Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty Democracy
military resistance and political opponents have confronted the Eritrean regime and
the governing political party. Whether and when Eritrea will become a multiparty
system is difficult to tell, and is largely contingent on the internal and external
contexts within which the democratization struggle is launched.
4.2.2 Two-party systems
A two-party system is duopolistic in that two ‘major’ parties that have a roughly
equal prospect of winning government power dominate it. In its classical form, a
two-party system can be identified by three criteria.
1. Although a number of ‘minor’ parties may exist, only two parties enjoy
sufficient electoral and legislative strength to have a realistic prospect of winning
government power.
2. The larger party is able to rule alone (usually on the basis of a legislative
majority); the other provides the opposition.
3. Power alternates between these parties; both are ‘electable’, the opposition
serving as a ‘government in the wings’.
Two-party systems display a periodic tendency towards adversarial politics (see
Heywood 2002: 326). This is reflected in ideological polarization and an emphasis
on conflict and argument rather than consensus and compromise. It is also noted
that such systems sometimes operate through coalitions including smaller parties
that are specifically designed to exclude larger parties from government. (In similar
vein, Sartori (1976) distinguishes between two types of multiparty system, which he
termed the moderate and polarized pluralist systems. In this categorization moderate
pluralism exists in countries where ideological differences between major parties are
slight, and where there is a general inclination to form coalitions and move towards
the middle ground. This classification is apparently relevant to African countries
with a large number of ethnically-based parties.)