Paper short abstract:

The paper evaluates Tanzania’s regime legitimacy in the multiparty era. The paper argues that the regime has in four circles of multiparty elections been able to successfully mobilise a legitimacy narrative from Ujamaa period that to date the opposition has not been able to successfully counter.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses Tanzania's evolution of political legitimacy in the post independence state. It argues that for Tanzania examining the capacity of the regime to build and retain legitimacy offers a better explanation of Tanzania's dominant party system (CCM have dominated Tanzania politics since independence) than that offered by the literature on neo-patrimonialism or hybrid regimes. The paper lays out the trajectory of the regime legitimacy narrative in Tanzania, which was mediated by Ujamaa, the experiment in African socialism, which was adopted in 1967 and lasted for two decades. It traces the development of the 'legitimacy' narrative deployed by CCM through four cycles of multiparty elections held in Tanzania since 1995. The paper seeks to explain why these four elections, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010 have all been won by CCM the regime party albeit with varying levels of popular support in the absence of significant manipulation of the electoral process. It is the argument of this paper that the policies of Ujamaa produced important legacy for regime legitimacy narrative deployed by the dominant party as it provided important elements that continued to bind the Tanzanian people as a political community. The paper observes that regime even though it failed to live up to the values and ethics of the idealised political community, and indeed to its own legitimacy narrative it still positioned itself within the framework of that narrative and has been able to use this legitimacy narrative that to date the opposition has not been able to successfully counter.