functioned. ... The tribal elders might make the decisions, but they would be
decisions that reflected the consensus’ (Nursey-Bray, 1983, pp. 97–8).
Such communities corresponded to Tönnies Gemeinschaftrather than
Gesellschaft. A more convincing explanation for the appeal to a pre-
colonial Golden Age might be that it was necessary for political leaders
to distance themselves from the institutions and values associated with the
colonizers.
The development of an alternative form of democracy to that of Western
liberalism appears more natural still when it is recognized that for much of
the post-independence period Third World countries lacked the two
vital conditions, one economic and one political, which preceded liberal
revolutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the West: the
availability of capitalist enterprise, finance and skills; and a loyalty to the
nation rather than an ethnic community. It was therefore to be expected that
there would be ‘a painful, long period of accumulation of capital and of
productive skill. ... A pre-political or pre-national people has to be brought
to a political and national consciousness. This puts a premium on the
mass movement with strong ideological leadership’ (Macpherson, 1966,
p. 27).
There have been some notable deviations from the tendency towards
single-party systems. In 1983 Senegal, which soon after independence from
France and under the charismatic leadership of Leopold Senghor became a
single-party state, decided to revert to a two-party system. More recently
international influences and democratization movements have encouraged
such reversals. The exception is Zimbabwe, the only country whose politi-
cal leadership has in recent years been attempting to justify a move away
from a multi-party system.
The demise of party government
A more alarming tendency has been for parliamentary and party politics to
collapse altogether under the impact of political crises. Party systems have
often given way to military systems. Both single and multi-party regimes
seem to have fared equally badly in terms of the political stability which
they were able to secure. It is difficult to find any pattern in the decay of
party systems. Single-party systems sometimes survive as in Kenya or
Tanzania, sometimes they succumb to military coups, as in Ghana. Multi-
party systems have sometimes survived, notably in India, but elsewhere
they have not (for example, in Pakistan after 1958 or Nigeria). Between
146 Understanding Third World Politics