Party Proliferation and Political Contestation in Africa

Abstract

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Social Inequalities and the Politicization of Ethnic Cleavages in Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal, 1999–2019

“…As Catherine Kelly showed, parties need to have both experience in high-level state administration and international sources of private financing to be able to play the role of opposition party without being dependent on incumbents to survive. The advantage of the outgoing president thus appears to be considerable in Senegal (Kelly 2020).…”

“…Since 1978, political pluralism has indeed enabled the setup of multi-party elections, marked by peaceful government changes. However, the Senegal of the 1990s and 2000s is sometimes referred to as a "competitive authoritarian" regime because of the limitation of civil liberties and the uneven playing field constraining the opposition (Kelly 2020). Furthermore, the past decades have been characterized by a proliferation of political parties, sometimes more likely to be vehicles for their leaders than election-oriented.…”

“…In 1981, a multiparty system was completely authorized and the proliferation of political parties began. There were 174 Senegalese parties in 2010, two thirds of which having never run on their own individual party labels in presidential or legislative elections as of 2010 (Kelly 2020). The Senegalese case thus appears to fall outside the scope of classical theories of political party formation, which posit that the number of parties should depend on the structure of the electoral system and on the importance of various societal divides.…”

“…These strategies of alliance, union, and cooptation was for example illustrated by the participation of the opposition leader of the PDS, Abdoulaye Wade, to several PS governments in the 1990s. Another specificity of Senegalese party politics is "political transhumance", with politicians switching party affiliation, for example after an electoral defeat, mainly in order to access state resources (Kelly 2020).…”

Precolonial Legacies in Postcolonial Politics

“…Though both regimes relied on tight alliances with Sufi leaders as vote brokers, Wade's regime was notable for its shift toward Touba, the seat of the Mouride Brotherhood, at the expense of the Tidjanes, based in Tivaouane. 20 Still, both men represented what Kelly (2020) has called "insiderinduced turnovers." Wade served in Diouf's government in the early 1990s and had long been involved in Senegalese politics, meaning that while his election was monumental, the 2000 alternation of power largely did little to challenge the constellation of national elites as Wade continued Diouf's strategy of encouraging the formation of patronage-seeking parties that the regime could co-opt.…”