Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

Chapter 7
7. Conclusions and Recommendations
7.1 Conclusions
How can African political parties be assisted to make progress towards becoming more
responsive, representative and effective organizations in support of democratization
and development?
Internally, African party systems are diverse and fragmented, and externally,
globalization and the IFIs’ policies have made political party programmes subservient
to global agendas, with political parties increasingly unable to deliver on their
promises. Hence among many Africans we observe political apathy and withdrawal
from the political process; this is also confirmed by low voter turnout in some
countries. It is safe to argue that political ideology is informed and largely influenced
by global, liberal thinking and policy options formulated by the IMF and the World
Bank, and with alternative African party programmes increasingly absent where they
are most needed. Important steps towards more informed party programmes and
policy formulation processes could be achieved by increased South–South exchange
of experiences, not least between Latin America and Africa.
The current understanding of political parties’ role in governance is narrow. The
growing documented narrative on internal and external party regulations should be
subjected to reality checks. Our knowledge of how political parties are managed and
internally organized and of how they develop their party programmes is insufficient
and the need for better understanding is growing as political parties develop and
change over time. African party systems are changing rapidly, with the emergence
of two contradictory tendencies: (a) fragmentation; 15 and (b) the consolidation
of dominant-party and two-party systems. Although minority governments and
coalitions persist, little is known about how and why coalitions are really formed,
15
Basedau 2007: 118ff.