1960 and 1969 ten of the 15 multi-party states in Africa had experienced
military intervention. Of the 20 single-party states, 11 had had coups.
It is not surprising that some commentators started to write off
party systems generally as a total failure. This is reflected in the general
down-playing of the political significance of Third World parties (see
Randall, 1988, which is an attempt to restore a sense of their importance).
Yet in some countries party government has survived for a very long time.
The continuity of some Third World party systems is now greater than
in Eastern Europe. There is no shortage of examples of countries with long
histories of party government. There are also examples of the military being
instrumental in the reinstatement of parties, albeit to legitimize the mili-
tary’s role in politics.
There are no obvious explanations for the survival of party government.
Economic growth, which might be expected to increase prosperity and
therefore a sense of satisfaction with the regime, does not guarantee the sur-
vival of party systems, although the World Bank pointed out in 1989 that the
African countries with the best economic records (Botswana and Mauritius)
had parliamentary democracies. Support for this conclusion was seen to be
provided by The Gambia which has had multi-party democracy since inde-
pendence in 1965 despite a GNP per head of only $US240 and an average
life expectancy of 43 years in 1989 (Riley, 1991, pp. 7, 29) but which
succumbed to the military in 1994.
Alternatively it might be hypothesized that social structure might offer
an explanation in that stratification based on class seems to provide a better
basis for competitive politics than vertical cleavages based on race,
language or religion. However, social factors such as class and related
indicators of stratification such as urbanization and literacy, do not appear
to be systematically related to patterns of party politics (Randall, 1988,
p. 188).
It is more difficult to account for the stability of a party system than to
explain variations between systems. Explanations of the latter include the
legacy of colonialism, the time that parties have to take root and become
established (India and Jamaica are examples of countries in which political
parties have long histories), and whether independence was won by war or
negotiation, the former method leading to the creation of the ‘party-army’ of
national liberation such as the FLN in Algeria which had great difficulty in
transforming itself into a civilian political movement after the French with-
drew. Not all nationalist movements have histories of guerrilla warfare,
some having been able to negotiate the end of colonialism rather than
engage in armed struggle.
Political Parties and Party Systems 147