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Votes, money and violence: political parties and elections in sub-Saharan Africa

2007; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 45; Issue: 02 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5860/choice.45-1103

1943-5975

Matthias Basedau, Gero Erdmann, Andreas Mehler,

Politics and Society in Latin America

and consolidation of democracy.It also seems to justify old reservations about the appropriateness of politics in Africa's multiethnic societies.One explanation for this public scepticism of the value of opposition parties is that they are not really visible in the periods between elections.we have learned from focus group interviews in Ghana and Zambia during 2003 that 'you see political parties only before the elections.Afterwards they disappear again, completely'.Before passing judgement on Africa's political landscape it is healthy to take a sober look at what is happening closer to home.A recent Eurobarometer (2004) survey indicates that only 16 per cent of the people interviewed in Europe trust political parties.The situation in Africa is not, therefore, an unusual one.Perhaps, there is no major reason to feel concerned about it.However, we do not know very much about the political meaning of different levels of trust in different political contexts, that is, in new democracies or hybrid regimes versus consolidated democracies.The collection of articles that make up this volume deals with these two core institutions of democracy: elections and political parties.Seymor Martin lipset's (2000) dictum on the "indispensability of political parties" remains unchallenged.Even African scholars who are critical to what is 'western' accept it. 1Even beyond liberal democratic ideas, these two aspects of a democracy are important as a focus of research because in Africa there are many hybrid and even authoritarian regimes that attempt to obtain legitimacy via multi-party elections.Surprisingly, however, almost 15 years after the 'wind from the East that is shaking the coconut trees' of Africa (Omar Bongo, Africa, 9 April 1990), there is still little systematic empirical research in this area.while elections have received a fair degree of scholarly attention, this is not true as regards African political parties or party systems.Even the election research is limited, being concentrated on case studies and more often than not linked to the 'technical' issues of election observation.Systematic comparative research about the effects of elections and different election systems on, for example, the quality of the political regime (democratic, hybrid), the development of party systems, civil liberties, or political party organisation is largely missing.Andrew Reynolds' (1999) work is of course an exception, although in some respects it is typical.He (1999: 267) concludes his comparative analysis by stating that proportional representation (PR) electoral systems outperform their plurality-majority alternatives in many performance criteria, especially in-1.See for example Salih 2005.