and the ideological variable produce three main types of single-party system.
The one-party authoritarian system (such as Mali, Ghana and South Vietnam
in the 1960s) treats opposition as a threat to revolutionary or nationalistic
objectives. The one-party pluralist system is characterized by a pluralistic
party organization and a pragmatic ideology, as in Mexico’s Institutional
Revolutionary Party. The one-party totalitarian system has the state itself as
an instrument of the party whose objective is social and economic transfor-
mation, as in China, Vietnam and North Korea.
Single-party systems
In some cases party systems in the Third World have resembled their Western
counterparts, offering a degree of electoral choice, legitimate political opposi-
tion, and accountability to the interests ranged in support of them electorally.
Others have resembled the democratic centralism of the former Soviet Union
and Eastern bloc. But the Third World has produced important variants of its
own, most notably the single-party system in the context of parliamentary gov-
ernment and capitalist economy, as in Kenya until 1991. In some countries
multi-party politics has survived more or less intact since independence, as in
India. Elsewhere it has appeared intermittently, as in Nigeria. Single party
regimes in the context of capitalism prove that this form of economy often
requires the negation of liberal democracy rather than guaranteeing it.
With the emergence of independent states whose institutions were based
on Western models of government it was assumed that parties would
become the main institutions for the political mobilization of different sec-
tion of society, aggregating different interests into workable coalitions that
could constitute majorities, sustain governments, and provide for the alter-
nation of governments at regular intervals (Kilson, 1963). This alternation is
often regarded as the crux of a modern democracy. Political development in
the pre- and post-colonial era had seen the emergence of parties based on
the nationalist movements that fought for independence. The Indian
Congress is a classic case of an organization with a long pre-independence
history. In some colonies more than one nationalist movement emerged to
develop into parties, especially in Africa where nationalist movements often
represented different tribal groupings each with its own ideas about the
ending of colonialism. This again lent support to the expectation that this
was the origin of multi-party systems of government.
The emergence of single-party systems of government was thus a distinct
departure from the expectations of the constitution-builders on the eve of
142 Understanding Third World Politics