Not all new states came into existence on the basis of a preparation for
independence in a Western European constitutional mould. The preparation
for independence in Algeria, Indo-China, Angola, Mozambique was rather
different. Marxist–Leninist ideologyhas played its part. Such an ideology,
perhaps having its origin in mobilization for a war of liberation, identifies
party with state and nation. Anything outside the party, and certainly any-
thing that opposes it, is almost treasonable by definition. An organization
founded to wage war under such ideological motivation would have an
automatic propensity to form the sole leadership in the context of post-war
civilian politics.
Acceptance of single-party government was made easier by apparently
democratic tendencieswithin some sole parties. It appeared as if some par-
ties could sustain democratic decision-making within the party sufficient to
compensate for the lack of choice between parties. Intra-party democracy
could perhaps allow for just as much or just as little discussion of alterna-
tives as inter-party democracy. Tanzania has often been cited as a case in
point. During its single party regime Tanzania’s one legal political party, the
Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), was democratically organized, with the
national conference electing delegates to the national executive council
which in turn elected the central committee. For parliamentary elections the
party selected two candidates for each constituency, sometimes from a large
number of nominations – 85 in one constituency in 1990, for example. Seats
were vigorously contested in a carefully regulated campaign. It was not
uncommon for incumbents, including ministers, to be defeated.
Consequently, some political leaders in the Third World claimed, not
without some justification, that the policy choices offered by, say,
Democrats and Republicans in the USA were no greater than the choices
being made within the mass organizations of sole parties and between
the candidates which those parties sponsored in parliamentary elections.
Different factions within a single party could also compete for political
office.
Finally, following independence in many new states, the political leader-
ship argued that traditional societyhad its own forms of democratic
decision-making that could be adapted to contemporary conditions without
needing more than one political party. Leaders such as Julius Nyerere
of Tanzania and Leopold Senghor of Senegal claimed that traditional
African decision-making was based on consensus, unity and egalitarianism,
claims on which historical research has thrown some doubt (Hodder-
Williams, 1984, p. 11; Riley, 1991, p. 3). Pre-colonial African village com-
munities were said to have had ‘a sense in which basic political democracy
Political Parties and Party Systems 145