Electoral Systems, Ethnic Fragmentation, and Party System Volatility in Sub-Saharan African Countries

In recent years, a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to the relationship between political institutions and political party development among third wave democratizing states. Although there has been some literature that examines the determinative effects of political institutions (such as electoral systems) on party systems generally in Africa and elsewhere,¹ most of this work has focused almost exclusively on the number of parties rather than the degree to which stable party systems have emerged. Although there has been some work on party systems volatility on Latin America and postcommunist Eastern Europe,² there has been relatively little consideration of the relationship between electoral systems and party system volatility in Africa.

This is relatively surprising, given that most scholars agree that the development of stable, coherent representative parties that can shape and channel popular references is crucial to successful democratization in the wake of political transition. Moreover, many argue that widespread party system instability militates against successful democratic consolidation. Party system volatility, though less studied than the number of parties in the party system, is arguably just as important. Mainwaring and Scully consider volatility as a key dimension of political institutionalization.³ When parties come and go quickly, this increases the chances of populists coming to power, subsequently generating high levels of uncertainty for voters, who in turn struggle to make informed choices about candidates. For parties in power, uncertain if they will be around tomorrow, time horizons are shortened, making it less likely that politicians will engage in reform projects that may engender short-term pain.

More specifically, according to Sarah Birch, a consistently high level of party system instability has four main consequences that are detrimental to democratic consolidation:⁴

1. 1. It reduces accountability–voters cannot "throw the rascals out" if the rascals no longer exist as a unified group.

2. 2. It impedes party institutionalization by decreasing the level of long-term commitment that politicians, activists, and voters have to "their" party.

3. 3. It significantly increases uncertainty, hampering the ability of politicians and voters to engage in strategically driven coordination.

4. 4. It raises the stakes of the electoral game. This may have the consequence of weakening the democratic commitment of politicians, who may seek other ways to insure themselves against possible political loss at the next election.

The successful consolidation of democracy thus requires enough uncertainty to keep losers in the political game, but not so much that elections become a lottery.

On the other hand, extremely low volatility can also be a problem, especially when it leads to the permanent exclusion of part of the electorate from power.⁵ Lack of electoral turnover may also indicate the entrenchment of patronage links. Moreover, under such conditions, incumbents become even more entrenched, making it even less likely that the opposition will have access to power.⁶ Exclusion can lead to a hardening of opposition and increasing embitterment toward "democracy."⁷ Thus, too much electoral volatility can lead to negative consequences, but so can too little.

This paper addresses two primary issues. What is the relationship between the types of electoral systems that have been used to govern initial elections in the democratizing states of Africa and the degree to which party system volatility has emerged? What other factors impact on the levels of volatility? I examine the above questions using data from 31 African countries.

Literature

Despite the increasing amount of literature on political parties in new democracies and transitional systems, studies of parties and party systems in post-Cold War Africa have not been particularly plentiful. In part this is due to the tentative nature of African democratization, where many have questioned the depth and significance of the regime changes that have taken place during the "third wave."⁸ Crawford Young, for instance, notes that "in only a handful of instances can one speak with reasonable confidence of a beginning of consolidation."⁹ Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle note that the weakness of political parties in Africa "bodes poorly for the consolidation of democracy."¹⁰ However, as Michelle Kuenzi and Gina Lambright...