84 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ELECTIONS PARTY-VOTER LINKAGE IN SENEGAL The rise and fall of Abdoulaye Wade and the Parti Démocratique Sénégalais1 Anja Osei Dr Anja Osei is a postdoc researcher at the chair of International Relations and Conflict Management in the Department of Politics and Management, University of Konstanz, Germany e-mail:
[email protected] ABSTRACT In March 2012 Abdoulaye Wade was defeated by Macky Sall in the hotly contested presidential elections in Senegal. This article uses the concept of party-voter linkage to examine how and why Wade and his party, the Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS), lost touch with the electorate. It is argued that this failure must be viewed within the context of a complex process of social change that challenged traditional, often clientelistic, forms of linkage. As an alternative strategy, the PDS emphasised the personal charisma of its leader. Charismatic linkage, however, is naturally unstable, and the PDS began to lose public support. These findings suggest that political parties in Senegal cannot build their strategies on clientelism and charisma alone, they will have to begin to compete over issues and develop programmatic visions. If this challenge is not taken up, the long-term prospects for democratic representation and effective linkage are uncertain. INTRODUCTION In March 2012 the future of democracy in Senegal hung in the balance. In the run-up to the presidential election angry youth and opposition activists took to the streets, demanding the departure of the incumbent president, Abdoulaye Wade. The fact that a key role was played by young activists who came together in the Mouvement du 23 Juin (M23) is remarkable because the urban population, especially urban youth, had been a key element in Wade’s rise to power in 2000.