Political Parties in Zambia, Burundi and Togo: Organization, Cohesion and Party-Voter Linkage

Abstract

This dissertation compares political parties in three countries of sub-Saharan Africa: Zambia, Burundi and Togo. It draws on fieldwork that included 71 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with party representatives and ordinary members (23 in Zambia, 24 in Burundi, and 24 in Togo). The interviews were conducted mostly in provincial urban centres over a period of four months in 2011 and 2012. The study conceives political parties as strategically acting organizations embedded in unique socio-political contexts; it argues that two hitherto neglected terms are especially useful for understanding and comparing them: cohesion and party-voter linkage. The argument is grounded on three key features of sub-Saharan party politics: a hostile operating environment, the prevalence of face-to-face political communication, and the supposed absence of ideology (which is re-interpreted as the presence of a single dominant ideology - development). The study conceptualizes cohesion as a prerequisite of Panebianco's (1988) institutionalization. A new, expanded classification of party – voter linkage types is formulated and a distinction is made between linkage proper and the genre in which it is enacted. Cohesion and linkage are combined in a comparative framework that enables generation of specific hypotheses about parties’ behaviour.