interests. Political leaders such as Sékou Touré of Guinea claimed that though
their societies might be divided into occupational, age and other groups, all
shared a common interest represented by a particular party and its leadership.
Society is presented as ‘cellularized’ into factions whose common interests
outweigh their particular and possibly conflicting interests as illiterates or
intellectuals, young or old, producers or consumers, men or women, peasants
or urbanites, bureaucrats or clients.
Populism is thus a way of presenting a view of society that stresses homo-
geneity rather than diversity. In order to appeal to all interests in society pop-
ulist parties and leaders define special interests in ways that make them
ultimately reconcilable. Issues associated with particular interests, or which
are divisive, are, where possible, avoided. Leaders specifically aim to
prevent the development of a consciousness of conflicting interests. The
methods used include building support on the basis of rewards rather than
ideological conviction, and expressing contradictory policy objectives
incoherently. Populism is inevitably conservative since it seeks to prevent
alternative perspectives to the status quo developing.
Social diversity is not regarded as a barrier to the identification of a more
important common interest. In some countries the structure of post-colonial
society lent some support to this way of viewing the political world, partic-
ularly those that appeared to be devoid of significant class distinctions
simply because economic underdevelopment had prevented classes from
emerging fully. Congress in India must rank as one of the most successful
populist parties. It attracts support from very different sections of society
whose interests might appear to be incompatible. It has proved able to man-
age an alliance between different kinds of class structure, those of the rural
and urban areas, even when such stratification has been overlaid with
linguistic, ethnic, communal and religious differences.
There have been two dominant preoccupations in the analysis of Third
World parties. One concerns the development and survival of party systems
and in particular the emergence of single-party systems. The other concerns
the survival of parties as institutions.
Party systems
Observations of the tendency in the early 1960s for single-party systems to
emerge in Africa led Coleman and Rosberg to produce a typology of parties
based on a combination of ideological, participative and organizational
variables. This enabled them to contrast a ‘pragmatic pluralist’ pattern with
140 Understanding Third World Politics