From Formlessness to Structure? The Institutionalization of Competitive Party Systems in Africa

Abstract

Giovanni Sartori once described African party systems as “formless.” Our contribution challenges this view in an era of resurgent multipartism that swept through the subcontinent in the early 1990s and continues until today. The article brings together contemporary research on African party systems with the wider disciplinary literature on party system institutionalization. Using a data set including all continuous election sequences in Africa from 1950 to 2008, we find that Africa has some of the most volatile party systems ever recorded and yet, tremendous diversity across regimes. We test the relative impact of political institutions, economic performance, the history of party system development, and social cleavage structure on party system institutionalization in Africa. We find that its party systems have been shaped by a set of factors unique to the subcontinent, but some of the general global patterns of party system development hold true in Africa as well.

Nationalized incumbents and regional challengers

“…These findings add weight to the general conclusion that generalizing about the state of African party systems is highly problematic (Weghorst and Bernhard, 2014).…”

Bridging the Divide: Measuring Party System Change and Classifying Party Systems

“…Some studies (Bogaards ; Mozaffar and Scarritt ; Mozaffar, Scarritt, and Galaich ; Weghorst and Bernhard ) employ Pedersen's index of volatility (Pedersen ) to evaluate party system institutionalization in Africa. Pedersen's index computes the net change in parties’ vote or seat totals between elections.…”

“…More recently, Powell and Tucker () decompose total volatility into “Type A” and “Type B” volatility, which indicate, respectively, vote‐switching to new parties and vote‐switching among existing parties. These measures are used by Weghorst and Bernhard (, 1730) to argue that the steady decline in Type A volatility and the corresponding increase in Type B volatility provide “important evidence of the beginning of party system institutionalization,” and suggest that “that party systems in sub‐Saharan Africa are volatile but institutionalizing over time” (1708).…”

“…The approaches applied by Weghorst and Bernhard (), Kuenzi and Lambright (), and Erdmann and Basedau () each amend the basic volatility index as developed by Pedersen (). In the case of Weghorst and Bernhard, the measurement of volatility is amended, while Kuenzi and Lambright and Erdmann and Basedau bolster the measurement of volatility by tapping other party system dimensions.…”

Madagascar’s Fluid Party System: Authoritarian legacies and an uneven playing field in an enduring competitive authoritarian regime1

“…Most relevant parties emerged out of crystallised territorial and ethnic cleavages (Manning, 2005) and rely on these identities to build support (Salih & Nordlund, 2007). Furthermore, it has been shown that a party system can institutionalise if parties are able to cut across ethnic divisions and construct winning coalitions (Ferree, 2010;Riedl, 2014;Sanches, 2018;Weghorst & Bernhard, 2014), while political institutions and the economy generally have a small and unsystematic effect. In any case, studies show that presidential and proportional systems, as well as economic growth, engender higher levels of party system stability or institutionalisation (Ferree, 2010;Kuenzi et al, 2017;Riedl, 2014;Sanches, 2018).…”