Laying a foundation for democracy or undermining it?: Dominant parties in Africa’s burgeoning democracies

Abstract

Existing research suggests that countries at higher levels of economic development have a significantly greater chance at sustaining democracy, but also that at low levels of economic development, economic growth and lower levels of inflation make fragile democracies endure (e.g. Lipset 1959; Przeworski 2000; Przeworski et al. 1996). Analysing the economic effects of dominant parties in Africa therefore constitutes important research for the study of Africa’s young, and often poor, democracies. Some studies of democratic countries have suggested that dominant parties yield positive economic effects, such as the provision of governmental stability, political order and lower inflation – all important conditions for economic advancement (e.g. Aranoff 1990: 279). The Liberal Democratic Party in Japan provides a good example in this regard (Inoguchi 1990: 218-25). On the other hand, there is also a part of the literature suggesting that dominant parties tend to be associated with increasing levels of corruption and mismanagement resulting from unchecked power that in turn risks undermining new democracies (Pempel 1990b: 352-56). The relationship between the dominant Congress Party in India, and economic and political decline during the late 1960s is an example (Kohli 1990). If it can be shown that dominant parties do in fact facilitate government effectiveness and economic growth, dominant parties may help strengthen democratic processes and make democracy endure. On the other hand, if dominant parties rather lead to increasing corruption, mismanagement and stagnating economic growth, dominant parties are likely to play a key role in the erosion of fragile democracies. Out of this emerges an important question of the economic effects of dominant parties with serious implications for democratic sustainability in Africa’s relatively new and, in many cases, still emerging democratic regimes. This chapter evaluates these contradicting hypotheses with a cross-national analysis building on an original data set covering 18 years from 1989 to 2006. To the best of our knowledge, no systematic study of this issue has so far been carried out looking at Africa’s typically poor and underdeveloped countries.