Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

0
Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty Democracy
private rights theory. Magarian laments that ‘Methodologically, the private rights
theory requires an initial determination of whether and how seriously a government
regulation burdens an individual’s expressive freedom, entailing a strong public–
private distinction’ (Magarian 2003: 8).
According to the responsible party government theory of the electoral process,
political parties serve as mediating institutions that facilitate people’s political
activity. Determining what kind of partisan competition a political system will
allow—how many parties there will be, how large and diverse, and how autonomous
they are—makes a critical difference in organizing a democratic society (Magarian
2003: 9). In V. O. Key’s words, quoted in Magarian 2003: Ibid), ‘a political party
actually consists of three different entities: (1) the “party in the electorate”, meaning
the voters who identify as party members; (2) the “party in government”, meaning
the elected officials and political appointees who belong to the party; and (3) the
“party organization”, meaning the party’s institutional leadership’ (Magarian 2003:
8–10).
The question of party regulation then raises the question what element or elements
of the political party constituency is/are to be regulated. An allied question is
what the consequences of regulating one element of these three will have on the
others. While individual liberty is regulated insofar as it should not deny others
their liberty, to what extent is it desirable to regulate the freedom of individuals to
organize themselves in a particular way, for example, to spend their own money on
the party with which they identify? The argument for regulation, on the other hand,
is based on the contention that a measure of regulation is important in order to create
political stability and allow political parties to cooperate within the framework of a
general code of conduct, as well as to enable them to manage societal and political
conflicts within themselves and to restrain them from fomenting social and political
conflicts within the wider society.
Let us therefore start by disentangling the concept of party regulations and political
party law. This report follows closely Richard Katz’s definition of party law (Katz
2004: 2) as state law that:
• determines what constitutes a political party (including who qualifies for access
to the ballot), who benefits from public resources (subsidies and free time on
the broadcast media), who participates in government and how, and so on;
• regulates the types of activities that parties may engage in, covering the raising
and spending of funds, campaign activities, party manifestos, and more; and