Political Parties and Democratic Consolidation in Africa

It has been assumed that African political parties should play a key role in democratic consolidation. This article first assesses their performance in terms of particular democratic functional requirements. Second, it seeks to explain apparent shortcomings in their performance by reference to the imbalance of party systems and 'weakness' of parties, especially opposition parties, and also by reference to certain underlying factors. These include the economic context, weakness of civil society, prevalence of ethnicity as a basis for political mobilization, personalism, clientelism and strong presidencies.