a ‘revolutionary-centralizing’ pattern. Pragmatic pluralist parties were those
that generally tolerated the persistence of traditional politics, only partially
and intermittently tried to mobilize support, and assimilated group interests
to a limited extent. Revolutionary-centralizing parties in contrast espoused
a modernizing ideology, were highly committed to mass political participa-
tion, and developed monolithic and centralized organizations.
This classification was used to explain the level of success achieved by
African countries in solving the problem of national integration, both in the
sense of ‘transcending the élite-mass gap’ and in the sense of territorial inte-
gration. However, it proved difficult to develop a theory of successful polit-
ical integration as distinct from identifying integration as a function that
parties can perform, especially in the single-party system of government.
Coleman and Rosberg were able to go little further than stating that ‘In all
but a few of Africa’s new states the primary structure ... for coping with the
myriad parochial and ethnic pressures is the national political party, the
single or dominant party currently governing the state’ (Coleman and
Rosberg, 1964, p. 691).
A similar combination of regime and ideology is employed by
LaPalombara and Weiner in their classification of parties in developing
countries. They distinguish firstly between competitive and non-competitive
systems and then two dimensions along which parties differ within each
system.Competitive systemsare associated with large and/or ethnically frag-
mented countries such as India, Nigeria, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. One
dimension of such a system ranges from ‘hegemonic’, where one party dom-
inates for a long period, to ‘turnover’, where change in the party of govern-
ment is frequent. The other dimension refers to parties themselves rather
than regimes, and distinguishes between ideological and pragmatic parties.
The hope is that this typology will have theoretical value insofar as ‘the
particular combination of hegemony or turnover, ideology or pragmatism
that a party pattern manifests may tell us something about how the parties
relate to social, economic and political development’ (LaPalombara and
Weiner, 1966, p. 37). The typology was also useful if one was interested in
the ability of parties to manage conflict effectively: ‘in competitive systems
the ideological–hegemonic and the ideological–turnover systems are less
able to cope (short of repressive measures) with conflicts than either
pragmatic–turnover or pragmatic–hegemonic systems’ (p. 418). Another
hypothesis offered is that any drive for hegemonic control is likely to be
made by parties with a strong ideological position.
Party control in a non-competitive systemis by definition likely to be
hegemonic rather than ‘turnover’. Combinations of hegemonic party systems
Political Parties and Party Systems 141