pursuit of public goals was an indulgence. However, research has failed to
reveal evidence which consistently supports the view that the absence of
party competition is better for policy outcomes, such as economic develop-
ment and social equality (Sirowy and Inkeles, 1991).
The leadership was also nationalist, emphasizing national unity as the
paramount goal, condemning any sub-national sentiment to tribe, religion,
region or other centres of political attachment and loyalty as destructive
of national integration. Political leaders in new states undoubtedly encoun-
tered many separatist tendencies. The need for political order made the
single-party system attractive. Some Western political scientists discussed
single-party systems approvingly as well as descriptively and analytically.
Huntington noted the relative success of communist states in providing
political order, seeing it as derived from the priority given to ‘the conscious
act of political organization’. A strong party could assimilate the social
forces generated by modernization that would otherwise threaten political
stability. Huntington could find no stable multi-party system in any mod-
ernizing country. Single parties seemed better able to institutionalize
and regularize political conflict and competition than parties in a multi-
party system.
Another factor is that political office is not readily relinquished, least
of all in the Third World context. The rewards of political officein the con-
text of underdevelopment are so great that there must always be a tempta-
tion to manipulate politics to exclude the organized opposition. This goes
further than mere corruption, serious though this problem is. The problem is
rather that the state, being the main engine of economic development, is
something that those who aspire to benefit socially and economically from
such development have to control. An emerging bourgeoisie cannot look to
other sources of capital. Production, trade and commerce all depend upon
capital channelled through the state which also controls licences, the law
governing the labour force, and access to foreign exchange, import licenses
and export permits. The state is an organization which has to be captured by
any group that wishes to accumulate economic resources. Political power as
well as political careers bring huge rewards that are not lightly conceded to
opponents.
It was also believed that the classlessnature of some Third World soci-
eties removed the need for more than one party. Tanzanian society, for
example, was composed of a number of more or less equally balanced eth-
nic groups without any major forms of social and economic stratification.
So it was thought too homogenous to need more than one party to represent
interests effectively.
144 Understanding Third World Politics