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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Ethnic Party Bans in Africa
| Panel |
83. Political Parties in Africa
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| Paper ID | 742 |
| Author(s) |
Bogaards, Matthijs
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | During the 1990s the number of African states to hold multi-party elections increased dramatically. Paradoxically, the spread of democracy and the extension of political rights in Africa has been accompanied in the majority of countries by legal bans on, among others, religious, ethnic, regional, and linguistic parties. The official reason for such party bans has been the aim of preventing the politicization of ethnicity as this is judged to lead to ethnic conflict and political instability. Surprisingly, the unprecedented scale of party bans in Africa has received little attention from international organizations, donors, non-governmental organizations and scholars. To date, there has been no research on party bans in Africa, their origin, their implementation, the effects on party competition and their success in preventing ethnic conflict. Nor has the place of ethnic party bans in democratic theory been scrutinized.
A project funded by the Fritz-Thyssen Stiftung seeks to fill the gap through a study that integrates empirical, theoretical, and normative approaches to the study of party bans in Africa. In light of the history of ethnic conflict in Africa and the possibility of drawing lessons for other plural societies, the leading question is: are party bans an effective instrument in preventing and managing ethnic conflict, and at what cost to democracy? This main question translates into five more specific questions: 1) Why have so many new multi-party systems in Africa adopted party bans?; 2) Are formal bans on ethnic parties an effective instrument in ethnic conflict management?; 3) Are party bans democratic?; 4) What has been the experience with party bans?; 5) Why have ostensibly so few of the countries that adopted party bans actively enforced them?
The paper will present data on legal party bans in the new multi-party electoral regimes of Africa; in fact the first-ever inventory of party bans and their implementation in Africa. It will also sketch some tentative answers to the research questions formulated above. |
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