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.