Abstract
The concepts of political party and political party system are extensively (and profitably) utilized in comparative political analysis. Typologies based on the number of parties in a political system, i.e., the party system, are common. Nonnumeric schemes that use such categorizations as mobilization, reconciliation, and the like as the analytic unit are equally tied to a characteristic of the political party, its ideology, prevailing in the given state. In this article the authors wish to deal only with the usefulness of party system type as a tool for comparative analysis of African politics. Certainly we do not wish to suggest that specific political parties on that continent should not be studied; our review of the literature dealing with African parties is designed solely to establish the context within which comparative schema of party systems have emerged. Our conclusion that this is not an illuminating set of boxes into which to distribute African polities may not surprise some of our fellow Africanists. On the other hand, our suggestion that we view party as a device for a totally different sort of institutionalization may do so. Handy though it may be, party or party system type is not an unambiguous concept. A recent study by William J. Crotty points out the definitional fuzziness prevailing in much of the literature.l While his focus is quite different from ours, he does usefully separate three input sets that delineate the environment of a party: socioeconomic, attitudinal,
Published Version
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