Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

International Idea
work at the village, the neighbourhood and the parish, and most importantly at
the local government level. If women are poorly represented at these levels—a fact
about which we know very little, and what we know is substantially negative—
then challenging the entrenched values and attitudes that contribute to their
poor representation in national politics will be difficult. Inclusiveness and gender
empowerment are as important at the local level as at the national level, if not more
important, for the future representation of women, in the democratic process and
above all in contributing to politics with political ‘lenses’ that have often been
neglected.
5.3 Party policies and electoral programmes
Although there is some information available on political party policies and electoral
programmes, there is not enough systematic analysis of how these policies and
electoral programmes are conceived. Still scarcer are studies on whether party policies
and electoral programmes are a result of a transparent democratic participatory
process or are written by elites and consultants, whether they are followed through
after the elections, and whether there are party follow-up committees to ensure their
implementation or offer alternative policy prescriptions.
Chege (2007 forthcoming) finds in a comparison of Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia,
Uganda and Sudan that the parties with the weakest programmes and platforms
are those coming out of strong authoritarian traditions—Uganda, Ethiopia and
Sudan. Political culture clearly plays a role here, and clearly parties with a ‘command’
structure struggle to open up the agenda-setting arena within themselves.
In material published elsewhere on governing and opposition party policies and
electoral programmes in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia, Mohamed Salih finds
striking similarities due to the influence of the IFIs and the dominant new liberal
paradigm (Mohamed Salih 2005). The importance of this material stems not so
much from the evidence that it provides (which is not conclusive, as more research is
needed to be done) as from the fact that it highlights an area where political parties’
role in governance, their commitment to social issues and their efficacy could be
developed.
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Party Structures and Internal Organization