The dearth of research on African political parties and party systems was once lamented. A burgeoning literature on these subjects is now largely filling the lacunae in the research on these topics. The three books reviewed in this essay are among those works that make up this rapidly expanding literature. Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Party Systems and One-Party Dominance in African Democracies address different aspects of party system development in Africa while Political Parties in Africa focusses on the political parties that Africa’s party systems comprise. Each of these books attempts to elaborate frameworks that are universal in nature and therefore applicable to regions outside of Africa. These books complement each other well and make an important contribution to the comparative politics literature on parties and party systems.

One-Party Dominance in African Democracies employs a most similar systems research design to investigate why one-party dominant systems emerge and “endure in some countries but not in others” (p. 6). Three countries with dominant party systems, Namibia, South Africa, and Tanzania, are analyzed as well as three countries “in which initial patterns of one-party dominance did not persist,” Zambia, Mali and Senegal (p. 9). In the first chapter, the editors present the framework that drives the analysis in the case studies. The framework comprises seven mechanisms thought to affect one-party dominance: “historical legacy, social cleavages, institutional architecture, political culture, government performance, state-party relations, and international influences” (p. 195). In Chapter 2, after examining how one-party dominance has been defined and measured in the literature, Gero Erdmann and Matthias Basedau adapt Giovanni Sartori’s (Parties and Party Systems. A Framework for Analysis, 1976) classification scheme to categorize African party systems with regard to their levels of institutionalization and regime type. According to Sartori’s criteria, a system is one-party dominant if a party wins at least 50 percent of the seats in parliament three elections in a row. The classification reinforces other studies’ findings that dominant/predominant party systems abound in Africa’s democracies and therefore deserve scholarly attention. The remainder of the book, divided into three sections, is devoted to examining the forces that impinge on one-party dominance. Part 1 comprises three chapters presenting case studies of enduring one-party dominant systems. Part 2 comprises three chapters presenting case studies of one-party dominance that failed to persist. Part 3 contains the concluding chapter in which the editors attempt to draw conclusions about the factors that facilitate and inhibit the persistence of one-party dominant systems based on the case studies.

Because all six of the case studies examine the role of the same seven mechanisms in one-party dominance, the country chapters cohere fairly well. The case studies are generally well crafted and insightful. The editors do a nice job of tying together the insights gleaned across the country chapters. Many of these findings are interesting and point to potentially fruitful lines of future research. For example, the rather negligible effect of government performance on one-party dominance has implications for models of voting behavior and is worthy of further investigation in large-N studies, as is the link between presidential elections and one-party dominance.

The editors’ test of theoretical expectations about one-party dominance is laudable, but difficult with only six cases. Some of the conclusions may thus not be well supported. The editors refer to the “independence/liberation” struggles as an explanatory factor for the persistence of one-party dominance in Tanzania, Namibia and South Africa, but Tanzania is really not comparable to Namibia and South Africa in this regard. Both Namibia and South Africa’s liberation from white minority rule was very recent, which as the authors of the respective country chapters note, helps explain why the liberation parties continue to dominate elections. On the other hand, Tanzania achieved independence in 1961. As we know from Neo Simutanyi’s chapter on Zambia, Zambia’s independence party, the United National Independence Party (UNIP), had “immense popularity” in the immediate post-independence period but did not triumph even in the first multiparty elections in 1991 (p. 125).

Similarly, the editors observe that the cases in which one-party dominance did not endure all had been under one-party rule prior to the adoption of multipartyism (p. 196). But this pattern is not clear. The cases of Namibia and South Africa do not actually allow one to assess how one-party rule prior to multipartyism influences one-party dominance in the multiparty era as the start of multipartyism was essentially simultaneous with the end of white minority rule in these countries. The editors acknowledge that the case of Tanzania contradicts this pattern as the same party that ruled prior to multipartyism continues to dominate through the present (p. 196). The case of Senegal runs counter to this pattern as well. Senegal was under single-party rule by the same party that was able to dominate the political system for 20 years after the establishment of a multipartyism which is about the same length of time dominant party rule has lasted in South Africa and Tanzania at this point. As noted in the conclusion, a key consideration is a party’s level of institutionalization. Thus, whether it was the party in power under single-party rule that was able to achieve dominance after the transition to multipartyism seems to be relevant as such a party is likely to be well-institutionalized.

Of course, institutionalized parties are likely to be found in institutionalized party systems. What factors account for the different levels of party system institutionalization (PSI) across Africa’s democracies? In Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Party Systems in Africa, Rachel Beatty Riedl employs a mixed methods approach in order to answer this question. Riedl advances a theory of path dependence according to which the level of PSI is a function of the ruling party’s relationship with local notables prior to the transition to democracy. She brings different types of data from a variety of sources to bear on this subject, including elite interviews, the author’s original dataset, and the Afrobarometer datasets. Cross-national analysis supplements the detailed cases studies of two countries with high levels of PSI, Ghana and Senegal, and two countries with low levels of PSI, Zambia and Benin.

Riedl’s interesting theory is worthy of attention. As she explains, in order to consolidate the new authoritarian regimes, the leaders of the ruling party in some countries, such as Senegal and Ghana, opted to pursue incorporation and therefore integrated local notables into the party and state. Leaders in other countries, such as Zambia and Benin, pursued a strategy of state substitution and supplanted the existing local notables with associations and individuals associated with the party/state. The incumbents that had pursued incorporation could rely on the local notables to mobilize mass support during the transition to democracy, which rendered them strong and able to control the transition process. These incumbents were able to set the rules for future democratic competition and usually set restrictive rules for political participation. In response, the opposition was forced to coalesce and emulate the organization and strategies of the ruling party. Such party coherence and continuity result in more stable competition and thus higher levels of PSI. The incumbent parties that pursued substitution were weak at the time of transition and therefore unable to set the rules. This made for an open transition process in which a variety of actors took part and pushed for unrestricted participation. The resultant party proliferation “…and unstructured competition leads to a volatile new party system, regional fragmentation, and low party system institutionalization in the long term” (15).

Riedl tests this theory using comparative historical analysis. Senegal and Zambia are paired because they share a similar political history aside from the strategies pursued by their respective leaders during the authoritarian era and their levels of PSI. Ghana and Benin are paired for the same reason. The countries selected seem well suited for testing the theory, and the case studies demonstrate Riedl’s thorough knowledge of the countries. The analysis provides support for Riedl’s theory.

The cross-national analysis of 22 African multiparty regimes, however, is less convincing than the case studies. The greatest weakness of the quantitative analysis is that Riedl does not actually test her theory, although she interprets the results as supporting it. Riedl operationalizes the ruling party’s relationship with local notables in the authoritarian era as “the percent of seats the authoritarian incumbent party won in the founding elections” (p 60). Riedl then notes, “It can be interpreted as an indicator of the extent of local elite support for the authoritarian party on the eve of democratization” (p. 61). Riedl cannot determine that the percent of seats is a good proxy indicator without solid evidence, and the case studies cannot be the basis of this assertion as the quantitative analysis is meant to test the generalizability of the case studies. Moreover, in order to evaluate the quantitative analysis, the reader needs more information about the methods and data. Some appendices would have been helpful, in this regard. For example, the reader should be able to see at least the average level of volatility for the countries of study as well as the years of the elections and number of electoral periods included in the study.

The importance of historical legacies in shaping the nature of political parties is also highlighted in Political Parties in Africa. In this book, Sebastian Elischer seeks to evaluate the importance of ethnicity in party politics in Africa and identify the factors that influence the salience of ethnicity in this domain. In order to achieve this end, Elischer adapts the party typology developed by Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther (Political Parties and Democracy, 2001) to the context of Africa and applies this framework to the parties of some African countries. This book has seven chapters and a conclusion. Chapter 1 describes some the book’s central arguments and provides an overview of the study and remainder of the book. Chapter 2 elaborates and operationalizes the amended typology and framework for classifying political parties. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 present the in-depth case studies of Kenya, Namibia and Ghana in which Elischer applies the framework to all of the major parties in the respective countries. A much less detailed application of the typology to 25 parties in seven additional African countries is provided in Chapter 6 in order to cross-check some of the findings emanating from the three in-depth case studies. In Chapter 7, Elischer seeks to identify the factors that affect the formation of ethnic parties. Finally, the Conclusion provides a synopsis of the major findings Elischer derives from his study.

The party typology and framework are welcome additions to the existing research approaches. The changes to Diamond and Gunther’s typology, such as dropping the postmaterialist category and adding the multiethnic alliance category, seem appropriate given Africa’s political landscape. While Diamond and Gunther’s typology comprises 15 different party types, Elischer’s amended typology comprises five: “the mono-ethnic party, the multiethnic alliance, the multiethnic catchall party, the programmatic party, and the personalistic party” (p. 8). Elischer adopts the four criteria laid out by Diamond and Gunther to classify political parties: party goals, electoral strategy, organizational structure, and social base. He then identifies 10 indicators to evaluate political parties on the four criteria.

Although this new framework is potentially very useful, it renders coder knowledge and interpretation extremely important. Inter-coder reliability would be an issue, should an attempt be made to classify the parties of all multiparty electoral regimes. Thus, it remains to be seen how viable it would be to apply this framework on a large scale. In addition, the decision rules guiding classification are always open to question. For example, when a political party’s policies are in line with the economic interests of an ethnic group, how is that party to be categorized? According to Elischer, such a party would be deemed an ethnic party because one would assume that “the programmatic orientation is derived from its ethnic base” (p. 37). Evaluating whether such an assumption is justified would not always be straight-forward. Some of the policy stances consistent with the interests of an ethnic group could be broad in orientation and beneficial to economic development in general. Moreover, parties that attempt to gain support from a particular ethnic group on the basis of ethnic nepotism may be qualitatively different from parties actually representing policy interests.

Some of Elischer’s findings have important implications for debates in the comparative politics literature. For example, whether multiparty electoral competition inflames ethnic tensions has been much debated. The finding that “…over time, multiparty politics makes party politics less ethnic” (p. 263) speaks directly to this debate. Elischer recognizes the limitations a small-N study has in making inferences, and this conclusion should be tested in a large-N study. This book also suggests that a large-N study on the conditions that render ethnic parties harmful would be valuable.

Other findings may seem less momentous to students of African politics. For example, Elischer emphasizes his finding that not all African parties are ethnic. The idea that the role of ethnicity in party politics varies across contexts, however, is fairly established in the African politics literature. Similarly, Elischer finds that “the political saliency of ethnicity in African political life has been widely exaggerated” (p. 9). First, a number of studies, some of which Elischer cites, articulate a nuanced view of the role of ethnicity and point to the variability of ethnic salience across countries and even sub-national units. Second, the case studies do not point to the irrelevance of ethnicity in political life. The efforts different parties make to accommodate ethnic diversity would seem to indicate that ethnicity is a consideration in these contexts. However, Elischer’s study successfully highlights the diversity in Africa political parties and demonstrates that these parties are amenable to classification.

These three works address interrelated questions. They all point to the important role historical legacies play in determining the characteristics of today’s political parties and party systems. To some degree, Riedl’s theory speaks to the questions pursued in One-Party Dominance. Both of the books on party systems suggest that the supposition that those authoritarian parties that pursued incorporation and had strong relationships with local notables performed better in the founding elections (and thereafter) than their counterparts that pursued substitution should be tested with more cases. Elischer’s finding about the prevalence of nonethnic parties echoes those of the other two books which show that parties consistently able to win power through elections in African countries often manage to overcome social cleavages. Does Elischer’s framework “capture the essence” (p. 75) of political parties in Africa and other regions? At the very least, this framework is promising. Indeed, each of these books helps to fill gaps in the literature on African political parties and party systems and speaks to the debates in the broader comparative politics literature.