elections decreased and thus the degree
to which elections and parties are perceived as the means of determining
who governs remains uncertain. Although the point totals for five countries
increased between the first and second elections, only in Ghana does the
change appear to be large enough to indicate a meaningful increase in the
degree of acceptance of parties and elections. No comparison can be made
with the work of Mainwaring and Scully on these indicators, as they did not
operationalize criterion three.
Benin's perfect score on criterion three may appear surprising given the
low scores on the previous criteria. However, Benin's score is consistent with
its score on criterion one. Benin exhibited a high level of electoral volatility
because there is a substantial amount of inter-party competition. There is
no hegemonic party manipulating the election results strongly in its favor.
The possibility of winning seats through elections in Benin explains the high
level of acceptance of elections indicated by Benin's score on criterion three.
Perhaps Benin represents a situation in which a hegemonic system has had
to 'deinstitutionalize' and experience electoral instability before being able
to institutionalize a democratic party system.
Such a scenario could imply that there is a curvilinear relationship
between level of democracy and party system institutionalization. When the
level of democracy is relatively low, aspects of party system institutionalization
can appear fairly high. That is, competition may seem very regular
because it is tightly controlled. As countries begin to democratize, the party
system may enter a period of flux as people have yet to develop party attachments
and parties have yet to establish stable platforms. On the other hand,
in countries which have a highly legitimate, revolutionary party, democratization
may not inspire much electoral volatility as citizens continue to
loyally support the revolutionary party at elections. This scenario seems
consistent with the experiences of South Africa and Namibia.
Level ofParty System Institutionalization
The aggregate scores reported in Table 5 represent the summation of the
scores each country's party system received on the three criteria. As was the
case with the 12 Latin American countries, there was wide variation in the
level of party system institutionalization. The aggregate scores range from
9 (Botswana) to 3 (Comoros). Setting rigid cut-off points in order to demarcate
the three different categories of institutionalization would be arbitrary.
On the other hand, we did think trying to establish general guidelines for
how the countries might be classified would be of heuristic value.
460
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
Table 5. Level of party system institutionalization
Country Criterion one Criterion two Criterion three Aggregate
Botswana 3 3 3 9
Gambia 2.75 2.75 3 8.5
Namibia 2.75 2.75 3 8.5
Senegal 2.5 2.75 3 8.25
South Africa 2.5 2.75 3 8.25
Zimbabwe 2.5 2.75 2.5 7.75
Cape Verde 2.5 2 3 7.5
Malawi 3 1.5 3 7.5
Cote d'Ivoire 2.5 2.75 2 7.25
Mauritius 1 3 3 7
CAR 2.25 1.25 3 6.5
Seychelles 2.25 1.25 3 6.5
Sao Tome 1.75 1.25 3 6
Burkina Faso 2.75 1 1.5 5.25
Congo 2.5 1.25 1.5 5.25
Kenya 2 1.75 1.5 5.25
Madagascar 1 1.25 3 5.25
Benin 1 1 3 5
Eq. Guinea 2.5 1 1.5 5
Gabon 1.75 2.25 1 5
Ghana 2 1 2 5
Mauritania 2.5 1 1.5 5
Zambia 2.5 1 1.5 5
Djibouti 2 1.25 1.5 4.75
Togo 1 2.75 1 4.75
Cameroon 1.25 2.25 1 4.5
Lesotho 1 1.5 2 4.5
Mali 1.5 1 1.5 4
Niger 1 1 2 4
Comoros 1 1 1 3
The countries with aggregate scores of 8 or above can be classified as
'institutionalized'. Five of the countries fall into the institutionalized category:
Botswana, Gambia, Namibia, Senegal and South AfricaY For the
most part, party competition in these countries is stable. The major parties
in these countries have early founding dates and long-standing constituencies.
In these countries, elections tend to be free and fair.
Two of the countries with scores falling between 6 and 8 can be categorized
as 'hegemonic in transition'. In both Cote d'Ivoire and Zimbabwe,
one party has monopolized power for the past couple of decades. While
both these countries have tried to introduce muitipartyism, many elections
have not been deemed free and fair. Hence, the opposition has only had
limited opportunities to obtain power. In fact, Zimbabwe falls just below
461
PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
the institutionalized category with a score of 7.75. Although some might
be surprised at this outcome, given the hegemonic nature of its party
system, it is in fact the hegemonic nature of the leading party (ZANU-PF)
which caused it to score so highly on our criteria. Not only has the ZANUPF
been in existence for a long time, but its role in the independence movement
elicited the long-term loyalty of many. On the other hand, Mauritius
with a score of 7 cannot be considered hegemonic in transition. While
party competition has a long history in Mauritius and there appears to be
widespread acceptance of the democratic rules of the game, voters do not
have strong attachments to particular parties. Instead, citizens tend to vote
for the electoral alliance whose policy platform most closely matches their
own policy preferences. Given the fluid nature of party alliances throughout
Mauritian history, voters have little party loyalty.
Finally, the majority of our cases score 6 or below and fall into the
'inchoate' category. In these countries, party competition tends to be
extremely unstable, party roots tend to be shallow and acceptance of elections
and parties as the route to power is low.
The contrast between the long-standing 'democracies' or polyarchies and
the countries that have only recently transited to democracy are quite striking.
None of the long-standing democracies fall into the inchoate categories.
Moreover, three out of the five countries with institutionalized systems are
long-standing democracies.
Since we did not include criterion four in our study, we cannot directly
compare our aggregate scores with those of Mainwaring and Scully.
However, we can compare the proportion of party systems falling into the
different categories across these two studies. Mainwaring and Scully find
that 6 of the 12 Latin American countries (50 percent of the cases) fall
into the institutionalized category, while only 4 of the 12 fall into the
inchoate category (33 percent of the cases). In our study of African democracies,
the most populous category is inchoate. We find that 17 of our 30
cases (56.7 percent) are inchoate, while only 5 of the cases (16.7 percent)
are institutionalized.
Implications and Conclusion
Just as Mainwaring and Scully set out to create a 'conceptual map of Latin
American party systems' (1995: 33-4), our purpose was to measure party
system institutionalization in Africa. That party systems in African countries
are far less institutionalized than those in Latin American countries is
not surprising given that most African countries achieved independence
much later than did those of Latin America. Even though some parties in
the African countries predate independence, most of them had their roots
around the time of independence. Since the age of political parties is an
important criterion of party system institutionalization, the recent founding
462
KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
dates of many of the parties in the African countries under study at least
partly explains the low levels of party institutionalization. Moreover, the
length of time during which a country has experience with democracy is an
important factor in determining the level of party system institutionalization,
a conclusion also supported by our intra-African comparisons. The
difference in the performance between the five long-standing polyarchies
and the countries new to multipartyism was notable on all of the criteria.
What are the implications of the intensified party activity in Africa? Ihonvbere
questions the extent to which the new political parties and movements
can generate true political change (1996). He points out that many of
the leaders of these new parties were affiliated with the previous regimes.
Moreover, these parties have largely failed to establish anything but 'opportunistic
relations' with the traditionally disempowered and alienated constituencies.
Another limitation of the new parties and movements, according
to Ihonvbere, is the 'excessive personalization of politics' (1996: 356). The
prognoses are generally not bright. According to Segal, 'Contested elections
featuring managed outcomes and co-opted opposition parties are becoming
the new norm in much of Africa' (1996: 382). Further, many of the forces
that militated against the establishment of democracy in the immediate postindependence
period still exist today. For example, as early as 1965, Lewis
noted, 'The unreasonable behavior of the government and opposition
parties to each other has sprung also from the fact that so much hangs on
who is in and who is out' (pp. 78-9). Yet the zero-sum nature of politics
persists in many African countries.
Still, we come back to the point that an institutionalized party system is
a requisite for democratic government, and renewed party activity is a precursor,
albeit an early one, to an institutionalized party system. In countries
where political activity appeared nearly extinguished for several decades, the
growth of political activity can largely be seen as positive. Moreover, the
probability that democracy will take root in some of the countries with relatively
institutionalized party systems seems fairly high. For example, Segal
claims that it is 'highly probable' that democracy and capitalism will be
institutionalized in Botswana and Mauritius (1996: 381). Huntington notes
that predictions often prove embarrassing, and so we will abstain from
making grandiose predictions about the future of Africa's nascent democracies.
We feel that applying the framework we have adapted from Mainwaring
and Scully can help us better understand the processes of party
system institutionalization and democratic consolidation in Africa.
Looking at some of our indicators over time can give an idea of how party
system institutionalization is evolving. For example, looking at the rise and
fall in electoral volatility over time may help us to assess the emergence of
the tendency to vote the basis of party labels. The study of parties and
party systems can do much to illuminate the prospects for democratic
governance in the African countries that appear to have embarked on a
path to democracy.
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Notes
Much of the data on which we base our analyses was drawn from the following
sources: Africa South of the Sahara (London: Europa Publications Ltd., 1997);
Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa. (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de
Walle, MSU Working Paper No. 14, Political Regimes and Regime Transitions in
Africa: A Comparative Handbook (Department of Political Science, Michigan State
University; Alan J. Day (ed.) with Henry W. Degenhardt (contributing ed.), Political
Parties of the World IChicago: St. James Press, 1996); Europa World Year Book
(London: Europa Publications Ltd., 1996); Keesing's Contemporary Archives
(London: Keesing's Ltd.); Dieter Nohlen, Michael Krennerich and Bernhard Thibaut
(eds) Elections in Africa: A Data Handbook (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999); Political Handbook and Atlas of the World (New York: published for the
Council on Foreign Relations by Simon & Schuster, 1996).
1 Welf1ing's (1973) work on the institutionalization of parties and party systems
in 31 African countries constitutes an early and rigorous treatment of the subject.
Unfortunately, only a few scholars have pursued this line of inquiry.
2 However, the relative 'youth' of African political parties should still be emphasized.
Morgenthau also notes that, at the time of independence, the oldest
political party was only 20 years old (1964: 330).
3 Mainwaring and Scully do not operationalize this criterion or attempt to assess
levels of party organization in a systematic manner.
4 Since Gambia's most recent election (January 1997) is in many ways distinct from
the pre-coup elections, we have not included it in our calculations.
5 In calculating electoral volatility we treated coalitions as a single party in our
calculations when the coalition was a true electoral coalition and votes were
registered for the coalition as a whole. In cases where votes were registered for
each party in the coalition, each party is counted separately.
6 We chose to exclude the 1992 Constituent Assembly elections in the Seychelles
because the electoral system in place at the time was fundamentally different
from that which was in place for the 1993 and 1998 National Assembly
elections. We did, however, include Namibia's 1989 Constituent Assembly
elections because the electoral rules and institutional design that governed those
elections remained the same for the 1994 National Assembly elections.
7 In some cases, we were unable to calculate scores for presidential volatility and/or
presidentiaUlegislative difference. For those countries with parliamentary
systems, the final score on criterion one is based solely on legislative volatility.
Some countries have had only one presidential election. In such cases, the final
score on criterion one represents an average of the two scores the country receives
for legislative volatility and presidential/legislative difference.
8 We obtained several of our data points from the Bratton and van de Walle data
set (1996). We adopt their operational definition of this indicator, which is
whether the parties winning seats agree to take their seats in the legislature after
the election.
9 As Table 2a shows, eight countries report NA, or not applicable, in the presidential
volatility column. This is because four of the countries (Botswana,
Lesotho, Mauritius and South Africa) do not have a presidential system or
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KUENZI & LAMBRIGHT: INSTITUTIONALIZATION
directly elected presidents. The other four countries that received NA on this
indicator (Congo, Equatorial Guinea, CAR and Namibia) did so because at
present there has only been one multiparty presidential election, and we were
unable to calculate a presidential volatility score. For these countries the mean
electoral volatility score reported represents only the legislative volatility.
10 In calculating legislative volatility for Mauritius, we treated the seat holdings of
electoral alliances as those of a single party. However, many of the sources we
consulted report the seat holdings of the individual parties making up the
different electoral alliances. It is, therefore, possible to calculate volatility by
looking at the changes in an individual party's legislative seats from election to
election. When calculated in this manner, legislative volatility for Mauritius
drops to 49 percent. However, this volatility score still earns Mauritius a score
of one on our scale of institutionalization for this criterion.
11 In calculating Lesotho's electoral volatility score, we divided by 79 rather than
by 80, which is the actual number of legislative seats, because one seat was not
filled due to a postponement because a candidate died during the campaign.
Similarly, in calculating Madagascar's score we divided by 134 rather than by
the 138 legislative seats in the first election because four seats were not filled.
12 Had we used legislative votes as opposed to legislative seats, our expectations
would have been the obverse: we would have expected those countries with
plurality, single-member districts to have relatively low volatility levels and those
with proportional electoral formulas and large, multimember districts to have
high volatility levels.
13 We initially constructed five categories, but found that one of our categories had
no cases (i.e. no countries had district magnitude ranging from 6 to 10).
14 The median is a better measure of central tendency than the mean, as the mean
is greatly affected by outliers (Neto and Cox, 1997).
15 In only 6 of the 30 countries were the elections used in the calculations of the
difference between presidential and legislative voting concurrent. These countries
are: Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Seychelles and Zambia. The presidential
and legislative elections in the remaining countries were not concurrent. We
considered elections concurrent only if the presidential and legislative elections
were held on the same day.
16 In the case of the Cameroon, one of the two older parties to win seats captured
only 0.5 percent of the seats.
17 The party system in Gambia before the 1994 coup would have fallen into the
institutionalized category. Following the coup in 1994, the party system will most
likely pass through a period of reconstruction in order to return to the level of
institutionalization achieved previously.
Appendix
For the 30 countries included in our study, the elections used in our analysis are as
follows:
Benin - legislative elections (1991, 1995, 1999) and presidential elections (1991,
1996).
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PARTY POLITICS 7(4)
Botswana -legislative elections (1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994).
Burkina Faso - legislative elections (1992, 1997) and presidential elections (1991,
1996).
Cameroon -legislative and presidential elections (1992, 1997).
Cape Verde - legislative elections (1991, 1995) and presidential elections (1991,
1996).
Central African Republic - legislative elections (1993, 1998) and presidential elections
(1993).
Comoros -legislative elections (1992,1993, 1996) and presidential elections (1990,
1996).
Congo -legislative elections (1992, 1993) and presidential elections (1992).
Cote d'Ivoire - legislative and presidential elections (1990, 1995).
Djibouti -legislative elections (1992, 1997) and presidential elections (1993,1999).
Equatorial Guinea - legislative elections (1993, 1999) and presidential elections
(1996).
Gabon -legislative elections (1991, 1996) and presidential elections (1993, 1998).
Gambia - legislative elections (1966, 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997) and
presidential elections (1982, 1987, 1992, 1996).
Ghana -legislative and presidential elections (1992, 1996).
Kenya -legislative and presidential elections (1992, 1997).
Lesotho -legislative elections (1993, 1998).
Madagascar - legislative elections (1993, 1998) and presidential elections (1992,
1996).
Malawi -legislative and presidential elections (1994, 1999).
Mali -legislative and presidential elections (1992, 1997).
Mauritania - legislative elections (1992, 1996) and presidential elections (1992,
1997).
Mauritius -legislative elections (1976, 1982, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1995).
Namibia -legislative elections (1989, 1994) and presidential elections (1994).
Niger - legislative elections (1993, 1995, 1996) and presidential elections (1993,
1996).
Sao Tome -legislative elections (1991,1994,1998) and presidential elections (1991,
1996).
Senegal - legislative elections (1983, 1988, 1993, 1998) and presidential elections
(1983, 1988, 1993).
Seychelles -legislative and presidential elections (1993, 1998).
South Africa -legislative elections (1994, 1999).
Togo -legislative elections (1994, 1999) and presidential elections (1993, 1998).
Zambia -legislative and presidential elections (1991, 1996).
Zimbabwe -legislative elections (1980, 1985, 1990, 1995) and presidential elections
(1990, 1996).
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466
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MICHELLE KUENZI is a graduate student in the Department of Political Science
at Michigan State University. She is currently undertaking dissertation research on
the relationship between non-formal education, literacy and the development of
democratic attitudes in Senegal, thanks to a Fulbright lIE Dissertation Fellowship
from the US Department of Education.
ADDRESS: Michigan State University, Department of Political Science, 303 South
Kedzie Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824-1032, USA. [email: kuenzimi@msu.edu]
GINA LAMBRIGHT is a graduate student in the Department of Political Science at
Michigan State University. She is currently undertaking research on the politics of
decentralization in Uganda, thanks to a Fulbright Hays Dissertation Fellowship from
the US Department of Education and Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant
from the National Science Foundation.
ADDRESS: Michigan State University, Department of Political Science, 303 South
Kedzie Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824-1032, USA. [email: lambrig1@msu.edu]
Paper submitted 8 January 1998; accepted 16 February 2000.
468