Party Dominance ‘Theory’: Of What Value?

Suttner, Raymond

doi:10.1080/02589340601122901

Cited by 25 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Adam (1999) draws attention to the ANC's role in dampening the heightened expectations of the poor and acknowledges that the dominant party brings long-term stability, offers short-term safeguards for fearful minorities, and allows democratic institutions to take root. Suttner (2006) criticizes the notion of a 'dominant party' as intrinsically conservative because it assumes only an electoral, bourgeois type of democracy, rather than one based on popular participation and decision-making. The ANC in South Africa always contained this potential to represent working and poor peoples' interests in a genuine sense.…”

Section: The Decline Of the Anc As The Main Integrating Institutionmentioning

confidence: 98%

ANC Decline, Social Mobilization and Political Society: Understanding South Africa's Evolving Political Culture

Reddy¹

2010

Politikon

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This article examines the evolving political culture in contemporary South Africa. It draws on elite culture, neo-patrimonialism, and revisionist institutionalist perspectives to understand state weaknesses and patterns of politicization confronting South Africa's developing democracy. While it accepts that the democratic political system and its constituent institutions are in place and function formally, a discourse of violence or threats of violence to rival political actors is commonplace. The article is structured as follows: the first part describes the increased social mobilization of disgruntled citizens who rely on a discourse of violence rather than articulating grievances through political structures; the second part focuses on those factors that ferment this kind of political culture. The article discusses the deepening economic inequality and its expression in class conflict under conditions of democracy. It then discusses the politics of the ANC as a dominant party, and in particular intra-elite conflict, ANC factionalization, and the consequent weakening of state institutions. These factors, the paper argues, encourage a politics in which political society, rather than civil society, becomes the main terrain for expressing conflict.

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Section: The Decline Of the Anc As The Main Integrating Institutionmentioning

confidence: 98%

ANC Decline, Social Mobilization and Political Society: Understanding South Africa's Evolving Political Culture

Reddy¹

2010

Politikon

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“…This is not only a question of diversity of identity, but also a manifestation of pluralism that the ANC and other NLMs have not always welcomed. The ANC has not appreciated that identity is not purely a subjective state, but often relates to plurality of objective interests, which may be quite autonomous (see Suttner 2004aSuttner , 2006.…”

Section: The National Liberation Counter-modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, it is proposed that in instances where the ruling party is so strong that it is unlikely to suffer electoral defeat in the foreseeable future this presents a danger to or may preclude defining a state as a consolidated democracy. Such reasoning has been applied to South Africa, and the literature that does so has not considered why existing opposition parties are unlikely to defeat the ANC, even at its present moment of crisis (Suttner 2004a(Suttner , 2006. This dogma, for it is not an explanatory device, but merely a statement or declaration of what criteria need to be met by political forces to qualify as consolidated, is usually accompanied by a literature criticising what is referred to as the 'dominant party state' (Southall 2005, but see Suttner 2006.…”

Section: Western Paradigms Applied To South African Social Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Africanisation’, African identities and emancipation in contemporary South Africa

Suttner

2010

Social Dynamics

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This article problematises the concept of 'Africanisation' as a response to colonial conquest and apartheid rule, bearing both political and knowledge consequences. It aims to rescue 'Africanisation' from essentialist notions, but at the same time to show how paradigms cannot be simply applied where they derive from quite different experiences. The article introduces modes of differentiating concepts that are dynamic, as opposed to static, singular and unmediated meanings that bedevil any emancipatory project. The tendency to see a moment in the life of a concept as having a settled and finalised meaning renders the qualities of democracy, and other similar liberating concepts, as settled though their meaning is never finally realised. While colonialism marginalised and devalued local knowledges, the national liberation project sought unity/homogenisation, which tended to deny distinct identities, as is largely the case today. There remains hostility to pluralism at a social and political level and a failure to recognise autonomous identities unconnected to the state or the ruling organisation, the African National Congress (ANC). The tendency towards static notions of custom and paradigms that do not derive from the experiences of African women, in particular, has tended to erase the voices of women or prejudice the emancipation of women from patriarchal oppression. Africanisation, the article proposes, must be located through an ongoing dialogue between dynamic local knowledges and a range of other explanatory tools. IntroductionThe notion of Africanisation is not an abstract question and has quantitative and qualitative, substantive and concrete implications. It is controversial for many in South Africa, because it is seen, along with affirmative action and 'playing the race card', as one of the ways in which merit is devalued. It is regarded by some as undermining the allegedly 'colour blind' ethical basis that should guide a democratic order and educational system. I am dealing with a spectre that haunts many whites and attracts many acquisitive black people, who see it as a path to wealth or, from the perspective advanced here, a key route to emancipation.The question of Africanisation arises or is propelled in South Africa in the context of an assertion of values and identities that have been suppressed and which oppressors sought to impose by displacing others that preceded or arose during phases of conquest. The colonial and apartheid orders were not simply political and military

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“…The phenomenon of a “dominant party‐state” (Suttner, , pp. 277–297; Wines, ) has three potential problems.…”

Section: A Dominant Party‐state?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Transition in Myanmar: Prospects and Problems

Kingsbury¹

2014

Asian Politics and Policy

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Since 2011, Myanmar has been undergoing a political transition that, in keeping with the Myanmar government's own claims, has been hailed by many previously critical countries as the start of a process of democratization. Myanmar has become a substantially more liberal country, and in particular its economy has been increasingly liberalized, away from the tight restrictions of the past. However, Myanmar's economic liberalization primarily benefits its entrenched and usually military‐dominated or linked elites, while its political liberalization may be just enough to satisfy an appearance of democratization without the army giving up real power. This article looks at Myanmar's process of political liberalization set against some of the literature on political transitions, and highlights some factors that could militate against extensive reform, much less democratization. It concludes by noting that while Myanmar's military has started to step back from direct political control, it still retains ultimate state authority.

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Party Dominance ‘Theory’: Of What Value?

Cited by 25 publications

References 11 publications

ANC Decline, Social Mobilization and Political Society: Understanding South Africa's Evolving Political Culture

ANC Decline, Social Mobilization and Political Society: Understanding South Africa's Evolving Political Culture

‘Africanisation’, African identities and emancipation in contemporary South Africa

Political Transition in Myanmar: Prospects and Problems

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