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The one‐party regimes in Africa: reconsiderations1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

S. E. Finer
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Extract

‘When the market is buying, sell, and when the market is selling, buy.’ This Stock Exchange maxim might be equally productive applied to academic fashions; and that it has been fashionable to extol the ‘single or single-dominant party system’ in Africa is undeniable.

One way of questioning this fashion – and a fruitful one – is to examine the very concept of a ‘single or single-dominant party’. Its very clumsiness discloses the difficulties of conceptualization, when states in which only one party is legal are classed together with others where one party has succeeded in winning an overwhelming preponderance of seats, or where states whose governments have seized every chance to harass opposition elements are lumped together with others where little or no such pressure has been applied. Not only that. The word ‘party’ itself requires further definition. In what sense was the (now defunct) PDD of Dahomey a ‘party’? Or the FLN of Algeria? The party in Mali or in Guinea is quite clearly a very different animal from the party in Malawi. And so is the style of politics.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , 01 December 1967 , pp. 491 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1967

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References

2 This is the term coined by Coleman, J.S. in Coleman, J.S. and Rosberg, C.G., Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa, University of California Press, 1966 Google Scholar.

3 But the tide is turning and perhaps I am just swimming, noisily, along with it? Especially noteworthy are Sir Arthur, Lewis, Politics in West Africa, OUP, 1965; Edward, Shils's remarkably perceptive essay, Opposition in the New States of Africa and Asia (this journal, Vol. 1, No. 2, 01 1966)Google Scholar as well as the discussion on ‘The Dead‐end of Monolithic Parties’, reported also in this journal (Vol. 2, No. 2, January 1967). Cf also Moore, C.H., Mass Party Regimes in Africa (Reprint 216 of the Committee for Africa Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1966)Google Scholar. Particularly poignant, in view of the left wing political views of the author and his dedication to the Algerian revolution, is the polemic against the single‐party state as it had evolved in Franz, Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, London, 1965, pp. 136–47Google Scholar. An important critique, ‘The Evolution of Single Party Systems in French Equatorial Africa’ by Ballard, J. A. ‐ a seminar paper delivered at the University of Ife, Ibadan, 1963 Google Scholar, is unfortunately only available in mimeograph. I am greatly indebted to Mr K. Post, of the Department of Government, University of Manchester for drawing my attention to this paper and making a copy of it available to me.

4 At page 503 where I touch on ‘stability’.

5 And cf. Africa Report, November 1965, for the CAR.

6 In L'Afrique noire est mal partie, 1962.

7 Africa, No. 13, 1965.

8 Africa, No. 25, 1965.

9 The official Guinean version of the plot will be found in Africa Research Bulletin, November, 1965, quoting Horoya, 17 November 1965.

10 Here and elsewhere I intend by this only the Tanganyika portion of what is in effect a twin state, with twin single parties ‐ TANU on the mainland and ASP in Zanzibar.

11 In Mali there was certainly a ‘plot’ in 1962 when over ninety persons were sentenced for planning an uprising with French support; but this was allegedly led by leaders of the former opposition party, not from within the party ranks. In Mauritania there has recently been serious trouble between ‘Arab’ and ‘African’ Mauritanians over a degree making Arabic compulsory in the secondary schools, but it is unclear how, if at all, this has involved the party leadership. The relative absence of plots in the P SD, the Malagasy ruling party may well be due to the fact that officially the system is a competitive one, with the opposition holding three seats ‐ so that if serious inner party opposition developed it could express itself in the form of a rival party (as in Kenya).

12 Quoted in Burch, B. B., Dictatorship and Totalitarianism, New Jersey, 1964, p. 155 Google Scholar.

13 Op. cit. Chapter II, Section 2.

14 Vishinsky, A., The Law of the Soviet State, Harvard, 1946, p. 241 Google Scholar.

15 Gollan, J., The British Political System, Lawrence & Wishart, 1954, p. 10 Google Scholar.

16 Engels, F., Revolution and Counter‐revolution in Germany, Lawrence & Wishart, 1933) p. 13 Google Scholar.

17 It is important to note that in one of the single‐party states this problem does not exist ‐ in Tunisia.

18 Levine, Victor T., ‘Insular Problems of an Inland State’, Africa Report, 11, 1965 Google Scholar.

19 It is odd that Togo is included in Wallerstein's list. There were four main parties in existence between 1960–3, but by 1962 President Olympio had succeeded in banning or otherwise suppressing the rivals to his own party (the CUT), so that it is only from December 1962 that one could describe Togo as a de facto single‐party state. Was it in the CUT that the ‘two‐way flow’ was so excellent, according to Wallerstein?

20 I have not included the UAR among the one‐party states. She was a multi‐party state to 1952 when the military takeover occurred. Since then Nasser has made no less than three separate attempts to establish a single official party. It is clear to me however that even if the present Arab Socialist Union is established, it is, for the moment at any rate an arm of the regime, which is provided by the former Free Officers. For this reason it does not seem proper to categorize the UAR as a single‐party state. In any case the UAR has suffered much plotting ‐ in 1966 no less than three separate treason trials were proceeding simultaneously.

21 Wallerstein, I., quoted in Burch, B. B., op. cit. in n. 12 Google Scholar.

22 University of Chicago Press, 1964, p. 29.

23 Encounter, December, 1965, pp. 51–4.

24 Ballard, op. cit. in n. 3. The PSD, the Malagasy ruling party, also evolved in this order.