6 - Parties and Ideology

Summary

Political parties play an important role in mobilizing public opinion and articulating ideas that make their way into policy. In a competitive political environment, parties use their identity to carve out a distinct position in the public policy space. In the established democracies in Western countries, this space is defined in left–right terms and is shaped by underlying socio-economic factors. The relative constancy and stability of the party system has long characterized mainstream Comparative Politics research on the subject. This connection between ideology, party organization, and the emergence of a durable party system is less applicable to the African situation because countries there lack the social base that holds the party system in check. This chapter examines how political parties in African countries, like in other developing and democratizing regions, suffer from a low level of party institutionalization because political parties tend to be either just personalized factions or dominated by a single organization with little interest in opening space for other parties. Elections may occasionally produce changes in who holds power, but they rarely reflect real differences in policy. Instead, the consequence of political change is no more than a rearrangement of communities of consumption competing for access to power and government resources. Political parties do not need ideology to attract followers. Party strategies in Africa therefore are built around finding individuals with the qualities to serve as champions of as many consumption communities as possible. Where state capture, as in Africa, is the prime objective, party politics easily becomes both transactional and authoritarian. This form of politics that has been a dominant feature of African countries since independence sets limits on a democratic transition. Above all, it slows down the emergence of a political culture infused with democratic values.