assist in the process of political integration if parties are successful in draw-
ing support from across regions to which people feel an attachment greater
than that to the nation-state. In Nigeria such importance is attached to the
potentially destructive force of regionally or ethnically based political
mobilization that parties are required by law to draw their membership from
across the country (Oyediran and Agbaje, 1991). This indicates that parties
can, under some circumstances, impede political integration by aggregating
primarily ethnic and regional interests.
Parties also act as the conduits of upward pressurefrom the rank and file
membership, affiliated organizations representing special interests such as
women, youth or trade unions, and, if they are forced to compete for office
through the ballot box, the electorate. Some parties have represented tradi-
tional oligarchies as in parts of West Africa, for example, where traditional-
ists adapted the modern institution of the party to their own political ends. In
a constitutional arrangement that assigns one person one vote even an aris-
tocracy has to obtain mass support. It has the advantage of being able to trade
on the traditional allegiances of naturally deferential societies within the
wider context of more egalitarian principles. Other parties have been based
on the demands of the professional classes such as teachers, lawyers and low
ranking officialdom. Ethnicity is often a parallel defining factor limiting
membership and cutting across occupational and economic interests.
Parties also contribute to political socialization, affecting the attitudes of
party members and the wider public on such maters as the management of
the economy, national identification and the legitimacy of government.
In theory political parties should also be major influences on public policy
as a result of devising programmes to attract a workable aggregation of inter-
ests or through the application of official ideology to current problems. In the
past parties usually have had a minimal impact on public policy in Third
World countries, and even more rarely exercised any effective supervision of
policy implementation (Randall, 1988, pp. 185–6). However, there is grow-
ing evidence, especially from newly democratizing polities, that parties are
relevant to policy outcomes. For example, parties are crucial to strategies
designed to reduce poverty by the empowerment of the poor. Experience in
some of the states in India and parts of Latin America suggests strongly that
the opportunity to elect pro-poor parties to office makes a significant differ-
ence to the strength of public policies designed to alleviate poverty, espe-
cially if the parties are unified rather than fragmented, and with a coherent
ideology and programme (Moore and Putzel, 1999, pp. 9–11).
Type of party system also helps explain whether or not governments will
target social spending on the poor. Party systems that allow leaders to secure
Political Parties and Party Systems 137