Political Parties in Africa: Challenges for Sustained Multiparty

International Idea
In this regard, the institutionalization of internal party democracy in Africa is
contingent on the maturation of civil society associations and their ability to influence
the political parties. It is important to realize that patron–client relationships and
internal party democracy cannot be separated from the political environment in
which democracy is practised.
At least four points can be teased out from this.
First, the current data on political party leaderships indicate that selection rather
than election is the rule. Party leaders rise to prominence within the rank and
file of their parties. Because of the patronage relationship that characterizes party
leadership and constituencies, election in most cases is purely nominal and an empty
formality, except in cases where a party leader is challenged from within by aspirant
and ambitious rivals.
Second, one way of looking at party-based democracy is that it acquires its meaning
from global policy influences on the current wave of multiparty democracy and the
new global context within which political parties operate. In common with political
parties in other parts of the globe, African political parties are aware of their position
in the geopolitics of development, which characterizes their political programmes
and policy orientations.
Third, political party vocabulary, policy and party–electorate relations straddle the
contours of a similar but nationally different globally-informed liberal paradigm,
without stifling the possibility of the emergence of vocal anti-globalization political
parties and civil society activism. This trend is not different from other parts of
the world where the challenge to the neo-liberal paradigm has come from the very
democratic forces that it has unleashed.
Fourth, globalized party-based democracy does not mean universalized party-based
democracy—a point which has been emphasized as opening up the political arena
for political contestation (Burnell 2004) or a globalization deficit (Scholte 2005).
In other words, political parties worldwide could subscribe to broadly defined
global paradigms reflected in their political manifestos such as those the present
authors have consulted. Evidently, there would always be points of convergence and
divergence on some elements of any globally informed socio-economic or political
paradigm. Global paradigms make leaders and parties subservient to external forces,
in other words, to the market.
Party Structures and Internal Organization