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- Convenor:
-
Michaela Collord
(University of Nottingham)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Sa'eed Husaini
(Center for Democracy and Development)
- Stream:
- Politics and International Relations
- Location:
- Appleton Tower, Room M1
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 12 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel is focused on a recent wave of party research in Africa, which takes parties' internal organisation seriously, examining the different ways they are structured and how power is contested by the various actors who comprise them.
Long Abstract:
Following a period of relative neglect, political parties have returned to centre stage in the study of African politics. With this growing interest comes a desire to move past an over simplified, "neo-patrimonial" view of parties as uniformly weak, subordinated to a common logic of personalised patron-client exchange and "big man" dominance. Rather, Africanists are increasingly taking seriously parties as organisations. They are examining the interaction between formal structures and informal ties, the contestation surrounding internal party elections and nominations procedures, as well as the complex, negotiated relationships between party elites and grassroots activists. This recent work recalls, either directly or more implicitly, a "classical" tradition in the study of parties, one on which an earlier, post-Independence Africanist literature drew heavily. As Panebianco (1988) summarised, this tradition focused on the close empirical study of the internal organisational dynamics of parties, and particularly on "the dimension of organizational power, explaining the functioning and activities of organizations above all in terms of alliances and struggles for power amongst the different actors that comprise them."
This panel invites submissions—be they from anthropologists, political scientists or historians—examining the organisation and internal dynamics of African parties, incumbent or opposition. The aim is to further our understanding of the diverse ways parties are organised, how the internal distribution of power is contested, whose interests are prioritised, and how this affects patterns of political mobilisation and inter-party competition more broadly.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 12 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the extent to which social media has become an alternative space in Tanzania for political expression and assembly. It focuses on the use of social media by opposition parties - focusing on Chadema and ACT-Wazalendo.
Paper long abstract:
As civic space is been squeezed in many countries around the world, literature has documented social media's ability to create space for citizens and civil society. In Tanzania, civic space in particular the freedom of expression, assembly and association are increasingly shrinking. The constitutional rights of opposition political parties have been restricted with temporal ban on political rallies. This paper explores the extent to which social media has become an alternative space in Tanzania for political expression and assembly. It focuses on the use of social media by opposition parties - focusing on Chadema and ACT-Wazalendo. The paper is unique out of its attention on political parties as opposed to civil society, which have been much of the focus in the various analyses of social media and civic space. The paper seeks to answer two questions: (1) how and to what extent has social media provide space for political parties when traditional spaces are restricted? And (2) have the opposition parties in Tanzania deployed social media strategy as an alternative space and how effective is the strategy? The paper will explore these questions through practice perspectives, which emphasises practitioners' activities in a situated context. Data will be collected in multiple ways including interviews, questionnaires, observation and documentary analysis. The analysis will be done through narrative structuring, which is capable at capturing real-life phenomena without undermining agency. The paper will underscore the practices within party organisational structures in ensuring party survival in continuous state of restrictions.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will describe the way the Union for Progress and Change (UPC) of Burkina Faso, founded in 2010, was built as a political party, and analyse the consequences of such a party development strategy in relation to the political context in which it is carried out.
Paper long abstract:
At the time Zéphirin Diabré, a technocrat at the peak of his international career, founded the Union for Progress and Change (UPC) in 2010, the largest opposition party held only four seats in Parliament, and President Blaise Compaoré seemed securely rooted. Yet, in less than two years, UPC had created structures in 41 provinces out of 44, and obtained 16 members of parliament in the 2012 legislative elections - a record for an opposition party. Diabré and his UPC were later key players in bringing about the 2014 insurrection that toppled Compaoré's regime.
How did UPC achieve this unprecedented outcome, when so many other opposition parties have failed to expend beyond their leader's home and a few urban centres? This paper will describe this process, from the identification of local leaders able and willing to mobilise supporters and erect party branches in their area - at their own cost - to the shaping of a new anti-incumbent cleavage focused on 'ability' or 'credibility'. It will analyse the consequences of such a party development strategy in relation to aspects of Burkina Faso's political environment: semi-authoritarianism (Hilgers and Mazzocchetti 2010) and the power of proximity (Stroh 2010).
Using a case-study approach, this paper will contribute to the very limited, but emerging, scholarship on African parties in order to better understand patters of organisation and mobilisation deployed by (opposition) parties.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on political economy and historical institutionalist literatures, this paper presents a revised analysis of power and party institutions. Using Tanzania’s CCM as a case study, it examines the relationship between a changing power distribution within the ruling coalition and party reforms.
Paper long abstract:
A growing body of development economics literature stresses the importance of first understanding the distribution of power within a ruling coalition—and notably within a ruling party—to then explain the politics of industrial policy, social welfare provision, and more. This political emphasis is important, but the analysis of power and party institutions needs additional conceptual and theoretical clarification. Drawing on both a political economy literature and an historical institutionalist tradition, this paper presents a revised analysis of power and party institutions, which should help our understanding of ruling coalition dynamics and their developmental impacts.
The new framework, first, factors in the extent to which power is centralised or dispersed within a party. This distribution of power evolves alongside patterns of private ownership in society; it is also more actively (re)structured through leaders’ strategies of “politicized accumulation” and the organization of informal patron-client factions. The analysis addresses, second, how formal party institutions both reflect and help magnify an informal distribution of power. As such, established formal party institutions can act as a check on changing power distribution; similarly, party leaders can help alter the power dynamics in the ruling party through institutional reform. The analysis here identifies which institutional structures and rules are most significant and how they evolve along with a changing distribution of power. Finally, the paper applies this theory to an exploration of the attempts by Tanzania’s President Magufuli to reorder power within the ruling CCM party, using evidence from interviews, archival research and press reviews.