Download or read book Ethnic Party Bans in Africa written by Matthijs Bogaards and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Sub-Saharan Africa, the spread of democracy since the 1990s has been accompanied by the proliferation of bans on ethnic political parties. A majority of constitutions in the region explicitly prohibit political parties to organize on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, region and other socio-cultural attributes. More than a hundred political parties have been dissolved, suspended or denied registration on these grounds. This book documents the experience with ethnic party bans in Africa, traces its origins, examines its record, and answers the question whether ethnic party bans are an effective and legitimate instrument in the prevention of ethnic conflict. This book was published as a special issue of Democratization.

Download or read book Political Parties in Africa written by Sebastian Elischer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-09 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the effects of ethnicity on party politics in ten African countries. Sebastian Elischer finds that five party types exist: the mono-ethnic, the ethnic alliance, the catch-all, the programmatic, and the personalistic party. He uses these party types to show that the African political landscape is considerably more diverse than conventionally assumed.

Download or read book Democratization and Ethnic Minorities written by Jacques Bertrand and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many new democracies are characterized by majority dominance and ethnocentrism. Varying paths or transitions toward democracy create very different outcomes for how ethnic identities, communities and politics are recognized. This book illustrates the varied consequences of democratization, from ethnic violence, new forms of accommodation to improve minorities’ status, or sometimes only minor improvements to life for ethnic minorities. The book treads a nuanced path between conflicting myths of democratization, illustrating that there are a variety of outcomes ranging from violence or stability, to the extension of rights, representation, and new resources for ethnic minorities. Contributors discuss the complex mechanisms that determine the impact of democratization of ethnic minorities through five factors; inherited legacies from the pre-transition period, institutional configurations, elite strategies, societal organization and international influences. Global in scope, this book features a broad range of case studies, both country specific and regional, including chapters on Nigeria, Kenya, Turkey and Taiwan, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Southeast and East Asia. This book provides new insights and makes at important contribution to existing debates. Democratization and Ethnic Minorities will be essential reading for students and scholars of democratization, nationalism, ethnic conflict and ethnic politics, political science, history, and sociology.

Download or read book Political Parties in Africa written by Sebastian Elischer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-09 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the effects of ethnicity on party politics in sub-Saharan Africa. Sebastian Elischer analyzes political parties in Ghana, Kenya and Namibia in detail, and provides a preliminary analysis of parties in seven other countries including Tanzania, Botswana, Senegal, Zambia, Malawi, Burkina Faso and Benin. Elischer finds that five party types exist: the mono-ethnic, the ethnic alliance, the catch-all, the programmatic, and the personalistic party. He uses these party types to show that the African political landscape is considerably more diverse than conventionally assumed. Whereas ethnic parties dominate in some countries, non-ethnic parties have become the norm in others. This study also finds a correlation between a country's ethnic make-up and the salience of political ethnicity: countries with a core ethnic group are prone to form non-ethnic parties. In countries lacking a core ethnic group, ethnic parties constitute the norm.

Download or read book Global Geopolitical Power and African Political and Economic Institutions written by John James Quinn and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-12-30 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global Geopolitical Power and African Political and Economic Institutions: When Elephants Fight describes the emergence and nature of the prevailing African political and economic institutions in two periods. In the first, most countries adopted political and economic institutions that funneled significant levels of political and economic power to the political elites, usually through one- or no-party (military) political systems, inward-oriented development policies, and/ or state-led—and often state-owned—industrialization. In the second period, most countries adopted institutions that diluted the overarching political and economic power of ruling elites through the adoption of de jure multiparty electoral systems, more outward-oriented trade policies, and the privatization of many state owned or controlled sectors, though significant political and economic power remains in their hands. The choices made in each period were consistent with prevailing ideas on governance and development, the self-interests of political elites, and the perceived availability of support or autonomy vis-à-vis domestic, regional, and international sources of power at the time. This book illustrates how these two region-wide shifts in prevailing political and economic institutions and practices of Africa can be linked to two prior global geopolitical realignments: the end of WWII with the ensuing American and Soviet led bipolar system, and the end of the Cold War with American primacy. Each period featured changed or newly empowered international and regional leaders with competing national priorities within new intellectual and geopolitical climates, altering the opportunities and constraints for African leaders in instituting or maintaining particular political and economic institutions or practices. The economic and political institutions of Africa that emerged did so as a result of a complex mix of contending domestic, regional, and international forces (material and intellectual)—all which were themselves greatly transformed in the wake of these two global geopolitical realignments.

Download or read book Democratization and Ethnic Minorities written by Jacques Bertrand and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many new democracies are characterized by majority dominance and ethnocentrism. Varying paths or transitions toward democracy create very different outcomes for how ethnic identities, communities and politics are recognized. This book illustrates the varied consequences of democratization, from ethnic violence, new forms of accommodation to improve minorities’ status, or sometimes only minor improvements to life for ethnic minorities. The book treads a nuanced path between conflicting myths of democratization, illustrating that there are a variety of outcomes ranging from violence or stability, to the extension of rights, representation, and new resources for ethnic minorities. Contributors discuss the complex mechanisms that determine the impact of democratization of ethnic minorities through five factors; inherited legacies from the pre-transition period, institutional configurations, elite strategies, societal organization and international influences. Global in scope, this book features a broad range of case studies, both country specific and regional, including chapters on Nigeria, Kenya, Turkey and Taiwan, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Southeast and East Asia. This book provides new insights and makes at important contribution to existing debates. Democratization and Ethnic Minorities will be essential reading for students and scholars of democratization, nationalism, ethnic conflict and ethnic politics, political science, history, and sociology.

Download or read book Democratization in Africa Challenges and Prospects written by Gordon Crawford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is two decades since the ‘third wave’ of democratization began to roll across sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1990s. This book provides a very timely investigation into the progress and setbacks over that period, the challenges that remain and the prospects for future democratization in Africa. It commences with an overall assessment of the (lack of) progress made from 1990 to 2010, exploring positive developments with reasons for caution. Based on original research, subsequent contributions examine various themes through country case-studies, inclusive of: the routinisation of elections, accompanied by democratic rollback and the rise of hybrid regimes; the tenacity of presidential powers; the dilemmas of power-sharing; ethnic voting and rise of a violent politics of belonging; the role of ‘donors’ and the ambiguities of ‘democracy promotion’. Overall, the book concludes that steps forward remain greater than reversals and that typically, though not universally, sub-Saharan African countries are more democratic today than in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, the book also calls for more meaningful processes of democratization that aim not only at securing civil and political rights, but also socio-economic rights and the physical security of African citizens. This book was originally published as a special issue of Democratization

Download or read book Eternity Clauses in Democratic Constitutionalism written by Silvia Suteu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses unamendability in democratic constitutionalism and engages critically and systematically with its perils, offering a much-needed corrective to existing understandings of this phenomenon. Whether formalized in the constitutional text or developed as part of judicial doctrines of implicit unamendability, eternity clauses raise fundamental questions about the core democratic commitments underpinning any given constitution. The book takes seriously the democratic challenge eternity clauses pose and argues that this goes beyond the old tension between constitutionalism and democracy. Instead, eternity clauses reveal themselves to be a far more ambivalent constitutional mechanism, one with greater and more insidious potential for abuse than has been recognized. The 'dark side' of unamendability includes its propensity to insulate majoritarian, exclusionary, and internally incoherent values, as well as its sometimes purely pragmatic role in elite bargaining. The book adopts a contextual approach and brings to the fore a variety of case studies from non-traditional jurisdictions. These insights from the periphery illuminate the prospects of unamendability fulfilling its intended aims - protecting constitutional democracy foremost among them. With its promise most appealing in transitional, post-conflict, and fragile democracies, unamendability reveals itself, counterintuitively, to be both less potent and potentially more dangerous in precisely these contexts. The book also places the rise of eternity clauses in the context of other significant trends in recent constitutional practice: the transnational embeddedness of constitution-making and of constitutional adjudication; the rise of popular participation in constitutional reform processes; and the ongoing crisis of democratic backsliding in liberal democracies.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties written by Neil Carter and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-04-25 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties provides a systematic and comprehensive overview of the study of political parties provided by leading experts in the field. In an era of widespread political disillusionment, political parties are often the main targets of citizen dissatisfaction, yet they are the key institutions that make democracy work. Analysing political parties in unrivalled depth and breath, with comparative thematic chapters throughout, as well as a dedicated section on political parties and party politics in specific country and regional settings, this handbook examines and illuminates the key questions around: how parties organise; how their ideologies have evolved over time; their relationship with society; how they differentiate themselves and how they respond to new social, economic, and political developments. The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties is essential reading and an authoritative reference for scholars, students, researchers and practitioners involved in and actively concerned about research in the study of political parties, party systems, and party politics.

Download or read book Rebel Parties in African Post Conflict Elections written by Nora Schrader-Rashidkhan and published by Nomos Verlag. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In vielen Post-Konflikt-Gesellschaften weltweit beteiligen sich ehemalige Rebellengruppen als politische Parteien an Wahlen. Die Studie behandelt die Gründung und den Erfolg solcher "Rebellenparteien" in Afrika und geht der Frage nach, inwiefern institutionelle Strukturen diese Prozesse beeinflussen. Der entwickelte Forschungsansatz ermöglicht zunächst eine systematische Erfassung aller afrikanischen Fälle seit 1989, um dann komplexe Kausalbeziehungen mit einer qualitativ vergleichenden Analyse mit Fuzzy-Sets (fsQCA) aufzudecken. Die Ergebnisse zeigen u.a., dass Institutionen wie Friedensabkommen Opportunitätsstrukturen für Rebellenparteien prägen und zu Pfadabhängigkeiten führen und dass demokratischere Wahlen die Etablierung solcher Parteien eher verhindern.

Download or read book The Quality of Democracy in Africa written by Jonathan van Eerd and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows that democratization in sub-Saharan Africa can be successful, even if the government remains dominated by one major political party. If an institutionalized and strong opposition party – even when too weak to take power – challenges the dominant government party, the quality of democracy improves substantially. The comparative study demonstrates that competitive opposition parties in dominant party systems are rooted in the historical legacy of political cleavages related to de-colonization that precede the third wave of democratization of the 1990s and have survived the instability of post-independence political developments to the present day. The study covers 19 African countries and 55 elections overall, including four in-depth case studies of Botswana, Lesotho, Ghana and Mali. It offers scholars and practitioners of electoral democracies and competitive authoritarian regimes a novel view on the role of party systems in processes of democratization. It makes an important contribution to the general literature on state building intertwined with democratization and representation in old and new democracies.

Download or read book Promoting Party Politics in Emerging Democracies written by Peter Burnell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a critical and comparative examination of international support to political parties and party systems in emerging and prospective new democracies in several world regions. It combines the insights of a strong international grouping of leading academics and pioneering doctoral studies, and draws on extensive new field work inquiries. The wide-ranging coverage pools evidence from countries in Europe and Eurasia, Africa, East Asia and Central America. The book shows how far international support still has to go if it is to achieve its aims of helping party politics make a constructive contribution to furthering democracy. It advances our understanding both of the role the political parties are playing in the different polities and the sometimes negative impact of democracy promotion actors from outside. By contributing original theoretical perspectives and empirical findings, the book points the way forward to agendas for future research and new courses of action. It will be of interest to academics and the policy-making and practitioner communities alike. This book was published as a special issue of Democratizations.

Download or read book Party Systems and Democracy in Africa written by R. Doorenspleet and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do party systems help or hinder democracy in Africa? Drawing lessons from different types of party systems in six African countries, this volume shows that party systems affect democracy in Africa in ways that are unexpectedly different from the relation between party systems and democracy observed elsewhere.

Download or read book Minority Rules written by David Lublin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named the American Political Science Association's Best Book on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics for 2014 When we think of minorities--linguistic, ethnic, religious, regional, or racial--in world politics, conflict is often the first thing that comes to mind. Indeed, discord and tension are the depressing norms in many states across the globe: Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Israel, Sri Lanka, Burma, Rwanda, and many more. But as David Lublin points out in this magisterial survey of minority-based political groups across the globe, such parties typically function fairly well within larger polities. In Minority Rules, he eschews the usual approach of shining attention on conflict and instead looks at the representation of minority groups in largely peaceful and democratic countries throughout the world, from the tiniest nations in Polynesia to great powers like Russia. Specifically, he examines factors behind the electoral success of ethnic and regional parties and, alternatively, their failure to ever coalesce to explain how peaceful democracies manage relations between different groups. Contrary to theories that emphasize sources of minority discontent that exacerbate ethnic cleavages--for instance, disputes over control of natural resource wealth--Minority Rules demonstrates that electoral rules play a dominant role in explaining not just why ethnic and regional parties perform poorly or well but why one potential ethnic cleavage emerges instead of another. This is important because the emergence of ethnic/regional parties along with the failure to incorporate them meaningfully into political systems has long been associated with ethnic conflict. Therefore, Lublin's findings, which derive from an unprecedentedly rich empirical foundation, have important implications not only for reaching successful settlements to such conflicts but also for preventing violent majority-minority conflicts from ever occurring in the first place.

Download or read book Political Opposition and Democracy in Sub Saharan Africa written by Elliott Green and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes a closer look at the role and meaning of political opposition for the development of democracy across sub-Saharan Africa. Why is room for political opposition in most cases so severely limited? Under what circumstances has the political opposition been able to establish itself in a legitimate role in African politics? To answer these questions this edited volume focuses on the institutional settings, the nature and dynamics within and between political parties, and the relationship between the citizens and political parties. It is found that regional devolution and federalist structures enable political opposition to organize and gain local power, as a supplement to influence at the central level. Generally, however, opposition parties are lacking in organization and institutionalization, as well as in their ability to find support in civil society and promote the issues that voters find most important. Overall, strong executive powers, unchecked by democratic institutions, in combination with deferential values and fear of conflict, undermine legitimate opposition activity. This book was originally published as a special issue of Democratization.

Download or read book Multiethnic Democracy written by Jeremy Horowitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who are the swing voters in multiethnic democracies? How much effort do parties invest in courting the swing relative to mobilizing supporters in their core ethnic bases? And how does this balance affect the policies leaders propose - and implement - if elected? This book examines the logic of electoral competition and policymaking in the context of Kenya's emerging multiparty democracy. Using data on voters, campaigns, and policy outcomes, it shows that the pursuit of the swing encourages presidential candidates to offer broad, inclusive promises and for election winners to opt for universal policies that share benefits widely. In doing so, it challenges the view - common to both popular accounts and scholarly work - that where ethnicity is politically salient, multiparty competition inevitably leads parties to focus their electoral efforts on mobilizing narrow ethnic factions and to concentrate rewards on ethnic clientele. Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, gender and political representation, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, comparative political thought, and the nature of the continent's engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged, as is interdisciplinary research and work that considers ethical issues relating to the study of Africa. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The focus of the series is on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest. Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy and International Development, University of Birmingham; Peace Medie, Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics, University of Bristol; and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Professor of the International Politics of Africa, University of Oxford.

Download or read book In Search of Lost Glory written by Asma Faiz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sindhi nationalism is one of the oldest yet least studied cases of identity politics in Pakistan. Ethnic discontent appeared in Sindh in opposition to the rule of the Bombay presidency; to the onslaught of Punjabi settlers in the wake of canal irrigation; and, most decisively, to the arrival of millions of Muhajirs (Urdu-speaking migrants) after Partition. Under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari, the Pakistan People's Party has upheld the Sindhi nationalist cause, even while playing the game of federalist politics. On the other side for half a century have been hardcore Sindhi nationalist groups, led by Marxists, provincial autonomists, landlord pirs and liberal intelligentsia in pursuit of ethnic outbidding. This book narrates the story of the Bhutto dynasty, the Muhajir factor, nationalist ideologues, factional feuds amongst landed elites, and the role of violence as a maker and shaper of Sindhi nationalism. Moreover, it examines the role of the PPP as an ethnic entrepreneur through an analysis of its politics within the electoral arena and beyond. Bringing together extensive fieldwork and comparative studies of ethno-nationalism, both within and outside Pakistan, Asma Faiz uncovers the fascinating world of Sindhi nationalism.