Harbingers of Change? Subnational Politics in Dominant Party Systems
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Danielle Langfield, B.A.U., M.A.
Graduate Program in Political Science The Ohio State University 2010
Dissertation Committee: Richard Gunther, Advisor Goldie Shabad Marcus J. Kurtz
Copyright by
Danielle Langfield
2010
Abstract
Democratic dominant party systems hold fair but uncompetitive competitions. In a democratic country in which one political party wins national elections repeatedly and continuously, what determines whether it will become competitive, authoritarian, or if it will maintain both dominance and democracy? These questions are important with regard to achieving democratic consolidation, and to ensure accountability and representativeness.
Prior work on this question generally has taken a view of party system evolution as a result either of top-down ruling elite factionalism or of grassroots-based opposition growth. I link the two processes, arguing that competitiveness emerges from a combination of a weakening dominant party and a growing opposition. The dominant party‟s attitude to interparty and intraparty opposition, and the opposition‟s viability as a credible alternative largely determine the evolution of a dominant party system. I use a multi-level approach, looking explicitly at the role of sub-national party systems in a nationally dominant party system to gain analytical leverage. I evaluate both explicit efforts to spread subnational opposition success to other localities and to other levels of government, and the ruling party‟s attempts to thwart these efforts. In this way I link the grassroots-growth theories to the elite-driven ones. To support this theory, I draw
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extensively on literature about a diverse set of countries, including India, Italy, Japan,
Mexico, and several states of sub-Saharan Africa.
Then, I turn to an analysis of South African cities, using my own interviews with party elites, newspaper accounts, and archival sources to compare increasingly competitive Cape Town and increasingly African National Congress (ANC)-dominant
Durban through the 2009 elections. This period coincides with a fraught succession fight within the ANC, culminating in severe factionalism with geographic bases and an organized defection to form a separate party. The weakened ANC created opportunities for opposition growth. I argue that opposition parties are most likely to find traction with strategies that, first, build their credibility through winning and governing subnational governments and, second, capitalize on voters‟ doubts about the democratic credentials of the dominant party in order to capture some of the electoral center.
However, democracy‟s contested status may damage the quality of democracy and consolidation of the regime. Based on survey data drawn from the Afrobarometer and the Comparative National Election Project, South Africans are disillusioned with their democratic system in ways we expect (based on comparable cases) and they support democracy in the abstract. However, there are reasons for concern about the public‟s reaction if the dominant party were to lose national power. I conclude that the evolution of dominant party systems into competitive ones may be a double-edged sword; competitive parties should yield a better functioning democracy, but the process of achieving that competitiveness risks political instability.
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Dedication
for my mother, Margaret Langfield, and for my father, Michael D. Langfield
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Acknowledgments
One of the more important lessons I learned in graduate school is that, despite appearances to the contrary, academia is not a solitary pursuit. While at some point we each must think and write on our own, both beforehand and afterwards we benefit from conversations with and feedback from numerous people.
Acknowledgements for the help and feedback I have received must of course begin with my dissertation committee. I am grateful for Dick Gunther‟s interest in this project and his guidance of my pursuit of it. It is not an accident that his combined expertise in democratization, political parties, survey research, and semi-structured elite interviewing is reflected throughout this dissertation. Goldie Shabad provided invaluable detailed feedback and spent the time to make sure my prose said what I meant it to say. I am thankful for her unflagging encouragement throughout the years. Marcus Kurtz saw this project in its initial stages, leading my cohort‟s Prospectus Workshop, and so helped shape it from the start. His practical advice is always very welcome, and his insistence on further theory development significantly improved this project.
Also at Ohio State, I benefitted from conversations, feedback, and general assistance from Irfan Nooruddin, Larry Baum, Herb Weisberg, and Kevin Cox. Kuba
Zielinski‟s course on party politics is largely responsible for my fascination with the subject. Retta Semones, Diana Camella, Wayne DeYoung, and Bill Miller were
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incredibly useful resources for navigating bureaucracy, resolving pedagogical troubles, and generally solving problems of all kinds.
Earlier in my education, some extraordinary teachers set me on the path that led to a doctorate. In my undergraduate days, Sandy Korros and James McCann, S.J., deserve special mention for their mentorship, friendship and, in Sandy‟s case, excellent meals.
(Fr. McCann deserves special mention for his stories about excellent meals, for what is field work for if not the acquisition of pastries?) Earlier, Renée Bell and Rosalie Gwinn taught me how to write and how to research, as well as how to be amused in the process of doing so.
If you are lucky, those with whom you attend graduate school will be smart, generous, and fun. I have been immensely lucky. Michael Cohen and Christina Xydias deserve special mention for reading drafts throughout each stage of this project. Both provided encouragement while pushing me to defend my ideas. They witnessed the sausage being made here, and I can only hope that I was able to repay the favor. Miryam
Chandler became an invaluable colleague and friend late in my graduate career, adding a fresh perspective to the project just when it needed it and fresh enthusiasm just when I needed it. For ideas, feedback, and sanity (or insanity, as the situation warranted), thanks also to Erin McAdams, Amanda Metskas, and Amanda Rosen; my comrades in the
Comparative Mafia: Michael Cohen, Ryan Kennedy, Mike Litzinger and Keith Moser;
Rich Arnold, Soundarya Chidambaram, Delia Dumitrescu, Jenny Nowlin, Autumn
Lockwood Payton, Jennifer Moyer, Jen Regan, Anand Sokhey, Sarah Wilson Sokhey,
Srdjan Vucetic, and Byungwon Woo. Many thanks also to Elizabeth Smith; Andrea
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Haupt; August Brunsman, Gaelynn Dooley, DJ Gregor, Lyz Liddell, Sharon Moss, Jim
Smith, and Landon Winkler; Paige, Lee, Shannon, Katerina, Shonali, Suri, Chris, Sara,
Dan, Kristin, and Jeff; Heather and Tony Clark for visiting me in Cape Town; and the inimitable Ana Espinal-Rae.
My field work in South Africa was generously supported by travel grants from the
Mershon Center for International Security Studies at Ohio State and from the Ohio State
Graduate School in the form of awards through the AGGRS and PEGS programs.
Many of the South African politicians I interviewed agreed to be identified by name. However, to protect the anonymity of those who did not, I refrain from connecting any specific statement to a particular person, except in a very few cases when I thought the quotation benefitted from the context of who said it. I am extremely grateful to all those who shared their time and thoughtful insights with me. Along with those who wished not to be identified, they include Jameelah Daniels, Martin Fienies, Grant
Haskins, Logie Naidoo, Ian Neilson, Fawzia Peer, Dan Plato, Demetri Qually, Jayraj
Singh, John Steenhuisen, Michael Sutcliffe, Belinda Walker, Dumisani Ximbi, and Helen
Zille. Thanks too to Sthe Mshengu and the many kind staff assistants who helped to arrange interviews. I am also grateful to the academics, researchers, officials, and activists who helped me to grasp the details of South African politics and government:
Richard Bosman, Rob Cameron, Zweli Jolobe, Brij Maharaj, Bob Mattes, Rama Naidu,
Thami Ngwenya, Sophie Oldfield, Lawrence Piper, Collette Schultz-Herzenberg, and Per
Strand.
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Finally, several individuals helped me in practical and intangible ways to complete this dissertation. Karen and Nick Hogan adopted me into their family when I moved to Columbus for graduate school and later provided me with a place to live between research trips. Their generosity is apparently limitless, and I am immeasurably grateful. Joan Hutchinson told me long ago that acquiring a PhD would require, above all else, sheer determination. I am very glad she did, and I am happy to call her a role model.
My family, too, is unfailingly supportive of my work and my goals. Joan Johnson fed me quite well while encouraging much-needed opportunities to not do work, and also gave me a place to stay as I travelled in and out of the country for field work.
My now-husband, Dennis Johnson, became part of my life at about the same time this project began to take shape. He woke up at inordinately early hours to phone me in
South Africa, enthusiastically learned nearly as much about my cases as I know, and provides not insignificant amounts of both research assistance and cooking. Completing this dissertation would not have been possible without his love, good humor, and unwavering belief in me, and I am grateful every day that he has joined me on this journey.
Both of my parents have been extraordinarily encouraging of my pursuit of an academic career. My mother, Margaret Langfield, has been instrumental in ways big and small at every stage of my education. My decision to pursue a career in academia is because of her influence. She is unfailingly supportive; it is difficult to imagine life without the free long-distance phone calls afforded us by the 21st century. For love,
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friendship, encouragement, hilarity, commiseration, and observations of irony, I thank her and dedicate this dissertation to her.
My fascination with South Africa and its politics began as a young child, during the violent last days of apartheid. My first instructor in its complexities was my father,
Michael D. Langfield; he remains one of the best sounding-boards, critics, and editors I have. It is because of him that I first wanted to learn more about South Africa and democratization, and his enthusiasm for the work I do now is a wonderful side benefit of it. I also dedicate this dissertation to him.
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Vita
2002 B.A.U., History. Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. magna cum laude, Scholars (Honors) Program.
2005 M.A., Political Science. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
2002-3, 2005-6 Distinguished University Fellowship, The Ohio State University.
2003-2010 Graduate Teaching and Research Associate
Fields of Study
Major Field: Political Science
Specialization: Comparative Politics
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Table of Contents
Abstract ...... ii
Dedication ...... iv
Acknowledgments...... v
Vita ...... x
Fields of Study ...... x
Table of Contents ...... xi
List of Tables ...... xv
List of Figures ...... xvii
Abbreviations ...... xviii
Note on Place Names ...... xx
Map of South Africa ...... xxi
Chapter 1: Introduction, The Problem of Competition without Competitiveness ...... 1 1.1 Introduction ...... 1 1.2 The Puzzle & Its Importance ...... 3 1.3 Dominant Party Democracies Defined ...... 7 1.4 Dangers of Dominance ...... 10 1.5 Dominant Party Evolution: National and Subnational Arenas ...... 12 1.5.1 Subnational Politics ...... 16 1.6 Methods and Data ...... 18 1.7 Plan of the Dissertation ...... 20
Chapter 2: Dominant Party Evolution ...... 27 2.1 Introduction ...... 27 2.2 The Evolution of Democratic One-Party Dominant Systems ...... 27
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2.3 Key Factors ...... 30 2.3.1 Dominant Party Attitudes to Pluralism and Opposition ...... 30 2.3.2 Opposition‟s Hurdles ...... 35 2.4 Paths away from Democratic Dominance ...... 47 2.4.1 Path 1: Democratic Dominance to Authoritarian Hegemony ...... 47 2.4.2 Path 2: Democratic Competitiveness from the Dominant Party Splitting ...... 53 2.4.3 Path 3: Democratic Competitiveness from Opposition Party Growth ...... 59 2.5 Scope ...... 61 2.6 Bridging the Gap ...... 64
Chapter 3: Opposition Credibility Gains from Subnational Competition ...... 67 3.1 Introduction ...... 67 3.1.1 Subnational Party Systems ...... 67 3.1.2 The Subnational Comparative Method ...... 69 3.2 Subnational Clues to the Abandonment of Democracy ...... 70 3.3 Party Strategies for Competitive Growth ...... 75 3.3.1 Opposition‟s Subnational Strongholds ...... 76 3.3.2 Spreading the Opposition Wins ...... 84 3.3.3 Intraparty Coalitions and Factionalism in Subnational Politics .....94 3.4 An Alternative Effect of Subnational Opposition Success ...... 102 3.5 Towards a Theory of Dominant Party Evolution ...... 110
Chapter 4: The Shape of South African Politics ...... 115 4.1 Introduction ...... 115 4.2 Democracy in South Africa ...... 116 4.2.1 De Jure Democracy: Institutions and Elections ...... 116 4.2.2 De Facto Democracy: In Practice ...... 122 4.2.3 Parallel Centralization of the Dominant Party and the State ...... 129 4.3 Political Parties in Democratic South Africa ...... 134 4.3.1 The Dominant Party: Broad Coalition, Limited Expression ...... 135 4.3.2 Opposition Parties: Fragmentation from Ideology and Identity ..144 4.4 Voting Behavior in South Africa ...... 150 4.5 Competition and Competitiveness: Municipal Government and Politics...... 155 4.5.1 Local Government Structures ...... 155
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4.5.2 Competition and Competitiveness: Variation in Local Party Systems ...... 158 4.6 Conclusion ...... 166
Chapter 5: Parties‟ Local Successes and Failures...... 168 5.1 Introduction ...... 168 5.2 Establishing Strongholds: Early Attempts at Opposition Coordination ...... 170 5.2.1 Dysfunctional Opposition Coordination in Newly Democratic Cape Town ...... 172 5.2.2 Too Much Too Soon: Durban and the Coalition for Change...... 181 5.3 Opposition Success: Cape Town ...... 191 5.3.1 Opposition Unity in Cape Town ...... 191 5.3.2 Explaining Opposition Unity ...... 198 5.4 Opposition Failure and the Extension of Dominance in Durban .201 5.4.1 The Extension of Dominance to Durban ...... 202 5.4.2 Explaining Dominant Party Success in Durban ...... 205 5.5 Conclusion ...... 207
Chapter 6: The Impact of Local Politics on the National Party System ...... 211 6.1 Introduction ...... 211 6.2 The Importance of Subnational-Based Strategies ...... 212 6.3 ANC Factionalism: From Broad Church to Rebellion ...... 215 6.3.1 National Fissures within the ANC ...... 216 6.3.2 (A)part of the Palace Intrigue: The ANC‟s Mass Organization ..222 6.3.3 Elite Factionalism ...... 224 6.4 The End of the Mbeki Era ...... 225 6.4.1 Regional Powerbases ...... 228 6.4.2 Regional Weaknesses...... 236 6.5 Factionalism Comes Home to Roost...... 240 6.5.1 Zuma Wins, Factionalism Continues ...... 240 6.5.2 Failing to Manage Factionalism: COPE Breaks from the ANC ..245 6.6 Capitalizing on Opposition Government in Cape Town ...... 248 6.6.1 Using the Viable Alternative ...... 249 6.6.2 Debating Who Is a Better Democrat ...... 252 6.6.3 Where Next for Opposition? ...... 256 6.7 What Now for South Africa? ...... 260
Chapter 7: The Implications for Democracy ...... 264
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7.1 Introduction ...... 264 7.2 Democracy as an Election Issue ...... 267 7.2.1 South Africans‟ Perceptions of “Undemocratic” Parties ...... 267 7.2.2 Regime Cleavages in Democratic Systems ...... 276 7.3 Effects of the Democratic Credentials Challenge ...... 282 7.3.1 Mass Attitudes about Democracy ...... 283 7.3.2 South Africans‟ Opinions regarding Democracy ...... 286 7.4 The Dangers of Dominance and Increasing Competitiveness .....304
Chapter 8: Conclusions and Further Research ...... 309 8.1 Dominant Party Systems and the Advent of Competitiveness ....309 8.1.1 Goals of Parties ...... 309 8.1.2 Subnational Roots of Party System Change ...... 310 8.1.3 Establishing Competitiveness ...... 312 8.2 Alternative Arguments ...... 314 8.3 Further Research ...... 316 8.3.1 The Evolution of Dominant Party Systems ...... 316 8.3.2 The Party System(s) of South Africa ...... 321
Bibliography ...... 325
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List of Tables
Table 4.1: South Africans‟ Perceptions of Government Corruption ...... 127
Table 4.2: Elite (2007) and public (2006) perceptions of corruption (percents) ...... 127
Table 4.3: National Election Results (prior to any floor-crossing changes) ...... 145
Table 4.4: 2006 Election Results, Vote Percentages by Province ...... 147
Table 4.5: Racial and Ethnic Demographics of South Africa, 2001 ...... 151
Table 4.6: KwaZulu-Natal 2001 Demographic Groups and 2006 Election Results, Percentages ...... 152
Table 4.7: Percent turnout in South African national elections ...... 154
Table 4.8: Winning Differential by Winning Party per Ward, 2006 ...... 161
Table 4.9: Number of councils controlled by party and by province, 2000 and 2006 ....165
Table 5.1: Cape Town and Durban 2001 Demographic Groups, Percentages ...... 171
Table 5.2: Durban (eThekwini) City Council Seats, 2000 and 2006 Elections ...... 182
Table 5.3: Cape Town City Council Seats, 2000 and 2006 Elections ...... 192
Table 6.1: Characterizations of ANC Factional Divisions ...... 221
Table 6.2: Percent of ANC membership from each province, by year ...... 229
Table 6.3: Percent of ANC delegates to 2007 National Conference and percent of South African population, by province ...... 233
Table 7.1: Negative Perceptions of Corruption and Extent of Democracy, Percents .....270
Table 7.2: Negative Perceptions of Government‟s Handling of Corruption, Percent by Province ...... 271
Table 7.3: Negative Perception of Government‟s Handling of Corruption, Percent by Province and Partisanship ...... 273
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Table 7.4: Levels of discontent among South Africans: percent satisfied ...... 288
Table 7.5: 2008 Percent Satisfied with Democracy compared with 2001 Poverty Rate, by Province ...... 289
Table 7.6: 2008 Satisfaction with Democracy by Voting Preference, percents ...... 291
Table 7.7: Turnout in South African National Elections ...... 293
Table 7.8: Vote Choice of South African Voting Age Population (VAP), percents ...... 294
Table 7.9: Commitment to Democracy among South African Voters, percents ...... 299
Table 7.10: Percent Agreeing Democracy is Preferable, by Province ...... 300
Table 7.11: 2006 and 2008 Support for Democracy by Voting Preference, percents ....302
Table 7.12: 2008 Opinion of One-Party Rule by Voting Preference, percents ...... 303
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List of Figures
Figure 1.1: Paths of Democratic Dominant Regimes ...... 13
Figure 2.1: Four paths to Democratic Dominant Regimes ...... 29
Figure 5.1: Key Factors in the Evolution of Dominant Party Systems (based on discusion in Chapter 2) ...... 169
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Abbreviations
ACDP African Christian Democratic Party
AEB Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging
ANC African National Congress
AWB Afrikaner Resistance Movement (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging)
BDP Botswana Democratic Party
CNEP Comparative National Elections Project
COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions
DC Italian Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana)
DP/DA Democratic Party/Democratic Alliance
DPJ Democratic Party of Japan
GEAR Growth, Employment, and Redistribution strategy
GNU Government of National Unity (1994-6, consisting of ANC, NP, and IFP)
IEC Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa
JCP Japanese Communist Party
JSP Japanese Socialist Party
KZN KwaZulu-Natal province
LDP Liberal Democratic Party (of Japan)
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MF Minority Front
NEC National Executive Committee of the ANC
NP/NNP National Party/New National Party
PAN National Action Party (of Mexico)
PCI Italian Communist Party
PRD Party of the Democratic Revolution (of Mexico)
PRI Institutional Revolutionary Party (of Mexico)
PSI Italian Socialist Party
SABC South African Broadcasting Corporation
SACP South African Communist Party
UCDP United Christian Democratic Party
UDM United Democratic Movement
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Note on Place Names
In the past decade or so, many South African municipalities have been renamed to reflect a broader cultural heritage. The new names are used in all official documentation and discussion, but the old names are often still used in everyday reference and as marketing tools such as tourism advertising. Most notable for this study is eThekwini, the municipality incorporating the city of Durban. In a few places, the old name officially refers to the downtown core of the municipality. I use the older, more widely known names to make this research more accessible to those without area expertise. In all cases unless otherwise specified, I mean the official municipality, rather than any specific area within that municipality.
Additionally, the Northern Province was renamed Limpopo after the 2000 elections.
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Map of South Africa
Gauteng Limpopo
Northwest Mpumalanga
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xxi
KwaZulu -Natal
Western Cape Eastern Cape
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Chapter 1: Introduction,
The Problem of Competition without Competitiveness
1.1 Introduction
Democratic dominant party systems are strange: they hold uncompetitive competitions. In some fully free and fair democracies, one political party repeatedly wins elections for national office. This dominance extends for several consecutive elections, so that, as Duverger wrote, the rule of the dominant party becomes “identified with an epoch” (1954: 308).
This dissertation asks what happens after one-party dominance has been established. How does a party stay in power indefinitely while respecting democratic principles? How might an opposition party bring a successful challenge? How may a competitive multiparty system evolve from one dominated by a single party? Most previous studies of dominant party systems find their explanations either in the behavior of the dominant party, or in the strategies of opposition party challenges. I argue that an exclusive focus on one or the other creates an incomplete picture and fails to recognize that party systems are, in Sartori‟s famous definition, the “system of interactions” among parties (1976: 39). My theory links the existing theories by looking at the interaction of constraints and opportunities on each set of parties.
While several recognized democracies have experienced one-party dominance, such as India, Italy, and Japan, many observers question the quality of democracy under
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such conditions. I do not assume that dominant party systems are necessarily bad for democracy, but recognize that they could be dangerous for democracy in particular ways.
How and under what circumstances a dominant party system evolves affects democratic consolidation, that is, that the democratic regime becomes relatively secure and accepted by all politically significant actors (Linz and Stepan 1996). Party system evolution also affects the quality of democracy in terms of pluralism, accountability, and representativeness.
The question of how dominant party systems evolve as they do is addressed here both in general, using secondary literature on a wide variety of cases drawn from different regions, and through the specific case of post-apartheid South Africa. South
Africa is in many ways a quintessential democratic dominant party system. Its democratic credentials are much lauded, if not yet consolidated. For example, it earned a composite score of 1.5 on Freedom House‟s scale of political rights and civil liberties through 2006, dropping to a score of 2 in 2007 and 2008. The rule of the African
National Congress (ANC) has dominated the post-apartheid era. It won 62.6 percent of the electorate‟s support in the first democratic election in 1994, increasing that share to
66.5 in 1999 and 69.7 in 2004, and falling to 65.9 in 2009. Fifteen years into its rule, it controls eight of the nine provincial governments, and the majority of local governments throughout the country.
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1.2 The Puzzle & Its Importance
How can a party subject itself to free and fair elections, but never lose those elections? Alternatively, how does an opposition party overcome the challenges posed by the obstacles present in such an environment? How might a competitive multiparty system emerge from one dominated by one party?
Some democratic states have dominant party systems in which, despite regular fair elections, no legal restrictions on parties or political expression, and respect for human rights, one party continually wins office. Ongoing one-party dominance is more likely if there is stability in the electorate and in the institutions that mediate the electorate‟s demands, than if there is not. However, Greene (2007: 17-27) makes a strong argument that many theories of party system equilibrium and change either cannot account for the equilibrium of a dominant party system or they cannot explain a change away from it.
For example, some theories of electoral stability and change point to parties emerging to represent different social groups (Lipset and Rokkan 1967). Such cleavage theories, however, struggle to explain dominant party systems existing in countries with highly diverse populations in which no one demographic group constitutes a majority.
Similarly, sociological theories of party system change, which argue that a party system shifts as the electorate‟s demographic groups change in size and importance, cannot satisfactorily explain the end of dominance. Dominant parties are adept at adjusting to new issues and incorporating new demands. They successfully co-opt many groups
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rising out of changing demographics. Cleavage theories also struggle to explain party system change in the absence of demographic change.
Many dominant parties enjoy ongoing support from their electorates because they are given credit for leading democratization or liberation movements. If so, dominance should last until the electorate experiences a generational change, when a new cohort of voters does not remember the liberation struggle nor cares about it in the same way.
However, these arguments cannot explain the timing of the end of dominance, because they cannot tell us which generation will defect from the dominant party coalition. They do not tell us if a dominant party will maintain its power for one generation or three or for even longer.
Similarly, institutional theories struggle to explain party system change without changes to, for example, electoral laws or entry barriers (Duverger 1954; Cox 1997). As will be discussed below, dominant parties usually change institutional rules for their own benefit. Baring miscalculation on their part (not unheard of, but rare), institutional changes made by a dominant party should strengthen its position, not lead to opposition party competitiveness.
Meanwhile, rational choice models suggest that opposition parties should never form, or at least should never gain ground as the incentives for political activists favor joining and supporting the ruling party. Briefly, most activists will overcome their ideological disagreements with a centrist dominant party in order to gain access to the halls of power and policy-making. The only activists who remain outside the ruling coalition would be those at the ideological extremes, not the best position from which to
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build an opposition party drawing enough support to challenge a dominant party. In sum, various schools of thought on party system change cannot explain most cases of dominant party system change.
In contrast, the specialized literature specifically on dominant party systems does have explanations for the emergence of competitive systems after an era of dominance.
However, it is divided about the key factors. Scholars focus either on elite leadership splits within the dominant party at the national level or on processes of opposition party- building at the grassroots. Many of these arguments are based on case-specific studies.
The puzzle remains of under what circumstances each factor becomes more important than the other. The research presented here seeks to resolve this issue, so that we have a fuller and more generalizable understanding of how dominant party systems evolve.
Much of the literature considers democratic dominance evolving into competitive party systems separately from democratic dominance evolving into authoritarian regimes, effectively selecting cases on the dependent variable of regime type. My study considers cases of both kinds.
I use the extant literature on a variety of cases, then turn to an in depth case study of South Africa. South African politics is itself a puzzle in its own right. In many ways the overwhelming success of the ANC is surprising. In the early 1990s, South African negotiators agreed to electoral rules (proportional representation with no minimum thresholds) designed to ensure that the great diversity of the country would have a good chance of gaining representation in the national legislature. The expectation was that the electorate would fragment along many ethnolinguistic lines, rather than follow the
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racialized pattern of voting that emerged producing majorities. The particular electoral designs used in South Africa (e.g., proportional representation) are recognized to increase the number of parties winning seats in the legislature (Lijphart 1999) and to reduce the likelihood of disproportionately privileging governing parties (see Cox 1997: 249-250;
Taagepera and Shugart 1989). When South Africans chose their electoral institutions, constitutional design experts warned of extreme fragmentation and political instability.
Instead, since the first democratic elections in 1994, a dominant party system has emerged. It is true that a degree of fragmentation exists; in 1999, 2004, and 2009, 12 or
13 parties earned at least one seat in the National Assembly. Nevertheless, the ANC has won more than 60 percent of votes and legislative seats in each of the four democratic elections through the maintenance of a coalition of economic and ideological interests that seems, on the face of it, unwieldy and illogical. The ANC defies many theories of party behavior. It pursues more than a minimum winning coalition, combining communists with business interests, and used floor-crossing procedures to absorb a wide range of competitors including leaders of the New National Party, the successor party to the apartheid-era government. Examining this puzzle – of how a dominant party maintains its power despite not conforming to the expectations created by previous theoretical work – should refine those theories.
Further, how the South African regime itself evolves matters. On a continent where presidents and their parties have often manipulated state institutions to their own purposes, to the severe detriment of democracy and the populations involved, the choices and behavior of a regional heavyweight carry importance. If South African democracy
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were to degrade into a more authoritarian regime, its example could damage democratization efforts in the entire region. If, on the other hand, South Africa maintains democracy – either while party dominance continues or while the party system transforms into a competitive one – then it provides an important example of a successfully pluralistic regime on a continent where such systems are very few.
1.3 Dominant Party Democracies Defined
Duverger was perhaps the first to describe the phenomenon, defining a dominant party as one whose “influence” is superior to all others for a generation or more (1954:
308-9). Sartori extended the idea, drawing a distinction between hegemonic parties and predominant parties. A hegemonic party allows other parties to exist but does not allow competition on an even playing field; an alteration in power “cannot occur, since the possibility of a rotation in power is not even envisaged” nor allowed (1976/2005: 205).
Conversely, a predominant party is one that wins the majority of the electorate‟s support fairly, repeatedly, and continually (173). Pempel (1990: 3-4) identified four dimensions on which a party can be dominant: in number of legislative seats and offices held, in bargaining position with other parties, in a “substantial amount of time,” and in government policies and projects. The important factor is not the number of parties – parties other than the predominant one are legal – but rather the distribution of power among parties.
Perhaps the watershed work on democratic dominant party systems was the volume edited by Pempel (1990). This valiant effort to gain some systematic
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understanding of these systems struggled to reach generalizable conclusions but did point out some apparent patterns. As noted, many dominant parties are the successor organizations of their respective countries‟ democratization or independence movements.
As such, they are often at least rhetorically committed to democracy. Their support frequently stems from the ongoing credit the population awards them for their role in democratization. Pempel and his coauthors also noted that the electoral systems in countries that develop dominant parties often function in ways that benefit the largest party while creating hurdles to opposition unity (336). Through these methods, dominant parties shape their polities further in their favor.
Dominant party democracies are rare, but have and do occur in a diverse set of world regions. Examples of democratic dominant party systems include postwar Japan,
Botswana, Sweden between 1932 and 1976, West Germany until 1966, Israel until 1977,
India before 1977 or 1991 (depending on one‟s interpretation of events), post-1987
Taiwan, post-1994 South Africa, much of the Caribbean, and possibly Namibia and some other African states. Most scholars of these systems argue that the postwar Italian
Christian Democrats constituted a dominant party when, while not winning outright parliamentary majorities, they consistently led parliamentary coalitions and controlled the distribution of patronage for nearly four decades.
The definition of democratic dominance used here includes all of the above cases.
The regimes at a minimum must meet electoral definitions of democracy. Dominance is defined as the party repeatedly and continuously winning enough offices that it controls the majority of government power. I do not assign a minimum percentage of legislative
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seats (as this would rule out the Italian case) nor do I require a minimum number of years in power or elections the party must win continuously (as this would allow us to recognize a dominant party only after a few decades of rule, rather than studying it in its earlier stages). One strong indication of dominance is that there are clear signs that the ruling party, the opposition parties, and the electorate expect the ruling party to continue in office for the medium turn. When even opposition parties admit they will not win national power any time in the foreseeable future, dominance exists.
Work on other kinds of regimes also informs this study. Perhaps most notably, scholars of competitive authoritarian regimes ask similar questions about why and how hegemonic parties evolve, such as why they organize elections for some offices, grant citizens more rights, and sometimes even lose elections of which they (supposedly) control the outcomes (see, for example, Schedler 2006, Brownlee 2007, and Greene
2007). Where the appearance of democracy, in the form of manipulated but multiparty elections, serves the regime‟s interests by providing legitimacy at home and abroad, the ruling party and opposition parties face many of the same opportunities and constraints as they do in dominant party systems. Indeed, the similarities between the literature on
“electoral behavior in authoritarian regimes” and in democracies are “striking” (Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009: 414).
Political strategies in both dominant and hegemonic party systems are often driven by efforts to gain the support of important political forces, especially different factions of elites. In both systems, the ruling party must maintain its coalition, preventing defections by providing incentives for continued support. Opposition is frequently co-
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opted into the ruling party formally or into cooperating with it. In both dominant and hegemonic party systems, the alternative to cooperation is often marginalization and even irrelevance. The calculations about how best to ensure the cooperation and support of a diverse group of elites, or alternatively how best to survive and push back against marginalization, are therefore similar in both democratic and competitive authoritarian regimes.
Studies of the Mexican party system‟s evolution from a hegemonic regime to a competitive democracy are especially informative. They show how opposition parties might overcome the even larger barriers than those faced by opposition parties in competitive systems. Mexico‟s history also shows the difficulties ruling parties face in maintaining broad coalitions and in managing institutions and policies meant to maximize their own payoffs. Hegemonic parties that lose power in an election and accept the result fail in similar ways as a dominant party that fails to maintain its position and faces the advent of a democratic competitive system.
1.4 Dangers of Dominance
Dominant party systems‟ lack of turnover in office is problematic for much of democratic theory. Advocates for democracy often assume competitiveness in the electoral arena, with opposition parties posing real challenges to the ruling party.
Schmitter and Karl (1991) write that “democracy is a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens” (76). Such accountability is accomplished through elections. Voters hold those in office responsible
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for their decisions and policies, “retaining in office those incumbents who perform well and ousting from office those who do not” (Manin, Przeworski, and Stokes 1999: 10).
For Schumpeter (1942), democracy rests on a competitive struggle for votes. Incumbents do not necessarily need to actually lose in order for democratic accountability to exist; the credible threat of losing office will suffice. Similarly, Scheiner (2006) writes, “[T]he presence of a viable opposition and party competition provides the ultimate check against unrestrained power. As long as a party fears loss of office, it will be much less likely to act arbitrarily” (7-8). In dominant party systems, however, the ruling party does not fear electoral defeat in the same way it would if the system were competitive. It, opposition parties, and the electorate expect its tenure to continue and behave accordingly.
If democratic accountability is to occur through elections, opposition parties and candidates must be viewed as viable alternatives to the ruling party. Voters must have a degree of confidence in those who would replace the incumbents. Opposition parties in dominant party systems have a more difficult time gaining this confidence than do parties in competitive systems; in dominant party systems, opposition parties are the devil the voters don‟t know, since they have no track record in office. Voters calculate that it is better to stay with the devil they do know.
Without turnover in which parties hold public office, and a subsequent lack of accountability stemming from controlling so many public offices, many dominant parties develop particular „pathologies‟ like an overreliance on patronage and clientelism. The long-term consequences of dominance include “the ability to reshape the entire political profile of the country” to the further benefit of the ruling party if it so chooses (Pempel
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1990: 336, see also 352). Dominant parties can create large public sectors against current economic advice, change institutions and rules in their favor, become stagnant or complacent in policy innovation, and otherwise adopt practices that can be seen as detrimental to the country.
The degree of competitiveness between incumbents and opposition should be a fundamental issue for advocates of democracy. Despite Schumpeter‟s (1942) argument, it may not be sufficient to establish formal competition through the holding of multiparty elections. As Pempel writes, a “democracy predicated on the ability to „throw the rascals out‟ is far less convincing when it exists only in the abstract than when it is backed up by periodic examples of rascals actually flying through the doors” (1990: 7). For democracy to function well, competition needs to be competitive between two or more parties (see
Trounstine 2006). If the good functioning of democracy is predicated on the idea of holding competitive electoral contests, then advocates of democracy must understand the dynamics that lead uncompetitive systems to competitiveness and, conversely, lead systems with competitions to stop those competitions.
1.5 Dominant Party Evolution: National and Subnational Arenas
Dominant parties worldwide have followed four paths. As outlined in Figure 1-1, these paths lead to three outcomes. First, a democratic dominant party system, once established, can be maintained for decades. Second, the ruling party can abandon democracy, choosing to ensure its power rather than risk being dislodged by the electoral process. The final outcome, the growth of a competitive party system, can be arrived at
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through two different paths. The growth of competitiveness has been attributed to the grassroots growth of opposition parties exploiting new political cleavages and, by others, to the disintegration of the dominant party‟s coalition through the defection of party elites.
Democratic Dominance Maintained
Democratic Dominance Single-Party Authoritarian Rule Established
Multi-party Competitive Democracy
Figure 1.1: Paths of Democratic Dominant Regimes Note that two paths lead to competitive democratic systems: the ruling party can split, or one or more oppositon parties can successfully challenge the dominant party.
The two factors that appear to determine these paths are, first, the dominant party leadership‟s attitude to interparty and intraparty opposition and, second, the opposition‟s viability as a credible alternative to those in power. I assume that a dominant party has two goals, apart from any programmatic policy initiatives. It (its leaders), like all parties and politicians, seeks to maintain and maximize its power; it wants to stay dominant.
Second, I assume – given the number of dominant parties that are the successor organizations to democratization movements – that these parties want to establish, maintain, and consolidate democracy.
The first path dominant parties can follow is to fail at the second goal, adopting authoritarian practices when they are unwilling to lose power or for ideological reasons.
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For example, several post-colonial African ruling parties saw themselves as the only source of national development and therefore the sole holders of legitimacy (Hyden
2006). Drawing upon studies of Kenya, Tanzania, and others, this path appears more likely if the ruling party‟s internal organizational culture is intolerant of debate and dissent. Without a broad coalition within the party given voice, nor a legitimate opposition, the party will fail to produce pluralistic representation.
There are two broad explanations for the end of party dominance through the growth of a competitive democratic system, that is, for the dominant party to achieve its goal of democracy but not its goal of maintaining dominance. First, literature on a diverse set of countries, such as Mexico and India, focuses on the idea that elite divisions within the dominant party lead to a split of the party, with the breakaway faction proving to be a viable opposition. Such splits could be due to irreconcilable ideological or personality divisions, or economic crises that make continued patronage spending difficult, thereby reducing the incentives for remaining in the dominant party‟s coalition.
Whatever the source of the divisions, intraparty debate and compromise break down and the faction(s) that feel silenced or ill-served leave to form a new party. Because these are political elites, they enjoy name recognition and can possibly use organization and networks developed within the party. Dominant party coalitions usually contain a diverse range of groups and interests, as in Kirchheimer‟s (1966) catchall parties. They need to be tolerant of internal debate to maintain such a coalition. Having clear and at least somewhat transparent methods of resolving disagreements appears to be advantageous in preventing elite-level splits.
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Second, other literature – on Mexico, India, and Japan – argues that opposition parties can build their organizations and support from the grassroots to eventually challenge the dominant party. I assume that opposition parties seek to hold office so that they can implement their policy preferences. These goals, in turn, usually mean they pursue the creation of a more competitive party system and therefore also support the good functioning of the democratic system.1 The key to achieving these goals is overcoming barriers to entry and building credibility with voters. Opposition parties are prevented from becoming viable choices through patronage spending by the ruling party, institutional barriers such as state funding for parties based on previous electoral returns, and simply never having the opportunity to create a governance record. If opposition groups present a viable alternative to the dominant party‟s rule, defections are more likely to occur and a competitive system emerges.
Readers will have already noted that the two sets of theories appear in the literature about the same countries. My theory attempts to resolve this problem by bringing together these disparate explanations. Party system evolution is not driven only by the dominant party‟s leadership‟s skill in maintaining its coalition. Nor is it simply that certain opposition parties overcome the obstacles to their growth and become viable challengers. The evolution of a dominant party system into a competitive party system requires both pieces. Dominant parties might survive difficulty such as an economic crisis or low approval ratings if no opposition party has emerged as a credible alternative
1 Some opposition parties may support democracy only in the short-term, that is, until they win. The Italian Communist Party, for example, stood for election during the period of DC dominance, but did not support the continuation of the democratic regime.
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for voters. Likewise, opposition parties will have difficulty gaining traction if the dominant party is generally viewed positively and maintains its coalition. The voters need a reason to defect from the party that has a proven, and at least somewhat positive, record in office. A dominant party achieves its two goals of dominance and democracy either when it maintains a broad intraparty coalition or when opposition is too weak to pose an electoral challenge, or both.
1.5.1 Subnational Politics
An important but underappreciated aspect of dominant party systems is subnational politics. Classifications of regimes and, less often, party systems ignore aspects of politics below the national level. While this is wholly appropriate in many circumstances, to describe a country as dominated by one political party may ignore variation that may be present at a subnational level. This variation can be used to understand causal processes within the regime and the party system (Trounstine 2009).
The existence of competitive subnational areas and, potentially, the growth of them allows us to observe how the dominant party reacts to losing power. We can ask the usual questions for determining if democracy exists: Does the dominant party accept the results of elections it loses? Does it manipulate election results to ensure it does not lose? Local events and political competitions therefore provide important measures of the democraticness of the regime.
Local politics is also important in understanding the evolution of party systems.
As outlined above, several scholars argue that opposition parties can build their
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organizations and support from the grass-roots to eventually successfully challenge the dominant party. In established democracies, slowly expanding at the local level by gaining elected offices can increase an opposition party‟s credibility as a viable alternative. Before a party shows how its candidates would govern, few voters will take the chance of handing it power (Willey 1998: 656). In dominant party systems, a few local wins grow into more local wins, and this success eventually “filters up” to other elected positions. Before demonstrating their governing abilities, however, opposition parties have little chance of winning national office.
Similarly, scholars who argue that factionalism within the dominant party can lead to a formal split of the party led by elites also sometimes identify subnational politics as an important factor. Regional divisions – on the basis of differing economic interests, ethnolinguistic differences, or the clientelistic networks of different party leaders – can become the bases for party factions and in turn the lines dividing factions.
A large electoral victory in a major city can elevate the party leaders from that city, while a major electoral loss in another can spell defeat within the party for those individuals responsible for the area. In this way local politics can impact which leaders rise to prominence within the party, and how strong they are when they arrive on the national scene.
Others claim that local politics do not matter in the evolution of a dominant party system. Brownlee (2007: 8) convincingly argues that authoritarian elections can serve either as “a safety valve for regulating societal discontent and confining the opposition” or as a “springboard” for opposition gain, depending on dynamics seen in earlier stages
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of managing elite conflict. In dominant party systems, then, it may be that local elections serve as a similar safety valve, channeling opposition resources away from national elections and serving to signal issues on which the ruling party is vulnerable, or subnational elections can serve as a springboard to greater national success. I will argue that under most conditions, the latter is more likely.
Local politics may be less important especially where the center controls much of government policy and finances. It is probably true that in an entirely centralized system local politics may not „filter up‟ to affect national politics. However, I will show that even in some relatively centralized countries, local issues and local contests have mattered. Indeed, several of the dominant party systems examined here experienced disputes over the degree of centralization as key episodes in the evolution of those systems.
Therefore, to understand the evolution of democratic dominant party systems nationally, we should look at how subnational politics evolve. The sources of subnational competitiveness will be identified, along with the strategies opposition parties implement to spread this competitiveness and those dominant parties deploy to stop it.
1.6 Methods and Data
To demonstrate my theory of dominant party system evolution, I first examine the extant academic literature to identify key factors and common patterns in the
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evolutionary paths of dominant party systems. As explained earlier, I draw upon the literature of both dominant party systems and hegemonic party regimes.
I then turn to the politics of South Africa to trace in detail how these factors develop and what patterns are emerging. This research design holds constant the broad historical legacies, institutional rules, and economic conditions in which parties and voters are making decisions. In addition to nationwide comparisons of different parties‟ strategies, I focus on the country‟s largest cities. Given the importance of intraparty factionalism to many scholars‟ work, large cities, rather than small towns, were selected to ensure a large cohort of elites in which different factions could be expected to exist.
Large cities are also important because they have a greater effect on national and other municipalities‟ politics, thereby showing us how local politics affect the development of the overall party system.
I selected the metros of Cape Town and Durban (eThekwini) based on Mill‟s
Method of Difference, wherein cases are selected because they have many similarities but yet have different outcomes (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994: 168). What few independent variables are different must be responsible for these different outcomes.
Cape Town and Durban have similar sizes and demographics. Further, they each have significant non-African populations that have traditionally played active roles in local politics and often form the swing vote within their respective electorates. Despite these similarities, the two cities‟ politics have evolved differently in the democratic era, providing variation in types and levels of success of opposition parties and over time. In
Cape Town, the ANC has lost control of the city government, creating a very visible
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opposition stronghold within the dominant party system. In Durban, a former opposition stronghold, the ANC has established its dominance. This variation is due to different
ANC and opposition party strategies. The resulting ANC intraparty power shifts among
Durban- and Cape Town-based factions became important factors in national politics as well.
The politics of these two cities is analyzed through the use of newspaper reports, archival sources, about three dozen elite interviews of city councilors, party officials, and activists conducted between September 2006 and August 2008, and secondary literature.
The bulk of the dissertation therefore focuses on elite behavior, as different parties interact with each other in different spheres of government. In the final empirical chapter, I turn to the question of how these interactions in the party system affect voter perceptions of democracy and the South African regime. For this analysis, I rely on survey data from the Comparative National Elections Project and Afrobarometer surveys to examine the public‟s support for and views of democracy, the regime, the government, and political parties. This final piece of analysis allows us to understand what effects the evolution of the party system(s) have on these key measures of the quality of democracy.
1.7 Plan of the Dissertation
This dissertation proceeds as follows. In Chapter 2, I review the extant literature on dominant party systems. I draw upon the history and analyses of countries as varied as Botswana, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Namibia, and Tanzania. This diverse set of cases – including dominant party systems that became single-party authoritarian
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regimes, dominant party systems that evolved into competitive party systems, and dominant party systems that continue long after their establishment, as well as competitive authoritarian regimes that maintain their rule and those that lost power – inform a theory of democratic dominant party system evolution that links elite behavior within the ruling party with the strategies of the opposition. This dual focus contributes to our understanding of these processes. It is the interaction of constraints and opportunities on each that determines how party systems evolve. The two key factors in this evolution are how and in what ways the dominant party maintains its coalition of interests and whether opposition parties are able to increase their viability as credible challengers. In this chapter I unpack what these two factors entail.
Chapter 3 continues building this theory by examining the role of local politics in the evolution of dominant party systems. Successful opposition growth in a system of national one-party dominance happens in stages. First, opposition parties can win subnational elections, usually drawing upon demographic differences across geographic space. Then, actual governing increases the credibility of opposition parties through making their policies and practices more concrete and known to voters. This growth can include additional local offices or aggregating to higher levels of government.
Opposition parties holding office and gaining visibility have more resources (financial and otherwise) to challenge ideas and policies that reduce their viability as credible alternatives. Meanwhile, the results of subnational elections can change the relative positions of factions within the dominant party. A geographically-based faction capturing an office can use its resourcs and reputation for success to gain within its party.
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Conversely, if a particular faction is blamed for losses, that can significantly change the fortunes of that faction on the national stage. Therefore, subnational politics can affect the overall party system development.
In Chapter 4, I turn to the South African case to show how the interactions of the dominant party and opposition parties at subnational levels can indicate how a dominant party system is evolving. I first show that varying levels of competitiveness do exist in
South Africa; the ANC is dominant in some localities and not in others, and these patterns have undergone some changes over time. These facts are one of the indicators that South Africa is indeed democratic; the ANC struggles to gain support in some politically important and visible places, and so suffers defeat – and accepts those defeats.
This chapter also presents some “stylized facts” about South African political parties, what ideologies and interests they represent, the electoral sources of their support, and the basic shape of the party systems at the local and provincial levels.
In Chapter 5, I turn from this nationwide overview to examine the democratic politics of two particular cities. The comparison of these two cases support my theory of party system evolution in a contemporary case of democratic dominance, showing how local politics reflect and impact national politics. In the first several years of democracy, the eastern port city of Durban and the surrounding province of KwaZulu-Natal were more competitive than most of the rest of South Africa. The ANC then extended its dominance to include it. This shift had more to do with opposition parties‟ miscalculations and decline than with any significant prowess on the part of the ANC; the opposition lost credibility as potential governors.
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Meanwhile, in Cape Town, opposition leaders cycled through several attempts at coordination. These attempts failed repeatedly until new elections in 2006. Then the opposition parties formed a governing coalition with what proved to be a durable set of agreements. This coordination was made possible by the largest opposition parties themselves becoming much less factionalized and coherent, making themselves more credible to voters. They also made themselves more credible to each other, as potential partners in government and in opposing the ANC, and learned that post-election governing coalitions could bring further success. Thus Chapter 5 shows how perceptions and judgments of political parties, especially opposition parties, matter in the evolution of dominant party systems. Successful opposition parties must find leverage to change perceptions (i.e., make themselves credible where before they were not), rather than just waiting for the dominant party to stumble.
Chapter 6 outlines the national effects of politics in the two cities. In both cases, what began as fairly localized dynamics had implications far beyond the municipal borders. The ANC in Durban adeptly turned its local success into a power base within the party. It then used this base to shift intraparty power towards its faction and elevate one of its own to the national Presidency. The intraparty factionalism produced an elite split from the ANC, constituting the most serious challenge to its continued dominance to date in the form of the new Congress of the People (COPE) party. It is no accident that
COPE‟s strongest support in the 2009 elections came from the Eastern Cape province, the traditional base of the ANC. The elite divisions within the ANC – while primarily about ideology, governing style, and personal ties – also coincided with a geographic split
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between those in and around Durban and those from party networks with their origins in the Eastern Cape. These areas contributed resources and party activists to the factional dispute.
In Cape Town, the story is also one of the nationally dominant party‟s internal dynamics interacting with opposition parties‟ strategies. Here, however, the results were quite different, beginning with opposition party choices. After the 2000 local elections, coalitions formed that succumbed to infighting and superior strategizing on the part of the
ANC. The ANC was able to wrest control of the city government from these coalitions.
Then in 2006, explicitly seeking to learn lessons from the 2000 experience, parties other than the ANC formed a post-election governing coalition led by the Democratic Alliance.
Governing the city provided a highly visible example of an alternative to ANC rule, and the coalition parties explicitly planned how they could extend their success to other parts of the province and country. They view their performance locally as a key step in doing so, and in April 2009 the DA succeeded in winning control of the Western Cape provincial government. They are pursuing a grassroots party-building strategy as that described in the academic literature.
Since dominant parties typically co-opt a wide range of ideological positions, I argue that opposition parties are likely to find traction only with strategies that capitalize on voters‟ doubts about the democratic credentials of the dominant party. Other issues can be co-opted into the dominant party‟s platform if voters seem likely to defect to opposition parties because of their policy platforms. Therefore, opposition parties divide the ruling coalition‟s voters only by creating a „regime cleavage‟ between those who
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support the status quo and those whose commitment to democracy is greater than their commitment to the dominant party. Other scholars, especially of Mexico (e.g., Magaloni
2006, Greene 2007), have identified use of this regime cleavage to be critical in the uniting of opposition in nondemocratic regimes. I argue that the issue can be used in dominant party democracies too. I demonstrate that it is precisely this strategy, arguing that the ANC is undemocratic and its leaders corrupt, that South African opposition parties have found useful in electoral campaigns.
In Chapter 7, I turn to the question of how voters fit into this theory. First, I explore what survey data can tell us about the electorate‟s perceptions of corruption and the quality of democracy. Then I turn to what these processes mean for future developments of the overall party system and for democracy. The effects of this rhetoric from opposition parties, whether successful or not in creating a competitive party system, are less clear. Opposition parties may warn of lurking dangers to democracy, but whether these dangers are to the regime itself or “merely” affect the quality of democracy should be examined. How do populations respond to evolving dominant party systems? If the party system remains stable, what are the long-term affects on the electorate?
To answer these questions, I use data from public opinion surveys that separate out different attitudes and behaviors regarding democracy, drawing upon clusters of attitudes identified by Gunther, Montero, and Torcal (2007) in surveys of voters in seven other new democracies. The maintenance of a dominant party system and the rhetoric of opposition parties may reduce the likelihood of consolidating democracy, as significant portions of the population may come to believe the regime is not democratic. If the
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dominant party continually blocks particular interests, those groups may abandon their support for democracy and support anti-system forces. Alternatively, voters may withdraw from politics as participation has little payoff, lowering the quality of democracy. However, the shortcomings of a dominant party system may merely lead voters to support an opposition party, as democratic theory would expect voter discontent to lead to changes in elected officials.
Dominant party system evolution therefore can be a double-edged sword.
Continued democratic dominance can create important political stability, or it may slide into more authoritarian practices. If the system evolves into a competitive democracy, most democratic theorists would see such changes as good for the quality of democracy.
However, the process of reaching competitiveness, through challenging the democratic credentials of the ruling party and the system, may be harmful and destabilizing.
The final chapter summarizes the argument, and indicates potential avenues for further reseach on both South Africa‟s political parties and dominant party systems more generally.
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Chapter 2: Dominant Party Evolution
2.1 Introduction
Dominant parties like the status quo. They like being in power, and they like that their power seems unusually secure and popular. Most also have some commitment to the democratic regime in which they operate, whether for its intrinsic value or because of the legitimacy they derive domestically and on the international stage for upholding democratic rules. Their preferences clearly lie in continuing both democracy and dominance. What are the keys to success for both of these goals? If forced to choose between democracy and continuing to rule, what drives different dominant parties to make different choices?
To answer these questions, in this and the following chapter I present my theory of democratic dominant party system evolution, drawing upon the extant literature of several cases. In the next chapter I show how subnational politics should be an explicit part of our understanding of these processes, although this aspect is not widely acknowledged. Here I begin with a discussion of the key factors in the evolution of dominant party systems and then turn to the four ways in which such systems can evolve.
2.2 The Evolution of Democratic One-Party Dominant Systems
Ruling parties of dominant party systems have two goals, to maintain their dominance and to maintain the democratic regime. They maintain both when they
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successfully manage their own coalitions, and when they prevent defections and mobilization that would make opposition viable. If circumstances make one or both of these conditions unsustainable, then the party system evolves away from its previous equilibrium of democratic dominance.
If and when this evolution occurs, a system can abandon democracy or become a competitive multi-party system (see Figure 2-1). In the former, dominant parties can abandon democracy, choosing to stay in power even if a challenger might enjoy more mass support. Such a shift might be to outright authoritarianism, ending all electoral competition and abandoning any adherence to the democratic constitution. More common in recent years is a shift to what has been called by various labels: hegemonic party rule, competitive authoritarianism, pseudodemocracy, and similar regime type labels all capture the idea that while events called elections take place, with multiple competitors appearing on the ballot, these votes are not free and fair. The outcome is manipulated before and, if necessary, while votes are cast, to ensure the ruling party‟s continued rule (Diamond 1999: 15-17; Levitsky and Way 2002; Schedler 2006). These regimes gain a measure of domestic or international legitimacy from organizing unfair elections and, further, opposition groups that participate in the elections in effect cooperate with the regime. Gaining such cooperation is a form of co-optation by the regime, thereby providing more security for itself (Gandhi and Przeworski 2007).
The second outcome for a system evolving away from democratic dominance is to become a competitive multiparty democracy. The extant literature shows two main paths to competitiveness. First, the ruling party could fracture into two or more parties,
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splitting its coalition. If none of the resulting parties gain an electoral majority, dominance ends. Alternatively, a dominant party could lose vote share to an emerging opposition party that overcomes the disadvantages opposition parties face in dominant party systems.
Democratic Dominance Maintained
Democratic Dominance Single-Party Authoritarian Rule Established
Multi-party Competitive Democracy
Figure 2.1: Four paths to Democratic Dominant Regimes Note that two paths lead to competitive democratic systems: the ruling party can split, or one or more oppositon parties can successfully challenge the dominant party.
Opposition parties usually share one goal with dominant parties, to maintain the democratic regime; occasionally an exception exists, such as the Italian Communist Party in the 1950s, which competed in elections on a platform of ending the democratic regime.
Opposition parties‟ other goal is at odds with the ruling party. All opposition parties work to end the dominant party system, seeking a more competitive electoral position.
Many opposition parties have sincere ideological and policy goals different from the dominant party, especially as over time dominant parties tend to co-opt more centrist activists and voters. Particular opposition leaders may also be motivated by personal ambitions to gain public office. Both of these latter interests – policies and power – could lead opposition leaders to cooperate with the dominant party or even to join it.
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Alternatively, the combination of all four goals – maintaining democracy, creating competitiveness, pursuing policies, and holding office – could lead opposition parties to pursue the end of dominance through the growth of their own electoral share.
The rest of the chapter will expand on these four paths: becoming authoritarian, becoming competitive through elite-level divisions, becoming competitive through grassroots opposition party growth, and maintaining democratic dominance. What circumstances precede each of these paths? Why does a democratic dominant party evolve the way it does?
2.3 Key Factors
Two factors – the dominant party leadership‟s attitude to interparty and intraparty opposition, and the opposition‟s viability as a credible alternative – predict the path a dominant party system takes. The right combination of these two factors will allow it to maintain its democratic dominance.
2.3.1 Dominant Party Attitudes to Pluralism and Opposition
Dominant parties often represent a wide range of the interests in a given society.
In part this is the natural outcome of these parties‟ origins. Dominant parties are often the successor parties of the democratization movements of their respective countries, whether democratization meant the advent of pluralistic electoral politics instead of authoritarian rule or the gaining of independence from outside colonial powers. These
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goals bring together diverse groups that may have little else in common, creating movements that are notably diverse and representative of their societies.
As a result of these origins, such movements begin their term in power from an advantageous position over other parties. They “make use of that legacy of national struggles as a powerful symbol as well as justification for their dominant status. Even in those countries where decolonization was relatively peaceful, such as Botswana, the ruling parties still profit from their role during the fight for independence” (Doorenspleet
2003: 181). Such parties were not necessarily the only movements for democratization in each of their countries, nor does every democratization movement turn itself into a dominant party. But most dominant parties were key players in democratic transitions.
The nature and original goals of dominant parties contributes to their tendency to be very diverse. They often build a broad multi-class and/or multi-ethnic consensus across much of the population, united in its demands for democratic self-rule (see
Zolberg 1966: 35). They often resemble what Kirchheimer called catchall parties.
Originally the catchall label referred to the European parties that expanded their electoral appeals to include not only working-class voters but also “voters in all those categories whose interests do not adamantly conflict” (Kirchheimer 1966: 186). More recently, the label is used to describe parties that did not begin as leftist mass parties, but also parties that “aggregate as wide a variety of social interests as possible” without an explicit ideology (Gunther and Diamond 2003: 186).
This centrist, inclusive position shares similarities with another party type, the congress party. Congress parties are coalitions of interests united behind the ideas of
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“national unity and integration rather than division.” The broadest congress parties often become dominant parties, such as the democratic Indian National Congress (Gunther and
Diamond 184-186). It called for the independence of a multiethnic, multicultural Indian state. That goal was realized partially in 1947 with the independence of Pakistan and an officially secular India that elected Congress to national power for decades. In Tanzania,
TANU lobbied for independence and apparently fairly won all but one seat in the 1960 election (Mihyo 2003: 67) by ignoring ethnic differences and concentrating on the unassailable goal of national development. In Japan, the LDP has acted pragmatically in co-opting issues and groups, becoming a „catch-almost-all‟ party of the center-right
(Muramatsu and Krauss 1990: 301-303 in Greene 281). De Gasperi, the Italian DC‟s founder, created a “political masterpiece consist[ing] in fusing the logic of the secular parliamentary party as an instrument of government with that of the religious mass party as an electoral machine” (Allum 1997: 28). By including such a broad range of interests and groups, dominant parties are able to maintain their large electoral majorities and to claim to represent „the nation.‟ They sometimes, as in India, portray themselves as “the party above politics” (Khator 1999: 341). Opposition parties then are portrayed as crass, opportunistic, self-serving, and even illegitimate.
The role played by many parties in independence also positioned them well to capture the support of much of the electorate. Zolberg (1966: 15-7) describes how in
West Africa, the movements that became the ruling parties after independence were often the first and in some cases, only, parties to act like mass parties and to extend their organizations outside the cities and their narrow bases of support. Other political parties
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began the competition at least symbolically disadvantaged and soon fell further behind in organizational skill and resources. A bandwagon effect then took hold, as those previously not mobilized to participate in politics “identified with the dominant party unless there was a strong reason – usually involving primary group ties – for not doing so” (21). These ruling parties were able to incorporate huge swaths of the public into their base.
Dominant parties therefore contain a wide coalition of interests and are able to win large electoral majorities. To succeed, their leadership is “concerned, first and foremost, with doing whatever is necessary to adapt the party to its environment”
(Weiner 1967: 14). But in doing so, they bring in many different interests, networks, groups, and areas. Such a diverse range of interests must be managed carefully, as it is possible for them to come into conflict with one another. Congress parties aim to be “as inclusive as possible,” but this “breadth renders [them] vulnerable to fracture” (Gunther and Diamond: 185). Pluralism and competing interests creates centrifugal forces on dominant parties.
However, there are also centripetal forces at work, as individuals and factions have strong interests to stay in a dominant party. Generally parties “provide collective security, a sense among power holders that their immediate and long-term interests are best served by remaining within the party organization” (Brownlee 2007: 39; see also
Aldrich 1995). In dominant party systems, these incentives are magnified in favor of one party. Ambitious activists will calculate it better to work with the ruling party than to challenge it. Instrumentalist theories emphasize party elites‟ desire to win elections.
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Elites usually gravitate to where they have the most chance of winning; in dominant party systems, that means the dominant party. Whether an activist has personal ambitions to advance in politics and government, or has sincere policy preferences she would like to see implemented, or some mixture of the two, neither goal can be achieved in a dominant party system from outside the dominant party (see Greene 2007: 121-131 for an extensive discussion of the extant literature and his additions to it). While this purely instrumentalist take is too simplistic compared to reality – as will be discussed below, some activists and candidates do join parties other than the dominant party – the incentives do disproportionately help the ruling party. It therefore gains a continually broadening base as more people join it in order to share in its power.
This expansion of the party‟s support, however, brings more interests into the party‟s umbrella. With each interest group comes another set of policy preferences and demands that the party organization must be equipped to manage. With each group comes more internal debate. As a result, Dahl (1966) writes, a “good deal of opposition operates as factions within the dominant party” (333) rather than as independent organizations (i.e., as other parties). It would be more accurate, however, to say that a good deal of opposition should operate as factions if democratic dominance is to continue. For India‟s remarkably diverse Congress Party, “the basic internal problem
[was] . . . not how to prevent [factional] conflicts but how to reconcile them or at least subdue them within the framework of the party organization” (Weiner 1967: 155). Those parties that tried to prevent factional conflicts either failed to maintain their dominant
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positions due to defections (e.g., India in the 1970s and 1990s) or abandoned democracy in their attempts to dictate resolutions (e.g., Kenya after independence).
Even though so many dominant parties were broad-based democratization movements, they have revealed different attitudes to debate and dissent between these many factions and to legitimate opposition outside of its structures. I will show below that this variation in part explains the differences in how the dominant party systems evolve.
2.3.2 Opposition’s Hurdles
The second factor predicting the evolutionary paths taken by dominant party systems is opposition viability. Some parties have advantages over other parties, and are perceived as more realistic choices by voters. Therefore, even if the ruling party struggles to maintain its coalition and its supporters, voters may not consider opposition parties to be viable alternatives to receive their support instead. For example, the
Japanese LDP faced abysmal public approval ratings and did not win an electoral majority in more than 40 years, and yet remained in office for over five decades with one
11-month interruption (Scheiner 2006: 1, 33). This paradox is widely attributed to shortcomings of the opposition.
Scholars have pointed to four groups of reasons for such a lack of viability at the ballot box, over and above the effects of „normal‟ incumbency advantages. First, dominant party systems give opposition parties few chances to prove themselves.
Especially when the dominance extends to provincial and local offices, opposition parties
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rarely have the opportunity to create a track record of governance. Voters have only campaign statements as evidence of the opposition‟s positions and reputations. Voters‟ perceptions of parties‟ competence, that is, “people‟s evaluation of the capacity of parties to bring about positive outcomes,” has been shown to influence electoral choices
(Bellucci 2006: 551). A party that has not held office has difficulty convincing voters of its capability to govern well (Willey 1998: 656). Especially if voters make their choices retrospectively, there is nothing on which an opposition party can base its appeal.
Therefore, one voted for the Indian Congress Party “because one knows how bad the
Congress is, but not how bad other parties are, so that it is safer to vote Congress” (Brass
1966: 244). Many voters would rather continue to support the ruling party than take a chance on an unknown, especially if choosing an opposition party may well be a “wasted vote” as the dominant party is likely to continue in office.
Second, patronage spending reinforces the challenges facing opposition parties trying to become credible alternatives. There is evidence that dominant parties are particularly likely to use clientelistic forms of organization and support. Shefter (1994) described how internally mobilized parties – parties created by elites already in power – are more likely to create clientelistic networks because they can direct the use of state resources towards their supporters. Externally mobilized parties – those not in power and without the same level of access to state resources – emphasize programmatic appeals instead to develop a mass organization. Basing a party‟s appeal on programmatic goals is more difficult because it requires consensus building among many different actors, working at a higher level of information and sophistication (Kitschelt 1995: 449-450).
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Programmatic appeals take more resources and are more work, so they are not often the first choice of parties. If parties have the resources to support clientelism, they find it easier to use them than to do the hard work of mass organization building. In a dominant party system, the dominant party is the internally mobilized party for a very long period of time, and every other party is struggling without the same resources.
With their continual access to state resources, dominant parties often rely on patronage and clientelism. In Italy by the 1950s, “clientelist factions controlled enormous numbers of positions, inside and outside the government” (Zuckerman 1979:
70; see also Leonardi and Wertman 1989: 223-244). Even in decline, a dominant party will continue to rely on these links. The DC, despite the need to provide its coalition partners with incentives to remain in the government and even with its power slipping in the 1980s, made sure that it retained control of “key ministries that wield influence or a lot of patronage” (Spotts and Wieser 1986: 16). Throughout its tenure as the dominant party, scholars agree that the DC consistently brought in additional constituencies through the use of patronage (see Zuckerman 1979; Tarrow 1990; Newell 2000; Greene
2007).
Similarly, scholars of India‟s period of dominance under the Congress Party have long noted how it “mobilized support through its ability to deliver state resources to its supporters and its general willingness to engage in patronage politics” (Chhibber 1999:
66). In Calcutta, for example, Congress built its organization and expanded its electoral position through patronage, directing government resources to those that supported it and denying “support of any kind” to those who challenged the party‟s leadership (Weiner
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1967: 370). Ideology and policy positions were assumed to matter less to voters than
“the personal services performed by the [municipal] councilor – that is, the administrative and executive performance of the councilor” (332). This meant that incumbents had the power and resources necessary to maintain their support. Once established, dominant parties are difficult to dislodge.
Likewise, “clientelism lies at the core of Japanese opposition failure” as the opposition parties could not overcome the LDP‟s organizational networks to gain voters
(Scheiner 2006: 64). Greene argues that the LDP did not even need to consistently take centrist positions because it could hold onto the center electorally through the use of pork and patronage. In this way the LDP could take positions on the right and maintain its hold on the center, remaining dominant and removing the possibility of challengers from the right (281-284).
The ruling party‟s control of the state puts opposition parties at another disadvantage in gaining electoral viability. Voters who might want to vote for an opposition party face a collective action problem. They fear, justified or not, that their ballot is not secret and so they as individuals will be identified as defectors from the ruling party. More commonly, blocs of voters face a similar dilemma. If an entire bloc
(usually defined geographically) defects from the dominant party but the dominant party remains in power, then that area might be punished with fewer public goods. Evidence of such beliefs is widespread, although evidence of such party practices is rarer as data is difficult to come by. One exception is the strong correlations between areas of Japan represented by LDP politicians and public spending on construction projects (Hori 1996
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and Okuda 2001 cited in Scheiner 72), although subsequent research found that spending is directed towards districts with close races, not just to districts with clear LDP majorities (Scheiner 109).
Hyden (2006) describes the problems facing opposition parties:
Having no party to back them financially, [African] opposition candidates are typically forced to rely on their own resources or whatever they can raise from friends and supporters. Their chance of competing with incumbents is not very good, because the latter can usually fall back upon support from government or other public sources. Being involved with individuals who control key resources remains the main purpose of political life. It is as much embraced by those in politics as by those who aspire to be part of it. Being part of the political opposition is a losing strategy. (114-5)
It makes sense, then, that opposition leaders are susceptible to co-optation by the dominant party. There are few incentives for them to struggle completely outside any power structure. If they are invited into the structure, they join it. Opposition leaders are frequently co-opted into the ruling party, with promises of positions or policies. New generations of politicians will join the dominant party “to further their own interests,” generally agreeing with the party‟s inclusive platform and bringing new activists and networks to the party (Weiner 1967: 298). This drains opposition parties of expertise, experience, and leadership, and further damages their credibility with voters. Kitschelt notes that “the difficulty of creating an effective opposition party in Japan that voters could look upon as a credible government alternative . . . gave the incumbent [party] a lease on life” (2007: 315). Even if the ruling party is disliked by the electorate, this pattern of weak opposition can keep it in power.
The third reason opposition finds itself without viability at the ballot box is that long periods out of power create several pathologies in opposition parties themselves.
Greene (2002, 2007) shows convincingly that opposition parties are increasingly
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marginalized over time in dominant party systems. Because the ruling party takes up so much space in the middle of the political spectrum, opposition parties must take positions far from the median voter to distinguish themselves from the ruling party. But of course taking more radical positions on the margin of opinion reduces their electoral share. The opposition parties become small niche parties that appeal only to narrow core constituencies.
Opposition party personnel contribute to the party‟s marginalization. An ambitious, smart activist in a dominant party system, seeking either career advancement or achievement of a fairly centrist programmatic goal, will work with the dominant party.
Only that party can offer a reasonable chance of success (Greene 2007). The incentives are clear: a 1967 survey in India showed that activists joined Congress in order to gain access to the state, its resources, and its powerful leaders (Chhibber 1999: 66-68). Other scholars have found similar patterns of opposition facing no access to power having a
“powerful incentive to unity” with the ruling party (see Carter 1962: 9 on several African cases).
The dominant party will seek out the ambitious, smart activists and co-opt them into the party; they get qualified, committed personnel and remove potential opposition.
Since many activists who resist such overtures will refuse the offers due to ideological principles, those who remain in opposition usually hold positions that do not appeal to the median voter. The dominant party captures a wide portion in the center of the political spectrum, with those on the edges remaining outside its coalition. After a long period of one-party dominance, many opposition parties gradually push themselves to the more
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radical edges of the political spectrum. They have predictable difficulty appealing to a large number of voters (Greene 2007).
Therefore, opposition parties, over time, “have attracted only a narrow slice of the electorate” and are “unable to defeat the incumbent individually.” But further, they will not coordinate with one another either: they each fill a small ideological niche that is incompatible with the others (Greene 2007: 260). Small parties with marginal positions face more difficulties coordinating amongst themselves, because they are not likely to share many policy positions. So not only is opposition highly fragmented, it is fragmented in ways that prevent coalition-building.
Examples of such niche parties in fragmented-yet-dominant party systems are numerous. In India, many states have a two-party system, with Congress and another party competing against each other. The other party is often an ethnically- or caste-based party such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) that explicitly seeks the support of those voters not belonging to the three Hindu upper castes or the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
(DMK) in Tamil Nadu that represents ethnic Tamil interests (Brass 1989; Chandra 2000;
Chhibber 1999). During its period of dominance, Congress‟s parliamentary candidates often won their seats with well less than 50 percent of vote; the opposition parties failed to coordinate amongst themselves by fielding multiple candidates, thereby splitting the opposition vote (Kohli 1990: 8).
In Japan, opposition existed only on the left of the LDP, and then fragmented several times, creating six small leftist niche parties by one count (Krauss and Pierre
1990: 232). The Japanese Socialist Party, the Japanese Communist Party, and the
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fundamentalist Buddhist Komeito party attempted various alliances with each other in the
1970s, but none succeeded organizationally or electorally. Most failed because a faction in one party refused to cooperate with the other party on ideological grounds (Greene
2007: 278-281; see also Christensen 2000). Opposition parties‟ “coordination problem is one of the most significant challenges” to their growth and success (Gandhi and Lust-
Okar 2009: 412).
In Italy, the DC captured the vast majority of the political center. The socialist
PSI began joining the DC in coalitions in 1963 when it won 14 percent of the electorate, but never again won more than about 10 percent and succumbed to its own infighting and factionalism by the mid-1970s (Farneti 1985). The other centrists, the social democrats
(PSDI), the Liberals (PLI), and the Republicans (PRI), never gained more than ten percent of the vote between 1946 and 1975 (Sartori 1976/2005: 138). The DC routinely co-opted these three smaller centrist parties into governing coalitions (Tarrow 1990: 317).
While this occurred out of necessity for creating ruling majorities, it also succeeded in neutralizing potential critics of the dominant party as the smaller parties downplayed their programmatic differences with the DC in order to keep the pro-democracy coalition together (Newell 2000: 18). These parties also willingly joined the ruling party to avoid being starved of resources (Greene 2007: 286, 288). Meanwhile, the far-right Italian
Socialist Movement (MSI) remained a marginalized niche party making narrow appeals to those nostalgic for Mussolini, and so was an unlikely coalition partner for any of the other parties.
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Although not considered a potential coalition partner by any other Italian party, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) enjoyed the most success among the opposition parties to the DC. It consistently won about 25 percent of the electorate during the DC‟s period of dominance, making it “fantastically successful” compared to other opposition parties in dominant party systems. Scholars have proposed several explanations for this success, including the sincere ideological preferences of a large portion of the electorate, the PCI‟s record of resistance to fascism, and the financial backing of the USSR lessening the negative effects of restricted access to domestic resources. Nevertheless, the PCI
“remained fundamentally a programmatic party with niche-oriented appeals and could not expand beyond its natural support among leftists” (Greene 2007: 286-7). The DC, with its catchall positions and patronage resources, could bring in supporters relatively easily. The rest of the Italian parties of the postwar era were limited in their appeals and in their potential to grow.
The final reason opposition parties are at a disadvantage in gaining credibility is that dominant parties have the power to shape the institutions regulating parties and elections. Manipulation of electoral rules, funding regulations, and other barriers to entry are relatively common in many democracies. The difference in dominant party systems is that one party controls enough of government for so long that this manipulation is all one-sided to the specific benefit of the dominant party. Institutional change is not responsible for the growth of competitiveness but rather is manipulated by the dominant party to keep opposition parties weak.
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Institutional theories emphasize the role of electoral rules in party system formation and change. A ruling party can alter these macro-level rules to its benefit, given enough knowledge of the electorate‟s voting patterns. While electoral systems are generally stable and even unlikely to change (Lijphart 1994), a dominant party should be able to overcome the usual barriers to electoral system change because, for example, it may be able to meet requirements for a supermajority vote on such issues. However, such manipulation has occurred rarely, and usually only when a dominant party has already abandoned democracy (Sartori 1976: 246). If a party is already dominant, it has little incentive to change the rules except to end free competition.
So why change electoral rules? The theoretical literature on electoral authoritarianism sheds light on this question. In an authoritarian regime, the ruling party should do so only if it has something to gain, that is, we can reasonably expect the dictator to change the system only in ways intended to strengthen or shore up his power.
An election can manipulate intraparty factions or opposition forces into cooperating with the dominant faction within the ruling party, helping the dominant faction maintain its position. Elections can show the opposition that the ruling party is strong, thereby discouraging further challenges (Brownlee 2007; Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009). Where elections are a way to distribute patronage, they can do so “fairly” by demonstrating which elites are deserving in the eyes of voters (Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009: 405); manipulating the rules governing elections could reward and punish a different set of elites and voters. Some scholars of authoritarian elections argue that ruling parties introduce elections or make their elections freer only when they are weak. There is no
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reason to expose themselves to the challenge created by elections (even those that are not entirely free and fair) unless they need to shore up their support or create renewed legitimacy for the regime (Gandhi 2008). Changing electoral rules manipulates the political landscape; authoritarian elites do so to make gains against those who would challenge their power.
Democratic regimes also make changes to electoral rules when there is some pressure to do so because of perceived problems, or to increase the ruling party‟s share of government power.1 The incentives for democratic dominant party systems would logically include both patterns. The dominant ruling party seeks to stay in power, and so will manipulate rules when its continued dominance is in question. Simultaneously, its dominance may be the subject of criticism and public demands for change, especially if the existing electoral laws magnify its share of votes into a considerably larger share of seats. So a dominant party may change electoral rules to gain more legitimacy.
However, it bears repeating that such macro-level changes are relatively rare.
More commonly, dominant parties manipulate “microlevel,” less visible regulations. They can craft rules that disproportionately benefit themselves with regards to campaigns, fundraising, and media access (McElwain 2008). Those in power will do what they can to stay in power, as Barbara Geddes has noted: “Those who make institutional changes pursue their own individual interests above all else and their interests center on furthering their political careers” (1995: 241).
1 For example, France overhauled its electoral system, from the Fourth Republic to the Fifth Republic, because of extreme fragmentation and difficulty in forming coalitions. In the mid-1980s, the ruling Socialist Party thought it could benefit from adjusting the electoral rules, and so it did.
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These parties have proved quite adept at adapting to their particular circumstances. In Japan, opposition parties had less money than the LDP but had extraordinarily good grassroots organizations. So the LDP instituted some of the most restrictive laws regarding campaign activities among democracies (Hrebenar 2000 qtd in
Greene 283), thus neutralizing the opposition‟s advantage. Similarly, opposition in many
African countries has faced “a lack of patronage, lack of funds, lack of access to information and to mass media.” These problems contribute to “the unimpressiveness of many African opposition parties even when they are allowed to operate” (Austin 1976:
92). In Botswana, often lauded for the democratic example it provides to the rest of the continent, the opposition parties complain that they do not receive equal time or treatment from the media. The dominant party also faces accusations of gerrymandering legislative districts to minimize the effect of the opposition‟s strongholds (Molomo 2003: 300-1) and many believe it has disproportionate access to public and private funding
(Doorenspleet 2003: 182).
What Greene (2002: 759-760) calls “hyper incumbency advantages” – controlling state resources, clientelistic networks, better candidates, and the ability to manipulate rules to benefit themselves – make dominant parties difficult to dislodge from power.
Democratic dominance is maintained through the preservation of the ruling party‟s advantages and the opposition parties‟ disadvantages. While rare, I assume that when democratic dominance exists, it does so because the factors outlined above have combined to create a stable party system.
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The previous two sections have shown how different scholars assign the impetus for different evolutions to different players. For some, the dominant party‟s attitude to and treatment of opposition is the key factor. For others, opposition groups‟ skills and strategies for overcoming the challenges posed by a dominant party system are the most important. I seek a middle ground that recognizes that the fortunes of incumbents and of the opposition interact in the evolution of party systems. The following sections present my theory of what happens when these factors begin to shift, creating different evolutionary paths for party systems.
2.4 Paths away from Democratic Dominance
2.4.1 Path 1: Democratic Dominance to Authoritarian Hegemony
Sartori observed that there are no cases of a change “from a competitive to a non- competitive polity that has occurred without violating the constitutional order. . . Some of these transitions apparently do not violate the constitutional order in that the violation occurs after . . . a legal or quasi-legal ascent to power” (1976: 246). Those cases where a dominant party gains power through democratic means but maintains power through undemocratic methods are the ones of interest here. The shift from a dominant party system to an authoritarian single party system or „party-state‟ appears to have occurred most frequently in Africa, and thus it is the literature on the region that proves most instructive in understanding the causes of such a change. It is clear that a continually co- opted or oppressed opposition combined with an increasingly vulnerable ruling party
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organization led to the authoritarian path. A vulnerable ruling party is likely to seek more radical ways to maintain its position – including undemocratic means, if need be.
Much of the literature on Africa in the decades following independence highlights the evolving ideological positions of the ruling elites as a key causal factor. Zolberg
(1966) argues that unity became an ideological requirement. Opposition parties were seen as obstructionist, on the premise that “in the absence of [class or religious] cleavages, . . . political competitiveness was based merely on „opportunism,‟ i.e., on individuals who wanted political office” (53). This motivation was not seen as morally sufficient to block vital – indeed, unarguable – projects such as nation-building and development. In Tanzania, Nyerere maintained that “developing countries cannot afford party politics” as decisions about the distribution of state funds needed to be made without reference to political considerations and instead on the basis of some sort of rational decision-making (Beinen 1970: 78). At a 1959 conference many of the Africans present argued that “democracy does exist inside the dominant party, but . . . the existence of an opposition party can jeopardize it because of fears that open discussion would provide ammunition for the enemy” (49). Therefore, opposition outside the ruling party could not be legitimate, but internal party democracy and debate were also suspect.
In the two goals of maintaining democracy and maintaining dominance, these rulers came to strongly value the latter over the former. When faced with a choice between the two, the answer was obvious to them.
This perceived illegitimacy of opposition parties did not necessarily make ruling parties purely antagonistic to those who opposed them. Several adopted what Coleman
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and Rosberg (1966) describe as a “pragmatic-pluralistic” attitude that created a “climate of „tolerated but controlled pluralism‟” (5-6). While they objected to interparty debate, going so far as to outlaw it in some cases, they were not opposed to incorporating a broad range of people into the ruling party.2 Carter (1962) noted, “Dominant African parties have demonstrated a remarkable capacity for absorption of former rivals or antagonistic groups and a quite surprising willingness to elevate their leaders thereafter to important government posts” (9). This was particularly true of the leaders of smaller ethnic groups, who could be brought into the party or government. This was often manipulative co- optation, buying off opposition in order to silence it. Those who did not cooperate when offered a carrot were then detained or otherwise removed from politics (Hyden 2006: 30).
In Kenya “the strategy fluctuated between outlawing, and attempting to absorb, the opposition” (Pinkney 1997: 88). In Tanzania, the ideology of national unity prompted the ruling party to sincerely seek the unity of all their country‟s leaders. Nyerere‟s nation-building project required the cooperation of all of society (Hyden 2006: 31-2).
Hegemony was achieved “by means of widely divergent paths: On one track, ruling parties accommodated otherwise disparate elite factions; on the other, leaders deactivated parties to neutralize dissenters and tighten their hold on power” (Brownlee 2007: 82).
Such events are not necessarily a thing of the past. One possible contemporary case of a dominant party system moving towards an electoral authoritarian system is
Namibia. That is, it is clearly a dominant party system, and some observers argue that it is no longer democratic. The evidence for this position includes the fact that Nujoma had
2 Coleman and Rosberg also identify a “revolutionary-centralizing” attitude, in which the regime was not tolerant of dissent of any sort.
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the constitution changed in 1998 to allow him a third term as president. The ruling party,
SWAPO, does not view any opposition party as legitimate. Its attitude appears to be
“simply that any information on any other party than itself is considered an undue interference in state affairs” (Melber 2007: 69). This attitude seems to spring from the same motivations it did in the earlier regimes, as “the adoption of non-democratic measures is often justified against the backdrop of achieving „national‟ objectives through a democratic mandate” (Salih 2000: 24 qtd in Melber 2007: 71-2).
Debate and dissent continued to exist within the 1960s African ruling parties, at least for a time. For example, even though the Kenyan government shut down opposition parties, the ruling KANU continued to allow internal debate until the nationalist coalition disintegrated and Moi curtailed challenges to his power in the early 1980s (Widner 1992:
22). However, co-optation of multiple groups and leaders into the ruling party increased intraparty factionalism. Groups began fighting for power and patronage (Zolberg 1966:
92) and co-opted groups were brought in by one side or another with the sole purpose of changing the balance in intraparty factional fights (Widner 1992: 200-201). Efforts to actively decrease the power of external opposition increased the dominant party‟s vulnerability to internal weaknesses.
The widening ruling party coalition made the degree to which the ruling party held debates and the methods by which it made decisions vital. Scholars of many countries with hegemonic ruling parties point to the lack of institutional incentives for bargaining among elites as key to understanding how the party operates (Widner 1992;
Brownlee 2007: 35-37). Widner (23-29) argues that Kenya‟s lack of institutions
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designed to make elites bargain across coinciding societal cleavages easily caused elites to become exclusionary in their behavior. Without legal opposition parties, alternative policies and views must be advocated by internal party factions. But these internal factions have little incentive to do so when they are battling intraparty opponents, because they do not want to be shut out of the spoils of rule. The dominant faction is therefore able to reduce the space for opposition, by curtailing rival intraparty factions.
Single-party systems are more likely when there are few independent sources of organization or financial support outside of the ruling party. Countries where levels of development and the structure of the economy create financial bases not reliant on the dominant faction are more likely to avoid the fate of Kenyan or Tanzanian opposition groups that were forced to disband or simply petered out (Widner 1992: 29, 198).
Resource scarcity and poor organization structures can prevent independent opposition.
Conversely, opposition can act as opposition when it is viable as an independent entity, even if it is formally inside the ruling party. For example, the factions in the
Italian Christian Democratic Party had their own resources and organizations, and so were able to compete against each other (Morlino 1995). Similarly, in India the Congress
Party‟s factions frequently acquired support from a particular faction in a rural village.
Village factions sought links to the party in order to gain access to government resources.
Congress intraparty factions welcomed the organizational advantages of such arrangements. In this way Congress was able to maintain its diverse electoral coalition in aggregate by having a diverse set of factions and leaders with their own bases of support
(Weiner 1967: 153-159).
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The ruling parties of Africa that became single-party authoritarian regimes shared several characteristics unlike those of the DC or Congress. Rather than having intricate but institutionalized ways of managing their diverse coalitions, they were vulnerable because of weak organizations, unmanaged factionalism, and a lack of a mass base
(Coleman and Rosberg 1966: 673). This was true at least in part in Tanzania (Beinen
1970: 80-89), Kenya (Beinen 1974: 81-2; Widner 1992: 39, 40), and Ghana (Pinkney
1997: 88). The party organizations in question either failed to exist consistently outside of urban areas, or did not have clear and consistent methods for resolving intraparty disputes. The idea of competing factions with independent support bases was viewed as threatening by the top leadership, rather than a method of maintaining support for the ruling party in the context of a pluralistic society.
In Kenya, KANU changed from organized interests to “multiple, ad hoc factional groupings” that were much more easily manipulated and co-opted by the president
(Widner 1992: 33). Lines between state and party became blurred, as the party used state employees for political purposes and party personnel for development projects (7). With limited resources available in their underdeveloped economies, parties became the only dispensers of patronage. Rather than serving one classic purpose of a political party, to organize and transmit the public‟s demands to leaders, these parties only served to transmit leaders‟ views to the public (see Widner 1992: 5-8 for a review of the literature on these African party-states).
With such organizational weaknesses, these dominant parties became oddly vulnerable. Without open debate in Kenya, state surveillance became one of the few
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ways leaders could monitor their supporters and opponents alike. Without free participation through local party branches because those branches were underdeveloped, leaders had to rely on the state to perform mobilization functions. Without clear rules to resolve factional disputes within the party, intrigue and suspicion took over politics.
Without independent resources and organizational strength, opposition was drawn into this system. In short, efforts to regain strength drew the ruling party into more authoritarian measures. Intraparty pluralism was subsumed to the leadership‟s control.
Dominant parties follow a path to authoritarian rule when the vast majority of opposition groups are not only not viable, but co-opted into the ruling party‟s structures.
Further, the ruling party overcompensates for its own organizational weaknesses by using the state‟s resources undemocratically. This blurring of party and state, and governors and opposition, descends into single-party rule.
2.4.2 Path 2: Democratic Competitiveness from the Dominant Party Splitting
There are two explanations for the end of party dominance and the evolution of a competitive and democratic party system. In this section, I describe the events that have led some scholars to emphasize splits of the dominant party as the key event in the growth of a competitive party system.
First, this pattern makes a great deal of intuitive sense. Part of the genius of dominant parties is that they maintain large and diverse coalitions, often serving a valuable nation-uniting function. Such intraparty pluralism can provide healthy competition; in Italy six “fractions” of the Christian Democrats (DC) developed complete
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with their own media outlets and fought each other much as independent parties would
(Morlino 1995: 339). Zuckerman (1979) noted that all roads to power in Italy went through one DC faction or another, which would cooperate at election time because their own survival was dependent on the survival of the party as a whole (106, 173). This allowed the DC to serve a uniting function in a highly fractionalized and potentially unstable polity.
But as the discussion of the authoritarian path highlighted, diverse coalitions are not easy to manage. Broad coalitions are vulnerable to internal disputes. They frequently include groups that disagree on some fundamental grounds. Often economic downturns lead to their demise. It is easier to paper over different ideological positions in good times, but when bad economic times come, those from the left and from the right may find it much more difficult to compromise. For example, in 1963, the Italian DC brought the Socialists (PSI) into its ruling coalition for the first time. Doing so had several effects that produced a weak government riddled by deepening factional tensions. Most basically, the addition of such a large coalition partner added a large number of new interests and new patronage demands; accomplishing government business became more difficult and slower (Tarrow 1990: 325-6). The coalition also exacerbated left-right divisions within the DC, as those on the right were skeptical of the new center-left coalition (Zuckerman 1979: 75). The Italian political scene became “increasingly paralyzed by competing demands and skyrocketing costs” (Tarrow 1990: 327-8).
The PRI in Mexico also struggled to maintain its coalition. Elite-led splits produced “sharp electoral losses” in 1940, 1946, and 1988 (Magaloni 2006: 84). Perhaps
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the most significant challenge to the PRI in its hegemonic era was the National
Democratic Front‟s showing in the 1988 presidential election, in which it won nearly 30 percent of the vote. A key factor in this anti-PRI vote was the decade‟s economic crisis.
Left-leaning PRI elites grew dissatisfied with the neoliberal policies of the de la Madrid government and with their own exclusion from policy decisions. After these elites‟ attempts to gain internal reforms were unceremoniously dismissed by de la Madrid,
Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas formed a coalition with several existing parties of the left and its subsequent electoral success “horrified” the PRI leadership (Bruhn 1997: 82-106;
Magaloni 2006: 239). Dissent was not given the opportunity to be voiced within the PRI, leading to these elites exiting the party and creating a serious electoral challenger to it.
Interestingly, the opposition‟s resource independence and the independence of the state from the ruling party are key factors in hegemonic regimes transitioning to democratic systems, just as the opposition‟s lack of these factors were keys to understanding how democratic systems became authoritarian. For example, Magaloni
(2006: 227, 252-256) argues that Mexican parties had changed significantly between
1988, when the regime engaged in electoral fraud rather than respecting the true outcome, and 2000, when the regime respected the presidential election results, losing to the PAN.
When the cardenistas posed their serious challenge in 1988, the PRI hung onto power by hiding the true results and buying off the other opposition party, the PAN, with legislative seats and a role in policy formation. The PAN used that position to force electoral reforms that created a truly independent election commission, so that by the 2000 election opposition parties and voters had a much clearer picture of what the election results
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actually were. Opposition parties also had public funding that gave them much greater access to the media. The PRI had to become clearly and unambiguously authoritarian, losing significant legitimacy it was not willing to sacrifice, or it had to accept that it lost the election.
A dominant party is vulnerable to elite splits in other ways. Where clientelism is a key part of a dominant party‟s strategy, an economic downturn can be fatal to the ruling party‟s position. If its support is based on clientelist payments, then having fewer resources available to make those payments can shift the incentives for voters and supporters (Zuckerman 1979: 170, 171). If the coalition is held together through various clientelistic networks, then resource scarcity will make that support base less loyal. In
India, Congress‟s catchall nature brought in numerous and diverse groups. When the party‟s organizational control began to break down at the same time that increasingly difficult economic conditions made it difficult to meet the groups competing demands, groups began to defect (Chhibber 1999: 84-5). The result was a succession of party splits between 1967 and 1971 (90).
Note that the literature is divided on the causes of Congress‟s decline. Some believe it was a consequence of new cleavage groups mobilizing for the first time (e.g.,
Brass 1990 argues a key was the advent of political involvement by the backward castes).
Others emphasize defections from Congress, especially among state-level elites who took their personal patronage networks with them (Chhibber 1999). While Indian political activists had needed to work with Congress to gain access to power or instead enter “the political wilderness,” the increasingly accelerating pace of defections meant this was no
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longer true (Kochanek 1968: 427). Defections begat more defections, and opposition coalitions successfully unseated Congress in several states (410).
Dominant party splits have also been driven by personality clashes among the party‟s elite, along with ill-managed leadership selection processes. Mexico‟s leftist opposition coalition certainly gained after the PRI chose Salinas as its presidential candidate in 1988, as many thought him “the worse possible candidate” (Bruhn 1997:
107) and the Democratic Current (CD) leaders defected from the PRI. The CD joined with several leftist parties that were already gaining in Mexico‟s worsening economic conditions, and officially won 38.1 percent in an election widely acknowledged to be fraudulent (Greene 2007: 93). If the PRI had managed its leadership selection process more effectively, perhaps by placing the CD‟s leader, Cardenas, in a prominent position other than the presidency, the CD elites may have stayed within the PRI and the electoral crisis would have been diverted. As scholars of many electoral authoritarian regimes highlight, elites continue to cooperate with such systems and their ruling parties when they believe loyalty will be rewarded in the long term. The leftists within the PRI no longer believed that in 1988.
Leadership succession debates have shifted power within other dominant parties.
In India, succession fights following the deaths of two prime ministers, Nehru in 1964 and Shastri in 1966, occurred just after a shift in internal party power from the center to state leaders. These state leaders chose prime ministers (Shastri and then Indira Gandhi) perceived to be weaker than themselves, intending to retain control of the party for themselves. The center lost control of the state-level party organizations. Without the
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center‟s authority to mediate, factionalism at the state level increased (Chhibber 1999:
82-86). Chhibber writes, “One could witness open dissidence, defiance, and electoral sabotage within the party in many states” (82).
After she won the 1971 election, Indira Gandhi sought to end this instability. She ended intraparty elections, deinstitutionalizing the method by which factions fought amongst themselves. This also inadvertently weakened Congress‟ organizational strength. Without intraparty elections, many representatives owed their positions to the
Prime Minister herself, rather than being accountable to a support base. The resulting excessive patronage and corruption became an issue uniting regional parties by the late
1970s (Frankel 1989: 507-8) and the strongest opposition issue in the watershed 1989 election (Kohli 1990: 10).
As Indira Gandhi shifted power from her party to herself, purportedly to “insure that opposition groups identified with „antinational‟ forces would not get out of control”
(Frankel 1987: 26), the lack of recognized and legitimate heterogeneity within Congress led to defections. As is generally true, a snowball effect occurred; “as the ruling party weakens, elites who formerly would have aligned with the ruling party choose instead to join the opposition, further weakening the ruling party and stimulating more defections”
(Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009: 411; see Langston 2006 for case studies). By 1989, factionalism, especially in response to Rajiv Gandhi‟s perceived weakness, and a lack of organizational resources for campaigning led to Congress maintaining only a plurality of parliamentary seats and losing power to India‟s first minority government (Kohli 1990: 1;
Frankel 1989). Therefore, if a dominant party system is evolving competitiveness by
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following the path of dominant party splits, we should see increasing defections to other political homes – rather than to, say, the business world – and increasingly fraught intraparty dealings over increasingly zero-sum debates.
One important caveat must be made about dominant party splits as a source of democratic competitiveness. It appears the breakaway factions rarely become the basis of the most successful opposition parties themselves. Instead, the pattern appears to be that these defections weaken the dominant party but rarely lead directly to its demise.
The defections reduce the electoral share of the dominant party, but it is usually another party that becomes large enough to end its dominance. So in India, even though it was numerous regional and even local parties that made the first significant dents in
Congress‟s dominance in 1967 (Kochanek 1968: 444; Chhibber 1999: 81), it was the BJP
– with some regionally-based coalition partners – that eventually unseated Congress from national power in the 1990s. In Mexico, PRI defectors formed the leftist Cárdenas coalition to win nearly 30 percent in the 1988 election, but it was the PAN that ended the
PRI‟s decades-long stranglehold on the President‟s office in 2000. It is to these successful competitors that I now turn.
2.4.3 Path 3: Democratic Competitiveness from Opposition Party Growth
The second explanation for the growth of a competitive party system focuses on an opposition party emerging as a viable alternative to the dominant party. Grassroots growth is difficult because of the incumbency advantages described earlier, but there are
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cases of opposition parties successfully growing and establishing themselves as the main challenger to dominant parties.
Remember that one of the obstacles opposition parties must overcome in dominant party systems is the idea that if one wants access to power and see one‟s favored policies implemented, one needs to work within the ruling party. There is simply little point in trying to work from outside the stable power structures. Therefore, the argument goes, once an opposition party is able to show it has some potential for further growth, defections from the dominant party will increase as activists believe they can have some success outside it. Similarly, voters will see a growing, office-holding party as more credible and will become more likely to choose it (Harmel and Robertson 1985:
505, 507; Willey 1998: 660; Meguid 2005: 353). A competitive system emerges as more politicians and voters are convinced of the viability of one or more opposition parties.
This emergence can appear quite sudden, as the process can be seen as a „tipping game,‟ where one particular defection might be “decisive in shifting perceptions” about the party system (van de Walle 2006: 86). This of course makes the end of dominance a surprise to many casual observers.
Even in a hegemonic regime, if an opposition party can maneuver to gain subnational footholds, this may give it a basis for further expansion. Mexico‟s 1988 election result stood in part because the PAN dropped its claims of fraud, in exchange for a policy-making role and two major electoral reforms. The president, Carlos Salinas, needed some non-PRI votes to pass his legislative agenda, specifically the liberalizing economic policies that were fundamental to the PAN platform. In a brilliant strategic
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move, the PAN exacted a cost for cooperating with the PRI on legislation the PAN supported anyway. This cost was the 1990 and 1993 electoral reforms that paved the way for a more democratic system (including the pivotal 1994 reforms, which had different causes) (Magaloni 2006: 90, 240-243). In the years after 1988, the PRI lost its first gubernatorial contests ever, to the PAN in Baja California, Guanajuato, and Chihuahua.
The PAN also more than doubled the number of municipalities it won control of (91-2).
By 2000, Vicente Fox became the first non-PRI president in seven decades.
If a party system is becoming competitive through grassroots opposition growth, we should see opposition parties gaining viability. The first step may necessarily be winning control of a large and important subnational office, as it facilitates improvement in an opposition party‟s credibility and resources. It also helps to have a flexible electoral base; rather than being viewed as the representative of a small ethnic group for example, growing parties often make appeals to the middle-class. The PAN, for example, had to shift from a “small, ideologically strong and closed, yet politically irrelevant” force to a
“more open and loosely defined, but electorally more effective and competitive party”
(Mizrahi 1996: 2, qtd in Shirk 1999: 50-1). However, the „tipping game‟ can make identifying the start of subnational growth problematic. I will return to this growth in the next chapter.
2.5 Scope
Under what circumstances does my theory of dominant party evolution apply?
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My theory does not apply only to regimes with particular electoral rules.
Democratic dominant party systems have existed, and evolved, under a wide variety of electoral systems. For example, India and Botswana use single-member plurality districts. South Africa operates under proportional representation with no minimum threshold. Japan has used two different systems, with the LDP maintaining its dominance under a single non-transferable vote (SNTV) in multi-member districts and then for 16 more years under a system of mixed-member districts instituted in 1993.
Given this variety, there does not seem to be particular patterns or relationships between electoral rules and dominant party evolution.
The choice between presidential or parliamentary systems may matter. Among my cases, the African regimes that abandoned democracy were all presidential systems, while the cases that became competitive democracies used parliamentary institutions. It is possible that presidential systems, placing more power with an individual, can circumvent democratic rules more easily. This pattern is complicated, however, by the case of Mexico with a presidential system, which evolved away from hegemonic rule and into a competitive democracy. So the choice might play a role, but it remains unclear.
To maintain democracy, an independent court system may be necessary. Without one with the authority and power to declare government actions unconstitutional, the government (i.e., the ruling party) can circumscribe the constitution much more easily.
So manipulating the system to slide it from democratic dominance into hegemonic authoritarianism requires the absence of a strong court system and rule of law.
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What much of the literature suggests is that dominant party systems are more likely to become democratically competitive where they operate in a federal or quasi- federal structure. Highly centralized systems allow the manipulation and prevention of opposition parties‟ viability, as in Japan, or outright co-optation or crushing of opposition. It is no accident that the African dominant parties that transformed their regimes into authoritarian single-party states made changing their constitutions a priority.
In Kenya at independence, the constitution gave powers to the regions, in a concession to the smaller ethnic groups represented in KADU. Within a year, KANU changed the constitution to make the country more centralized. KADU leaders had little choice but to join KANU if they wanted any measure of power, thereby allowing KANU to co-opt the strongest opposition they faced until the 1990s (Hyden 2006: 105-6). As Chhibber and
Kollman (2004) write, “. . . party systems – the number of parties and the link between local-level elections and national elections – respond to the degree of political and economic centralization in the country” (223). The more power is centralized, the more voters and activists will be convinced they must work with the ruling forces.
Where opposition parties can gain control of some offices with some degree of decentralized power, they can capitalize on those positions. As Willey (1998) writes, “It takes a lower level of resources to gain control of, or win seats in, subnational legislatures than it does to achieve entry into national legislatures” (660). This means opposition parties have a greater chance of overcoming their resource deficits in comparison to the dominant party in subnational elections. However, if opposition parties are to gain footholds, there must be elections for offices below the top leadership. The center cannot
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simply appoint all local government representatives. Those elected need some sort of autonomy in policy formation and policy implementation, especially in fiscal authority, or they will not be able to distinguish themselves as different from the ruling party.
The exact role of center-periphery relations on the growth of competitiveness is unclear. In democracies generally, “systems that are unitary and/or presidential, by having limited numbers of locations in government where policy can be influenced, also thereby diminish the chances of new parties gaining influence” (Willey 1998: 656). In dominant party systems specifically, different countries have different experiences. For example, India‟s move towards more power at the center in the 1970s led to state-level defections from the dominant party as state leaders chaffed against their loss of autonomy, and thus led subsequently to competitive party systems. Conversely,
Mexico‟s decentralization led to state-level opposition party footholds with some policy autonomy, and subsequently to a competitive party system.
Precisely how the degree of centralization affects the evolution of a dominant party system is outside the scope of this dissertation. What does seem clear is that some level of independence from the center is necessary for either path to competitiveness to occur. There needs to be a way for politicians to act independently from the ruling party‟s national leadership.
2.6 Bridging the Gap
What is left out of many of these arguments about opposition party growth is a key prior step. Why there are defectors looking for an alternative political home in the
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first place? What my work highlights is that both pieces must exist; there must be a credible opposition party to defect to, but there must be a subset of the dominant party wishing to defect from it.
For example, the BJP in India, and its precursor parties such as the Jana Sangh3, existed for decades before it won its 1991 plurality. While “the large coalition that the
Congress had built began to come apart during the mid-1960s due to the combination of a fiscal crisis caused by a series of bad harvests and a political crisis associated with succession struggles within the Congress,” the Jana Sangh could not capitalize on these divisions (Chhibber 1999: 169). Its economic platform was not that distinct from
Congress and Congress distributed state resources strategically to keep its coalition together. The resulting deficit spending was a major cause of economic problems two decades later when the middle classes did not have access to the state resources distributed to so many others. As in Mexico (Bruhn 1997: 7), the middle class was simply left out of Congress policies and patronage. When the BJP adopted a stance against the developmental state and this patronage spending, it was able to build a coalition between the middle class and its religious nationalist base (Chhibber 1999: 166-
170). A large cohort of politically disaffected citizens who choose not to participate, may be a common element in dominant party systems just before they become competitive, although this proposition remains untested across multiple countries.
My theory of dominant party system evolution underscores that the keys to a party successfully maintaining dominance are first to maintain a diverse coalition and,
3 The Jana Sangh itself began life in 1951 as a result of internal Congress Party disputes, led by defecting Congressmen unsatisfied with the party‟s secularist position (Chhibber 1999: 165).
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failing that, to keep opposition parties from gaining viability as credible alternatives.
Successful democratic dominant parties find long-term equilibriums (Greene 2007: 1) in which electoral competitions are manipulated within the boundaries set forth by democratic institutions. Unsuccessful parties fail to manipulate the competitions or fail to remain within the boundaries.
Put another way, opposition parties trying to gain competitiveness seek to become credible and, if possible, to win the support of parts of the ruling party‟s coalition or, more likely, to mobilize parts of the electorate that have grown disaffected with the status quo. As already suggested, one arena in which these goals are sought is the local level.
The next chapter explores how opposition parties have tried to do this and how dominant parties have responded. Bridging the gap between theories that ascribe the evolution of dominance to top-down, ruling party decisions and those that ascribe it to bottom-up, opposition party choices requires looking at how the two factors interact.
Where opposition parties do not have a large or consequential presence at the national level, opposition parties and the dominant party have real contests most directly at subnational levels. The next chapter continues the presentation of my theory of dominant party system evolution with an expanded discussion of such subnational interaction.
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Chapter 3: Opposition Credibility Gains from Subnational Competition
“All politics is local.” – US Speaker of the House (1977-1987) Tip O‟Neill
3.1 Introduction
The last chapter presented a theory of dominant party system evolution, arguing that both the ability of the ruling party to maintain its coalition and the ability of opposition parties to become viable alternatives determine whether democracy will be maintained or not, and whether the party system will become competitive or not. This chapter will show that both abilities can, and often do, begin in subnational political competitions.1
3.1.1 Subnational Party Systems
Dahl identifies several “sites” for “encounters between opposition and government,” one of which is elections for subnational offices (1966: 338). Gibson echoes this idea in his discussion of territorial politics in which “strategies of political control are … seldom limited to any single arena” (2008: 8). Instead, parties and politicians will seek power in many arenas. In what Gibson and Suarez-Cao (2008: 9) call „federalized party systems,‟ subnational party systems have “patterns of competition that are unique to them” and shaped by the particular subnational context. Populations
1 This formulation does assume that there are elections for provincial and local offices. As set out in Chapter 2, this theory would not apply in a fully centralized system in which local and even state officials are appointed by the center.
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and interest groups can vary significantly among different regions of a country, causing political parties to adapt to particular political environments in order to succeed.
Hence a dominant party may need to build its broad coalition by developing separate strategies and distinctly different bases in different places. Having secured the support of these areas, the party elites and national leadership then must find points of agreement among these bases to pull them into a coalition capable of providing national legislative and executive dominance. If the dominant party wishes to stay dominant, it must develop strategies that, first, maintain its competitiveness in many such subnational political arenas and, second, combine support in these arenas in such a way as to win nationally too.
Opposition parties may not appear nationally important, because of their size or the apparent limits of their appeal. But an opposition party may be important in a particular area. It and the dominant party may engage in strong competition in that area.
Changing the dominant party system on the national level requires opposition parties to become competitive in more subnational units or use their subnational power to influence the national party system. Much of this chapter and the South African case studies show how this can occur. For now, suffice to say that subnational party systems operate alongside a national party system geared to competition for national offices (Gibson and
Suarez-Cao 9-10). Any attempts to change the national party system must account for these differences and form strategies for connecting party coalitions across geographic lines.
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In short, “subnational party systems are not only shapers of power in local politics. They also affect key outcomes in national party politics” through their impact on resources, power bases, and institutional contexts (Gibson and Suarez-Cao 2008: 2).
Not recognizing this is to “mischaracterize the strategic context in which national politicians labor” (Snyder 2001: 100).
3.1.2 The Subnational Comparative Method
Classifications of regimes and, less often, party systems ignore aspects of politics below the national level (Gibson 2008). Rokkan (1970) warned against such “whole- nation bias,” or a miscoding of cases resulting from focusing only on national-level data.
Snyder (2001: 94-5) argues further that “disaggregating countries among territorial lines makes it possible to explore the dynamic linkages among the distinct regions and levels of a political system. Analyzing these linkages is an indispensable step for understanding and explaining fundamental processes of political and economic change.” Subnational variation can be used to understand the causal processes within both regimes and party systems (Trounstine 2009).
Despite these arguments, “theoretically informed, comparative analysis of regional elections and party competition has been conspicuous by its absence” (Hough and Jeffery 2003: 196). One exception are the scholars who study the political dynamics of subnational dominant or hegemonic party systems in nationally competitive democracies, beginning with V.O. Key‟s (1949) classic work on the American South and
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extending through current work on American city machines (e.g., Trounstine 2006) and
Argentinean states (e.g., Gibson and Suarez-Cao 2008) as just two examples.
This dissertation looks at the opposite dynamic, that is, how the existence of subnational competitiveness impacts nationally dominant party systems. This dissertation shows that examination of subnational politics shed light on dominant party systems in three ways. First, where opposition wins an election, we can observe the dominant party‟s reaction to losing and understand more about its commitment to democracy. Second, I argue that the advent and growth of subnational competitiveness can be the harbinger of increased competiveness nationally. Finally, I show that the dominant party‟s tasks of coalition building and management of factionalism are inextricably connected to subnational contexts and events.
Given the literature‟s basis in single-case research, often focused on a different question than dominant party system evolution, it is unclear if opposition must win particular local elections, win in particular places, win with the support of particular voters, or expand in particular patterns. What follows here is an outline of what the literature suggests may be the answers to these questions, in order to identify patterns for the subsequent study of South African party systems evolution.
3.2 Subnational Clues to the Abandonment of Democracy
The first evolutionary path of dominant party systems presented in the last chapter is a slide into authoritarian one-party rule. The subnational comparative method can assist in recognizing that a particular system is embarking on this path. The switch from
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a democratic regime to nondemocratic regime in these cases can be somewhat obscure; no coup, revolution, or assassination is necessary as the same people and parties remain in office. Instead, the rules and norms of governance change, sometimes quite gradually, to ensure those in power stay in power.
If the regime truly is democratic and the dominant party respects the role of opposition in a democratic system, then it will accept election results that go against it.
In a nationally dominant system, such results will occur in subnational elections. The existence of competitive regions allows us to observe how the ruling party reacts to opposition challenges. Does it treat opposition as legitimate? Does it strengthen electoral institutions and respect electoral outcomes? These questions can be asked about subnational politics just as they are asked about national politics.
In asserting subnational events as a potential, partial measure of democracy, I reject for the purposes of this study the classification rule implemented by Przeworski and his coauthors (2000). They argue that “if democracy is a system in which elections are held even if the opposition has a chance to win and in which the winners can assume office, then the observable evidence is not sufficient to classify” dominant party systems as democratic or undemocratic (23). We cannot observe opposition winning national office in dominant party systems, so we do not know for certain that they would be permitted to do so. Therefore, for the purposes of their large-n study, Przeworski and his coauthors choose to err on the side of classifying such regimes as not democratic.
My argument is that in studies using fewer cases, valuable information can be gained from in depth consideration of subnational elections. If the ruling party holds all
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public offices, it is quite likely that the regime is not democratic. However, the converse
– existence of some locally competitive elections and of opposition parties holding some elected offices – does not necessarily indicate a democratic system exists. Authoritarian regimes often find it in their interests to organize elections and even to allow opposition to win a limited number of offices. Doing so can co-opt opposition into the system
(Gandhi 2008), provide a veneer of legitimacy (Brownlee 2007), create credible commitments in policy to attract investors (Geddes 1999, Wright 2008), or allow voters choices among factions at the local level while insulating the ruling party from any national challenges (Langston 2006: 59).
If the ruling party does not accept losing elections, or manipulates these elections to ensure it does not lose them, then serious questions about the future of democracy are raised. Less clear are those electoral authoritarian regimes that are so successful in controlling electoral outcomes that they allow opposition parties to win elections at the local and state level, even to the extent of fixing the election in order to lose (Shirk 1999).
They do so in order to appear democratic and to gain legitimacy. I posit that there should be a qualitative difference in how a ruling party reacts to losing local elections; a democratically dominant party should vigorously compete for offices and seek to win back those it loses, rather than an authoritarian regime‟s passive acceptance of losses that serve its own purposes.
Crespo (1995) argues that one clear indicator of a less-than-free election is the behavior of the media. He characterized the national media in the last decade of PRI rule as either controlled by the government or publicly declared for the ruling party. Even
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worse were local media outlets that “form an antiopposition block that devalues, modifies, and slants what really happened” (18-19). This suggests that in evaluating the openness of elections, and therefore whether a ruling party is dominant or hegemonic, we can look at media openness and autonomy, along with the degree to which media is critical of either the ruling party or the opposition.
The ideological commitments of the dominant party can provide an additional clue. The existence of a visible opposition stronghold challenges the ideology of a party moving towards single-party authoritarianism. Recall from Chapter 2 that African ruling parties following independence often emphasized unity above other goals. They frequently sought a national appeal, eschewing suggestions (even those grounded in observed reality) that they represented one ethnic group or region disproportionately. To establish their nationalist credentials, these parties sought to win opposition strongholds.
For example in 1958, Ghana‟s ruling Convention People‟s Party targeted Kumasi with a determined “extra effort to get out the vote,” capturing the municipal stronghold of the rival NLM-UP (Austin 1976: 65). If a ruling party is successful in these sorts of targeted campaigns, it will eliminate many opposition strongholds. Doing so strengthens its position when it seeks to move towards authoritarian rule. Not surprisingly, achieving
“a monopoly of access to political office at all levels” makes the advent of single-party rule become much more likely (Zolberg 1966: 35).
The state was also centralized in these countries. This “growth of central control over cities, and in particular over the capital, [was] apparently motivated by fear of opposition” and of corruption (Zolberg 1966: 119). Similarly, in the two years of
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Emergency Rule in India, during which democracy and civil rights were suspended,
Indira Gandhi centralized power in her own hands. The Emergency was motivated by several signs of Congress‟s dominance weakening, and growing opposition engaging in formal, informal, and extra-constitutional challenges (Palmer 1976).
There is unlikely to be a clear demarcation between the dominant party democratic regime and the advent of undemocratic rule. Sartori (1976: 246) points out that no country switched from a dominant party system to a hegemonic system or one- party state without abandoning the previous system‟s constitution. In West Africa, the
“overall trend [was] first merely to reduce the opposition‟s success at the polls, then to control all candidacies, and finally to obtain the appearance of unanimity by means of a government-administered plebiscite” (Zolberg 1966: 79). Regimes manipulated electoral rules to reduce the likelihood of candidates defecting from the ruling party. Once a ruling party held nearly all parliamentary seats, it held referendums on constitutional changes declaring one-party states (80-82). But by then these were merely formalities. The outcomes were clear before they were held.
In sum, the existing literature suggests that if a dominant party system is evolving into a single-party authoritarian system, we are likely to observe a severe and dramatic centralization of power to the national executive; a reduction in the opportunities for opposition candidacies; careful management of where and when opposition candidates win subnational offices, and mostly passive acceptance of those victories; a steady reduction in the number and importance of the offices won by opposition; and restrictions
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on media coverage of opposition parties. Based on the cases reviewed, all of these actions are likely to be motivated by and justified on the basis of a nationalist ideology.
3.3 Party Strategies for Competitive Growth
In the theory of dominant party evolution introduced in Chapter 2, two paths lead to competitive democratic systems. In this section, I unpack the detailed steps of one of these paths, in which opposition parties begin by concentrating their limited resources at the local level. With time and successful strategy, these parties slowly expand and build upon localized victories, gaining more credibility with voters and more resources with which to fight elections. They become viable alternatives to the dominant party.
I argue that this evolution from a dominant party system with weak and marginalized opposition parties to a system with at least two viable, competitive parties occurs in two distinct steps. First, opposition parties must win some local elections.
Second, that success can grow and spread; actual governing increases the credibility of opposition parties through making their policies and practices more concrete and known to voters. Opposition parties holding office and gaining visibility have more resources to challenge the ruling party on the basis both of ideas and of electoral rules that reduce their viability. The extant literature suggests that this process may take decades as opposition parties attempt to make electoral inroads, somewhat through a trial-and-error learning process.
As Chapter 2 explained, evolution into a competitive party system also requires a weakening dominant party. This weakening can have its source in subnational dynamics,
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as local factions fight each other, or it can result from fights between subnational units and the center. This chapter will outline later how these dynamics have appeared in the comparative cases used in the prior chapter.
3.3.1 Opposition’s Subnational Strongholds
In the vast majority of dominant party systems, one or more opposition parties consistently win specific subnational offices. While dominant parties build coalitions across several constituencies, that does not mean they claim the support of every part of the electorate. Some legislative seats and control of some local governments will be won by opposition parties.
Demographic Differences: These opposition strongholds are often based on classic cleavage politics, wherein parties develop to represent particular social groups
(Lipset and Rokkan 1967). Even with a dominant party with a broad, catch-all appeal and coalition, some communities will remain outside the fold.
Most obvious and most visible, often, are small opposition parties representing ethnic or linguistic minorities. For example, in India there are, by one count, over two dozen such parties (Khator 1999: 340). Many of these parties represented a demographic group formed from one of India‟s politicized cleavages: caste, religion, or regionalism
(Chhibber and Kollman 2004: 12). Hence in India, “the major source of electoral competition to the Congress Party, in the years leading up to and including the 1967 election, was at the state level” as one such party emerged as the largest opposition in each state representing a particular group in that state (Chhibber 1999: 81).
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In Namibia, rural regional identities form the base for most of the opposition parties. Melber (2007: 70) writes
smaller opposition parties may mushroom, but remain without influence beyond the local support base: “While the fragmentation of parties into smaller groups, often with an ethnic pitch to the voters, may have prevented the opposition vote deteriorating from its 1999 position, it also produces a bits and pieces opposition. […] Namibia‟s political system tends to encourage small-time politicians, several of them ethnic entrepreneurs, who wish simply to win a wedge of support in their home areas that will justify a presence in the Parliament” (Hopwood 2005:142 and 144; emphasis removed).
In Italy, the religious-secular cleavage followed territorial patterns. Italy‟s high levels of cultural and linguistic diversity and its late unification, and the attendant differences between its different regions, predictably were reflected in its party system after World War II (Spotts and Wieser 1986: 222-3). The dominant DC, while winning votes in relatively high percentages nationwide, clearly enjoyed more support in the northeast. Meanwhile, the leftist parties, the PCI and the PSI, had regionalized support in the center of the country. Economic differences also played a role in post-war politics.
The DC was able to add the south to its coalition, as it directed state spending to the poorest areas of the country (Farneti 1985: 61-85; Newell 2000: 16-17).
Across most of the cases under examination here, urban-rural cleavages appear to be common in dominant party systems, with urban centers providing much of opposition parties‟ support (also see Rakner and van de Walle 2009: 117-8). Botswana‟s opposition is concentrated in urban areas. There are several explanations for these urban-rural political divides. Some voters support other parties simply for ideological reasons; in
Japan, urban residents are more likely to hold the leftist views espoused by most opposition parties or to have ties to the particular unions that do not support the LDP.
Conversely, rural areas have community ties and organized interests that maintained a
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conservative base for the LDP (Scheiner 2006: 116-7). In Mexico, a bloc of voters emerged whose interests lay with more neoliberal policies that would grow manufacturing and trade with the US. Thus the right-leaning PAN gained support among middle-class voters in northern cities (Rodríguez and Ward 1995: 5).
Along with ideological interests, state spending plays a role in the urban-rural differences. Urban public works construction is more difficult to direct to particular voters, simply because so many more people are likely to experience the benefit. Further, urban areas themselves are more able to afford their own public works, and thus rely less on the central government‟s subsidies (Scheiner 2006: 117). In Japan, although both norms and the bureaucracy are supposed to insulate central spending from political considerations, the LDP did not follow those rules reliably. “It is widely believed that the party is more likely to give subsidies to areas that support it,” so those urban areas with independent sources of revenue are more likely to be opposition strongholds than those that are more reliant on the center (110). This follows modernization theories that suggest that better off voters are less dependent on patronage and more willing to forgo the state spending dominant parties use to maintain support.
Similarly, in Italy, opposition to DC-dominated coalitions emerged because of the politicization of the distribution of state resources. A high degree of patronage and clientelism had developed in Italy, as a way to gain consensus in governance despite high levels of ideological polarization. Sani and Segatti (2001: 166) argue that this spending was treated as a necessary evil, until “the ideological temperature began to cool down.”
Then this spending became more visible and resented. Further, because of the differing
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levels of development in different Italian regions, revenue was generated largely in the north and spent in the south. Therefore, the resentment towards the patronage system took on a regional dimension, and in turn impacted party politics in a regionalized pattern.
Likewise, in 1998 the BJP in India was able to take advantage of a Congress Party weakened by defections only when it widened its appeal to capture middle class voters.
These voters tired of the dominant party‟s regulatory controls and clientelism, and middle-class Hindus chaffed against reservations (i.e., affirmative action) for the poor
(Hansen 1999). These voters turned to the BJP‟s more liberalized policies.
Just as political parties may have certain geographic strongholds because of different demographics in different parts of the country, so can changing demographics shift political fortunes. Electoral opposition in Mexico under the PRI‟s hegemony tended to be in cities. As the country developed economically and urbanized, this dynamic became very important. The cities continued to be the base of opposition support but now a much larger proportion of the population lived in those cities.
A common theme runs through the above descriptions: the urban-rural divide may be a proxy for economic status. Urban opposition strongholds may be where a middle- class, with resources independent from the state and the ruling party, develops. An opposition party with a rural stronghold and poorer supporters is likely to struggle to grow: its supporters are more likely to be punished by the ruling party, as they are more easily identified and targeted, and its supporters are less likely to have personal resources that can be drawn upon to overcome the opposition‟s disadvantages. This sort of pattern
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may be why the neoliberal PAN successfully challenged the PRI nationally while the leftist PRD was not as successful with its southern base, and why the liberalizing BJP unseated the Indian Congress rather than a coalition of the well-established leftist parties that exist throughout the country. The relationship between various parts of modernization theory and the evolution of dominant party systems is one that will be addressed in future research.
In conclusion, explaining the existence of stable opposition subnational strongholds in a dominant party system can rely in part on classic theories of parties representing politicized cleavage groups.
Local Networks: Local elites also determine the subnational political landscapes parties must coordinate across to gain nationally. Politicians often find it advantageous to
“coalesce around the same labels as politicians from different regions who have different ideologies and have different loyalties to previous and current government policies and leaders” in order to signal their policy preferences (Chhibber and Kollman 2004: 20; see also Cox 1997). Party labels become a heuristic for voters choosing candidates to support.
Weber (1918) noted that some parties are made up of local notables, those who involve themselves in politics to further their personal goals. These notables sometimes find it useful to coordinate across geographic divisions, building coalitions with the goal of achieving their ends. Most parties develop from a combination of a bottom-up growth such as this combined with some top-down party building emanating from national politicians (Chhibber and Kollman 2004: 83-88). As Snyder (2001: 100) writes,
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“Implementing their policy agendas – or simply staying in office – often requires national-level politicians to build coalitions with different types of subnational actors.”
These subnational elites then are part of how local politics impacts national events.
At early stages of party system development, local elites control the “local unregulated political economy” and so national elites seeking to incorporate an area‟s voters into their support base need the support of the local notable (Chhibber and
Kollman 2004: 87-88). Over time, as national parties gain more power over subnational policies and events, local elites find they need to join a party to access that power. Such decisions are often instrumental: in India in the late 1960s, for example, village heads
(sarpanchs) said that they would defect from Congress if a different party won state elections. It was simply a matter of how best to secure development aid for their villages
(Chhibber and Kollman: 86).
The relationship between these local notables and national parties were mutually beneficial, even symbiotic. Until the mid 1960s, Congress maintained its dominance in part by relying on particular castes. Where there were not dominant castes at the state level to deliver votes, Congress had to rely on local, even village-level elites (Frankel
1989: 503; Kothari 1964). Congress began life as “essentially a secondary organization that facilitated the persistence of „circumscribed local and sectional aims that derived from lower levels of politics‟” (Chhibber and Kollman 2004: 96, qtd Bayly 1975: 4).
This did not really begin to change until the 1980s.
Where autonomous civic groups do not develop independent power, usually in rural and underdeveloped areas, local elites can still operate without much check on their
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power (Mitra 2001: 103). The loyalties of these elites then determine which political party has support in the particular area. The nationally dominant party is likely to develop patron-client ties with such elites, to gain their support. Into the 1980s in
Mexico, “many rural areas were dominated by quasi-mafia leaders (caciques), whose informal rule was absolute and proceeded unmolested, as long as these same bosses delivered political support for the PRI when it was required” (Rodríguez and Ward 1995:
3). An opposition party is unlikely to make much headway where voters are reliant on such clientelist relationships (Greene 2007: 40-42; Scheiner 2006).
Because of higher levels of access to state resources, the dominant party is uniquely able to develop these ties in many places. Such ties build the coalition needed to maintain dominance. But it does leave the dominant party vulnerable to the effects of an economic crisis, as one will reduce the resources available for patronage.2 Even without an economic crisis, local crises can hurt dominant parties‟ standing locally.
Reliance on unaccountable local elites can backfire for the dominant party. If it relies on the local strongman for delivering votes, a revolt against the strongman and his corruption becomes a popular if localized defection from the party.
More often, though, the relationship is a mutually beneficial one. In Japan, the incentives for local elites to affiliate with the ruling LDP are clear. Local politicians were expected to “develop a relationship with national governmental leaders and bring home funding for local projects.” Therefore even supposedly nonpartisan local leaders needed
2 Economic crises often factor in the end of one-party dominance, but not every economic crisis ends dominance. In fact, the extant literature is divided on the role of economic crises. Future research will address this.
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to work well with the LDP (Scheiner 2006: 113-4; qts Reed 1986: 29, 35-6). In exchange, they were given the resources needed to do their jobs well. Opposition leaders were much less likely to enjoy such a relationship.
When opposition parties began to gain in Mexico, they did so in part by acquiring the support of local networks. The PRI elites who defected to form the PRD drew upon the personal networks they had developed in the PRI. Meanwhile, the PAN took a
“major strategic initiative” to recruit more appealing candidates, resulting in, for example, a string of charismatic important local business leaders winning in the city of
León and elsewhere in the north (Shirk 1999: 57).
A primary claim of this dissertation is that party system change in dominant party systems cannot be explained by changes in structural factors, such as socioeconomic demographics, alone. Party strategies and choices matter. However, my argument is not that party strategies can explain all dominant party system change. As highlighted above, the demographic patterns of a society and the existing patron-client relationships may well be key in the first step in party system change, that is, in opposition winning those first important strongholds. Party system evolution then is a process of opposition in different places growing and combining to challenge the dominant party in more places and at more levels of government. That is where the strategies of the governing party and of the opposition make the difference.
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3.3.2 Spreading the Opposition Wins
I argued in the previous chapter that opposition parties in dominant party systems have greater-than-normal disadvantages in challenging the incumbent party. These disadvantages – in credibility, unity, institutional rules, and resources – cause opposition parties to lack viability. To challenge the dominant party, an opposition party must find a way to gain viability. I will show in this section how such viability – in fact, most easily and most often – can be acquired through adept strategizing in subnational politics.
The opposition party must demonstrate its skill in choosing policies and in governing. This requires holding some public offices. Opposition parties can state their positions and advocate particular policies, but actually making those positions and policies reality requires holding offices that permit their implementation. Voters are more likely to believe campaign rhetoric when it is supported by actual events.
Especially where an opposition party‟s appeal is based less on ideological differences with the ruling party and more on a claim of more competent and fair governance – such as an anti-corruption campaign – a clear governance record of success on such issues makes such appeals much more credible.
For example, in 1997 in Punjab, the BJP formed a governing coalition with a moderate Sikh party. This success grew in part because “Congress(I) dominance has collapsed” in the state. The [Sikh] Akalis are seeking to establish themselves as a pre- eminent regional political party. The BJP views this arrangement as a precursor of regional pacts that would lead it to national power.” For the BJP, an alliance with an ethnic party helped its national cause, as it showed voters that the BJP‟s Hindu
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nationalism did not imply indiscriminant threats to all minorities (Singh 1997). This may not have convinced huge numbers of minorities to vote for the BJP, but it no doubt comforted many Hindu middle-class voters who had been on the fence. The BJP used its state governments to show itself as a credible alternative to the Congress Party.
Voters in neighboring municipalities or constituencies are likely to be aware of the record of the party in power next door, and thus more likely to consider voting for it in their own election. Numerous scholars of Mexican politics have noted that the PAN became more credible in part because it had experience successfully governing municipal and state governments (Shirk 1999; Magaloni 2006: 213; Greene 2007: 238).
An opposition party may find more success in growing if it wins the „right‟ offices, that is, those subnational offices that are larger, more important in some way, and more visible to voters in other parts of the country. Winning seats in an under-populated region far from any political or economic centers is unlikely to educate voters about the party or its governance record. Alternatively, winning the mayoralty of the capital or a significant economic hub can make an opposition party and its policies visible to the whole country. When an opposition party can do so, its success is more likely to spread, as more voters come to see it as a credible choice. As Bruhn notes, “A single rally in the
Zócalo of Mexico City can catch the attention of a national audience faster than a hundred rallies in the countryside” (1997: 57). Parties cannot simply govern a city, however; they must tell voters about their governance. So when PRD 2000 Presidential candidate Cárdenas, the Federal District‟s mayor from 1997 to1999, refused to publicize his achievements and dismissed television as mere spectacle, he failed to capitalize on his
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experience (Greene 238-9). An opposition party does need to tell voters that it has governed well.
The broader patterns in offices won can explain much of the different and shifting experiences of Mexico‟s two main opposition parties in the 1980s and 1990s. The PRD was more agrarian-based than the PAN, and so its strongholds were smaller, more marginal, and poorer with fewer resources independent of the PRI-controlled state (Bruhn
1999: 22). In contrast, the PAN won “highly visible and economically advanced states.”
These wins had more potential to affect national politics than the PRD‟s victories in less visible places, a potential on which the PAN capitalized (42).
Also, unsurprisingly, the particular policy positions held by opposition parties impact how they do or do not grow. They help determine which and how many voters will consider supporting them. Just as modernization and economic development increases the size of an independent middle class that will push for democratization
(Moore 1966), so can they shift the cost-benefit calculations of supporting the dominant party for newly middle-class voters. These voters can risk losing state patronage and their concentration in urban areas can increase the opposition‟s organizational resources.
In India in the mid-1990s, Kohli (1998: 12) noted that the BJP‟s success was due to
growing support for the BJP among India's business and industrial groups and among the numerous middling agrarian groups (the OBCs) who make up nearly half the total rural population. Business's . . . hinges on the BJP's promise of national-level stability and simultaneous commitment to private enterprise and economic nationalism. With its coffers full of contributions from business, the BJP was able to run an effective campaign.
Similarly, in Mexico the interests of urban areas and then northern cities specifically, because of their international manufacturing interests, shifted politically.
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Smaller-scale businesses grew concerned – and re-engaged politically – after the government nationalized the banks (Mizrahi 1995: 92-3). Thus the PAN was able to recruit small business owners to donate, to campaign, and to stand as candidates. As
Mexico‟s population shifted from the PRI‟s rural bases to the cities, the PRI struggled to maintain its coalition of economic classes (Bruhn 1997: 57). Hence an opposition party can overcome the resource disadvantage vis a vis the dominant party if it employs strategies and adopts platforms aimed at capturing the support of a growing urban middle class.
Parties‟ policy positions also impact how the dominant party reacts to opposition victories. The PRD-PAN differences in success, both at subnational levels and in their ability to expand, can be explained by their differently perceived threat to the regime. In
Mexico, “until 1988 the PAN formed the vanguard of the opposition and therefore was the foil and the focus of the PRI‟s attention” (Rodríguez and Ward 1995: 6). The left‟s success in 1988 shifted that attention, as it made the PRI realize the seriousness of the
PRD threat. The PRD‟s support, unlike the PAN‟s, came from among the PRI‟s traditional bases, and the PRD, unlike the PAN, would not cooperate with the Salinas administration on its economic reforms (Bruhn 1999: 21-2). The PRI became much more hostile to PRD-held subnational governments than to PAN-held ones (Rodríguez and
Ward 1995: 8-9).
The economic crisis, and the PRI leadership‟s pursuit of economic reforms in response, contributed to the PRI‟s calculations. Needing another party to help it implement the reforms, the PRI became more accepting of defeat by the PAN than by the
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PRD (Rodríguez and Ward 1995: 8-9). This meant the PAN was allowed to win more offices, even though it supported the same economic policies for which the PRI was losing support.
These events fit with the arguments made in Chapter 2; holding public office increases the possibility of opposition parties blocking or at least tempering policies that limit their ability to compete. Remember from the previous chapter that institutions and electoral rules can be manipulated to reduce the viability of opposition parties, even while maintaining basic democratic standards (McElwain 2008). If opposition parties hold the right offices or enough legislative seats, they may be able to prevent such measures from becoming law or to force existing policies to change. Indeed, the Mexican PAN was able to compel the hegemonic PRI to institute several reforms in the early 1990s. The PAN, while solidly in favor of the PRI‟s economic legislation, exacted a price for its votes in the form of electoral and other institutional reforms. These reforms made the electoral process fairer and allowed the PAN to win more subnational offices (Mizrahi 2004: 42).
The local PRI candidates sacrificed by the national party leadership did not like the bargains with the PAN, and eventually this led to some problems with party unity.
The accumulated result, “as the „magnanimous‟ national PRI leadership in the federal executive branch „threw‟ local races to the PAN, that party constructed administrative records and electoral competitiveness, to the point they no longer needed the PRI-state‟s charitable discretion” (Eisenstadt 2004: 35).
Not surprisingly, the PRI‟s perceptions of the threat again shifted. By 1997 the
PAN controlled 11 major cities, and had held nine governorships in six states (Shirk
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1999: 50). The government would not allow the PAN to participate in TV debates for
Mexico City mayor‟s race (42). But it was too late to stop the shifting fortunes nationwide. The subnational governments gave the PAN a base from which they could challenge national policies, especially with regards to electoral reform. The PAN- controlled Baja California, while accused of fraud similar to that which priísta state governments elsewhere were accused, still proved that it was, “in fact, possible to issue photo-identification cards in a short time and with few resources, which disproved the arguments used by the federal government to slow down that process” (Crespo 1995: 27).
Holding subnational office thus clearly allowed the PAN to reduce institutional disadvantages and increase its credibility with voters.
The PAN‟s Vicente Fox became one of the first non-PRI state governors in
Guanajuato and rose to national prominence as “one of the strongest critics of the Salinas government” (Mizrahi 2004: 56). Fox, in 1995, argued that Guanajuato would “give the example” of democracy in Mexico (Bruhn 1999: 19). Five years later Fox was the first non-PRI president in decades.
In 2000, there was still the distinct possibility of the PAN and the PRD splitting the opposition vote to the PRI‟s benefit (Greene 219). Attempts to form a PAN-PRD alliance for the 2000 election failed. However, voters coordinated behind one opposition party rather than splitting their vote among the left and the right. Greene attributes this success to Fox‟s independent resources, because they meant he could defy the PAN on some policy issues. He cast himself as more to the economic center than his party‟s usual stance, and therefore gained voters from outside the party‟s base (229-244). Magaloni
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argues that the PAN emerged victorious because voters found it more credible than the
PRD, based on its experience governing at the local level (213), and because voters perceived it to be more likely to defeat the PRI than the PRD (217).3 It had clearly gained viability, and Fox had gained viability as a somewhat centrist candidate.
Increasing the number and type of constituencies held not only creates credibility with voters. It also increases the number of experienced activists and party personnel.
As Greene (2007) points out and as Chapter 2 explained, this activist experience is a key step in creating a viable opposition party. Experience in running successful campaigns and in governing is an important party resource. In this way, successful campaigns should beget more successful campaigns.
To the degree that clientelism and patronage influence voters‟ choices in a particular polity, an opposition party can only be helped by winning more elections.
Depending on the country‟s institutions, legal system, and center-periphery relationships, holding public office may directly contribute to a party‟s resources for creating and maintaining ties with voters. The decision to spend public goods in a particular way to benefit a particular community may be one that any party would have supported. But the
3 This version of events need not ignore other factors leading to the PRI‟s downfall. Both authors readily acknowledge the role played by institutional reform, especially the creation of an independent election commission that prevented the manipulation and outright stealing of elections. But note that the advent of fair elections not only helped the PAN win the presidency in 2000, but fair elections contributed to opposition parties‟ victories for local and state offices in the 1990s. Fox himself had proved himself as the governor of Guanajuato. This made him a more viable candidate, with an office-holding record on which to campaign credibly. After all, even with a fair election, Fox still needed to gain the support of the electorate. Another factor in the end of PRI rule was the economic crisis of the 1980s and resulting privatization of state-owned companies. The reduction in the PRI‟s fiscal resources both limited the patronage it could dispense and went some way to leveling the playing field for all parties with regard to campaign spending (Greene 212-3). In short, the ruling party‟s institutional and financial advantages were greatly reduced, weakening its coalition. Fox and the PAN then capitalized on that weakness in part by pointing to their track record in subnational offices.
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party in power is more likely to receive the credit from voters for delivering such spending.
Clientelism denies voters the opportunity to learn what opposition parties stand for, because the parties no longer need to make strong ideological claims and contrast themselves with one another. Instead, in India “for the [local] rate payer it is the personal services performed by the councilor – that is, the administrative and executive performance of the councilor – which is more important than his legislative activities”
(Weiner 1967: 332). The dominant party‟s councilors merely need to perform competently to remain in office.
In Mexico, the PRI‟s organizational strength and power meant it survived the immediate effects of the economic crisis of the 1980s. Its corporatist arrangements, built and nurtured over decades, meant it enjoyed the “loyalty, through the unions affiliated with the party, of the organized groups most likely to be disadvantaged” by the economic conditions (Needler 1987: 78 quoted in Bruhn 1997: 6-7). The PRI‟s coalition was not perfect for its purposes, especially given changing economic demographics. Its policies excluded the urban poor, which Cardenas and the PRD were able to appeal to with some success in 1988 (7).
As patronage resources dried up in the 1990s, some PRI governors manipulated fiscal relationships to divert resources away from PAN-controlled municipalities to PRI ones (Greene 214). But overall, “despite important abuses on the margins, resources were much more equal across parties than at any time in the past.” Opposition parties now “had sufficient funds to mount full-scale modern campaigns, stage candidate events
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throughout the country, buy media time, print and post campaign propaganda, hire campaign staff, and monitor voting on election day” (215). After gaining in Guanajuato in the late 1980s because of corruption scandals among PRI officials, the PAN proceeded to make “enormous efforts to complete long-neglected public work projects” in the state; this good governance directly contributed to the PAN‟s winning a majority in the 1997 local Congress (Shirk 1999: 54-57). The leveled electoral playing field allowed the PAN to compete successfully.
To simplify opposition parties‟ task to its core, they must attract more voters.
More voters come from two places: voters can be lured away from the party they have supported in the past or voters can be created, in the sense that those who have not voted before can be mobilized to support a particular party.
In the latter case, dominant party systems often do have large numbers of non- voters. Because “everyone knows” the dominant party will win, many citizens feel little need to go to the polls. Because the dominant party‟s basic policies and the beneficiaries of them rarely change, citizens easily believe that their voices do not matter. Norris writes, “In such situations, the marginal value of each vote appears lowest, owing to the predictable outcome, and parties may make less effort to mobilize supporters. … In practice these options [among parties] are fairly meaningless” (2002: 70-1). It is not unusual to have a large cohort of disaffected voters who do not support the dominant party but do not think they have the power to remove it from office.
Opposition parties therefore have the task of convincing these potential voters to go to the polls to vote for the opposition. Not only must they overcome the typical
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democratic problem that an individual vote is unlikely to make any difference to the election outcome, they must also convince voters to support what Chhibber and Kollman
(2004: 57-60) sensitively call “hopeless parties.” Although they feel unable to reach any conclusions about why voters would support hopeless parties, they do find across four cases – including India – that support for these parties comes “in waves,” perhaps indicating that voters occasionally have reason to gain hope (59). The task here then becomes to identify what creates hope that an opposition party can make significant gains. I will show that the answer lies in decisions and events within the dominant party.
As described in Chapter 2, most dominant parties have large, diverse coalitions that require finesse in balancing the different and sometimes conflicting interests represented in them. Members of this coalition may become dissatisfied with the party leadership‟s decisions, and defect from the ruling party. An opposition party may benefit from simple good timing. A viable opposition party must exist for competitiveness to grow, but also some members of the dominant party‟s coalition must be looking for an alternative. If the coalition is held together by patronage spending, an economic downturn reducing the resources available for it may send members of the coalition looking for a new political home where they can gain more benefits, in state spending or in policies. An opposition party can position itself to take advantage of such events.
It is the question of the dominant party coalition, and how local politics contributes to its maintenance or disintegration, to which I now turn.
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3.3.3 Intraparty Coalitions and Factionalism in Subnational Politics
Several case studies of the growth of a competitive party system ascribe it to the dominant party‟s elites splitting along factional lines, with one faction defecting from the party and dividing the electorate. In maintaining the wide coalition needed to be dominant, the ruling party will sometimes fail. A defection may just reduce the size of the party‟s majority, or it may be a miscalculation by defectors who then fail to gain any significant electoral support. Or, the defection could end one-party dominance, by reducing the ruling party‟s electoral support and/or legislative share to less than 50 percent. Therefore we must address intraparty factionalism in our account of subnational politics in dominant party systems.
Brass (1966) argues that factions within the Indian Congress Party had both integrative and disintegrative functions. The integrative functions are those of a successful dominant party in a highly diverse society, so his conclusion can be applied to many of the other cases.
Dominance as Integrative: During its period of dominance, India‟s Congress
Party appeared to embrace all elements of India‟s great national diversity. However, case studies of specific localities show that Congress built different coalitions in each state, adapting to local conditions (Chhibber 1999: 52, qtd Brass 1965, Weiner 1967, Sisson
1972). There was “considerable state by state variation in the social groups that aligned with the Congress Party” (Chhibber 1999: 63). This created the conditions for factionalism nationally, as diverse interests were brought together under the Congress umbrella.
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Since Congress maintained much of its dominance through the use of patronage distributed strategically (Chhibber and Kollman 2004: 90), local party factionalism also developed, based on “kinship ties, personal friendships, financial obligations, and status aspirations” (Weiner 1967: 150). Where it lacked resources to distribute patronage widely or consistently, local factionalism increased as individuals and groups vied for the limited available resources. In these areas, the party became “essentially the vehicle through which diverse social groups and individuals attempt[ed] to maximize their power and social status, and that the party itself lacks the resources to provide continuous rewards and thereby ensure loyalty” (Weiner 1967: 451). Other parties did not face such loyalty issues, because they did not contain such a large and diverse coalition (154), nor the ability to gain patronage resources to distribute. Of course, they also simply did not have as many voters.
In Congress, intraparty factions fought amongst themselves, over patronage rather than ideology, on multiple levels (Brass 1965: 233). Weiner (1967) describes the twists of politics in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh in the early 1960s. Factions that failed to make their preferred candidate the party‟s candidate would routinely support the candidate of an opposition party. Local village factions will also pit one Congress faction against another, so one village faction would align with one Congress faction and another with the other. Weiner argues that this factionalism actually helped Congress maintain its dominance in the 1950s and 1960s, because it mirrored – rather than challenged – the social divisions in Indian society. Rather than trying to create a “modernized” society free of traditional cleavages, as was the goal of several African leaders of the same
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period, the Congress Party accepted the divisions and tried to become a friend to all who would support some part of it (158-160). Based on Weiner‟s argument, we can argue that this pragmatism, which would likely have been rejected as dangerous ethnicity-based politics in Tanzania or Kenya, may have contributed to the consolidation of Indian democracy.
However, as a result, Congress prevented the development of independent organized interest groups, such as caste associations or trade unions. Indeed, its strength came from “its willingness and . . . proven ability to organize diversity” (Brass 1966:
244-5). In short, “the range of social groups represented in the ruling party was considered its most positive feature, making it possible for opposition parties to influence government policies by forging links with like-minded Congress factions” (Frankel 1989:
502). The pluralism permitted within Congress often allowed the expression and organization of societal diversity generally.
Dominance as Disintegrative: However, as has been emphasized already, with such a wide range of interests in the party comes infighting. Further, as was recognized by V.O. Key (1949), where a dominant party system exists, competition occurs within the dominant party, not in interparty elections organized by the state. This makes the nature of internal party competition fundamental to how interests are represented in the political arena. Poor representation, actual or perceived unfairness, and a lack of transparency could all doom the peaceful and regular expression of these interests. When the good functioning of democracy relies disproportionately on malfunctioning internal party democracy, perhaps the best thing to occur is a defection by those interests who feel
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unrepresented in the dominant party. Such an event could restore competition and the buy-in to the system of interest groups.
One example of a clearly democratic system without a dominant party with clear internal party democracy is Botswana. Opposition parties do not represent much of a threat to the Botswana Democratic Party. What does, Molomo (2003) argues, is the
BDP‟s internal factionalism. A “lack of established and accepted procedures for selecting leaders and representatives” (e.g., some nomination process or primary election) has led to “resignations, factionalism, splits, and the fragmentation of parties” (308). The history of Botswana‟s democracy is littered with opposition parties that broke away from the BDP. They have never managed to coordinate amongst themselves, and so the BDP has remained in power.
Dominant party splits frequently manifest most clearly among the national leadership, such as the Mexican leftist defection led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1988
(see Chapter 2). Some of this is simply a result of visibility: regional or local arguments are more easily missed by observers or the importance swept under the rug by a party trying to maintain unity.
However, I will show here that often national leadership splits involve subnational politics too. The dominant party‟s coalition is not formed purely from interests defined by or interested in only national issues. Factions may be drawn from regional bases, especially when geographic splits coincide with economic interests or ethnic divisions too. Party splits can also be driven by disputes between the center and local elites, as the two groups vie for jurisdiction over particular decisions or policy areas. Therefore, even
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elite-driven factionalism at the center may have underlying causes that involve subnational politics.
In India, factional fights in the one-party dominant Indian Congress Party could become quite severe; it was not unheard of for factions to ignore external opposition threats because they were too busy fighting each other. Personal goals outweighed the continued good functioning of the party; “a disaffected faction leader does not mind participating in the defeat of the entire Congress organization if this is the only way to defeat his faction rivals” (Brass 1966: 240). Not surprisingly, where and when such factionalism occurred, the Congress lost electoral support. Voter mobilization is unlikely to occur under such conditions of little intraparty coordination.
In contrast to Brass (1990), who argued the changing Indian party system was the result of new voters – specifically, the backwards castes – entering the electorate,
Chhibber (1999) finds strong evidence that from the 1967 election Congress and the opposition parties traded the support of voters rather than mobilized great numbers of new voters. The specific groups or factions that shifted their support in different elections varied by the state. Chhibber calls this the “politics of exit,” after Hirschman
(1970). The common element driving exit was “whether or not the interests of a group were accommodated by the ruling party.” Such interests usually lay in controlling the spoils of office. Thus, “as the allocation of executive office has become the locus of coalition building, those groups or factions that could not attain office became dissenters, initially within the party and ultimately outside it” (117). In the 1950s and 1960s, “a
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substantial number” of politicians not nominated by Congress for office would run on other party tickets or as independents (Chhibber and Kollman 2004: 90).
This loyalty-exit dynamic is part of a broader pattern. Candidate selection for office appears as a source of dispute in several other cases. Party activists must be confident that coordinating with other factions will pay off in the long term. The minimal expected payoff is that they will have the chance to regain some power within the party and therefore in the state, in the form of positions or policy influence. Much as this is a key for external opposition in a democracy, so it is for internal party factions. Successful dominant parties institutionalized an accepted method of decision-making and candidate selection. Some level of transparency in party decisions is necessary for the successful management of factions. This means dominant parties may need to prioritize internal party democracy over efficiency or strict adherence to ideological positions. When the payoff appears to no longer exist, factions begin to defect from the dominant party.
For example, as described earlier, in Italy each of the DC‟s factions were organized and well-resourced for competition amongst themselves. The system broke down when the regime‟s patronage resources were curtailed, as each faction could no longer be assured of its necessary resources. The benefits of coordinating were not sufficient anymore. The Italian DC imploded.
The Mexican PRI had a strong norm of alternating presidencies between the party‟s own left and right wings. There was also some balance in leadership selection for subnational offices. But the 1988 defection began to develop when some doubted that
“any [factional] imbalance in one administration would be redressed in the one that
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followed” (Rodríguez and Ward 1995: 4). After the de la Madrid administration ended in
1988, rather than the traditional centrist swing, the Salinas administration was even further to the right. The left‟s defection was solidified.
Similarly, in India under Nehru, Congress, “was internally democratic and . . . particularly sensitive to pressures and counter-pressures at the grassroots level”
(Kolodner 1995: 240). However, Brass found, in his case study of Congress in the state of Uttar Pradesh, that faction leaders rejected several aspects of internal party democracy.
They did not accept the validity of majority rule or „institutional mechanisms‟ for resolving disputes. Instead, they expected the traditional arbitrator of a neutral leader
(Brass 1966: 239). Thus another way to read Congress‟s sensitivity and responsiveness to the grassroots is that “the only procedure for conflict resolution which [was] acceptable to [local and state Congress] faction leaders [was] the mediation of an impartial arbitrator,” that is, the intervention of senior Congress officials with no factional loyalties. However, this system broke down as the Congress Party became more factionalized, and factionalized further up the party hierarchy (Brass 1966: 239).
This left Congress with very little in the way of dispute resolution procedures.
What we might call „semi-managed‟ factionalism within the dominant party can contribute to opposition party wins. Where the national party leadership must repeatedly step in to resolve subnational disputes within the party as in India, we can understand that there is a lack of institutionalized methods to resolve such disputes. In Mexico, “when the opposition won or threatened to win a municipality, it was usually because of a split within the PRI at the local level could not be patched up, such that there was a failure to
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close ranks behind a single candidate” (Rodríguez and Ward 1995: 6). Hence the national-level decisions on which municipalities to allow opposition parties to win
(Crespo 22), with the alternative being to pick among the PRI candidates and factions.
However, when the national leadership resorts to ad hoc resolutions to factional conflict, we can predict that such solutions are not sustainable over the long term. We can expect that the national leadership will eventually be tarnished by the decisions it makes in these disputes, lose the perception of its neutrality, and hence lose its legitimacy as arbitrator. As those who won subnational factional disputes rise in the party, they may not be viewed in the same way, as somehow having gained their positions without appropriate levels of support. And quite simply, several interventions from above with murky decision-rules will not engender confidence nor legitimacy in the party organization.
The cases outlined above suggest that we can see deficient methods for resolving intraparty factionalism by looking at events leading up to elections. In each of these cases, candidate selection became a serious issue.
Finally, when defectors from a ruling party are individuals who are linked in ways that clearly demarcate them as sharing common interests and/or constituting an organized faction, then it is reasonable to assume these defections are because the party no longer accommodates these particular interests. Even if the faction is based on personalistic clientelism, a wholesale defection of the faction indicates that patronage and access were no longer forthcoming from the party.
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3.4 An Alternative Effect of Subnational Opposition Success
The theory of opposition expansion laid out above appears clear cut. Why do not all opposition parties succeed in following it? We might expect every dominant party system to succumb eventually to grassroots organizing and expansion. Similarly, dominant parties know the sources of their support and the groups that make up their coalition. If we accept that the first goal of any office-holder is to remain in office
(Downs 1957), then we would expect dominant parties to prioritize maintaining their dominance. But clearly neither pattern – of opposition expansion or of dominant parties maintaining complex coalitions – is always the case.
An alternative scenario is one in which the occasional subnational opposition victory serves as a safety valve for the dominant party. In the face of the dominant party‟s resource advantages, opposition forces must make strategic choices about where to put their own resources. Winning subnational office implies that the opposition directed resources into these local contests and may not have sufficient resources to contest elsewhere.
Bruhn‟s study (1999) of PRD government in the state of Michoacán directly addresses this possibility. She outlines the possible effects of local opposition government on future national regime change. I have argued above that local government can have what Bruhn calls “additive” or “exponential” effects. That is, opposition parties winning subnational governments can accumulate capacity themselves or demonstrate how to win to opposition parties in other parts of the country, and that these patterns can build into national change (23-4).
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However, Bruhn concludes that the opposition government in Michoacán did not have such effects. Instead, the pattern appeared to be more one of “subtraction,” in which gaining control of “local government fools the opposition into subtracting from its scarce total resources whatever time, energy, and assets a local opposition spends, in the mistaken belief that it is contributing to national regime change. . . . local government should tend to distract and divide political opposition” (25). Further, opposition government could allow the ruling party to engage in “division,” that is, the division of blame for problems among local governments in order to insulate the national government from blame (27). This would also boost the dominant party‟s security.
Bruhn concludes that in Michoacán in the 1990s, the PRD state government only subtracted from the cause of national change. But she also allows that this case may not representative of other opposition governments in Mexico. For example, Michoacán is not wealthy or important nationally, and so it may be opposition parties in wealthy, important states will succeed more and have a greater effect on national politics than those in Michoacán (41). Further, the PRD governed during a prosperous time, so the
PRI had resources available to undermine opposition governments (41). Since Mexico was quite centralized, local leaders looked weak and ineffectual to voters, because they were not be able to implement policies different than the center (26). Bruhn maintains that the PRD victories in the 1995 municipal elections had “everything to do with the national economic crisis and corruption scandals that have so discredited the PRI, and virtually nothing to do with local government in Michoacán” (39). Hence increased local
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competitiveness, in many diverse places, is likely to be a symptom of national change or a national-level shock, not of simultaneous change at the local level (44).
Regardless of the accuracy or limitations of Bruhn‟s specific case study, her hypotheses and expected evidence for each are quite helpful for structuring the discussion here. We can expect the following patterns. First, if opposition control of a subnational government is subtractive, we should see “repeated and costly efforts to capture local government that seldom lead to permanent consolidated bases or bigger substantive victories” (27). The literature on Mexico under the PRI suggests a potential issue for an opposition party that wins a subnational office is to maintain that position (Crespo 22-3;
Bruhn 1999). In the 1990s, the PRD never built on its municipal successes nor even, many times, repeated it by winning subsequent elections (37).
Second, if opposition control is additive, we should see electoral victories increasing in number and spreading in geography (23-4). Finally, if opposition control is exponential, we should see opposition victories increasing in number and spreading in geography after opposition wins important and visible subnational offices, and the public develops positive perceptions of opposition governance of those offices (24). A key aspect of „visibility‟ is national media coverage of politics and conditions in a municipality or region, or other methods (e.g., internal migrants‟ ties to their hometowns) of informing non-residents of the opposition party‟s successes.
Other processes can indirectly prevent the growth of subnational growth by opposition parties. A smaller-than-usual margin of victory in national elections or losses in local elections can serve to warn the dominant party of its weaknesses. Opposition
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parties may make gains, identifying issues with which they gain traction and making inroads with voters. The dominant party would then have the opportunity to address the issues driving such vote outcomes. It can modify policies or seek to co-opt a new group into its coalition, in order to shore up its position before the next national elections. This dynamic can explain Bruhn‟s observation that the PRD struggled to maintain its electoral gains from one election to the next; the PRI may have adjusted in response to these results. Another explanation for the PRD‟s failure to repeat its successes may be its organizational strength. Mizrahi (1995: 93) argues that a strong party organization between elections is needed to maintain an opposition party under these circumstances.
As has been alluded to already, the PRD did not always behave as a political party, but rather adopted the stances and strategies of a social movement.
The limits of subnational opposition growth are best observed in the longest dominant party system under examination here, Japan.4 Subnational opposition strongholds appeared to develop in Japan in the 1970s. In the 1960s, leftists were able
“to promote their political power at the local level, and then extend their influence to
Tokyo” (Muramatsu and Iqbal 2001: 5). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, these local governments challenged the center‟s economic policies (7), positioning the opposition parties to capitalize on widespread dissatisfaction with the ruling party‟s lack of economic success. In the ten years to 1975, the JSP and JCP increased the number of mayoralties they held from 10 to 140 (12-3). The success of these opposition parties and
4 Ignoring a six-year break in the 1970s, Sweden‟s Social Democratic Party was in power for longer than the LDP was, losing again in 2006. A lack of extensive literature on its party system prevented it from becoming one of the informative cases here.
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some accompanying social movements signaled the issues, notably the environment and welfare, on which the LDP‟s policies did not have public support. The LDP reacted by selectively co-opting some of the issues raised by the opposition parties and social movements, taking the teeth out of the opposition‟s challenges (Krauss and Pierre 1990:
245). As a result, the JSP and JCP failed to capitalize on their subnational gains. Each upstart opposition party saw its success peter out, without ever gaining more than 29 percent of the electorate‟s support (see Scheiner 2006: 39).
Another source of Japan‟s remarkable period of one-party dominance may be the relative lack of local strongholds from which the opposition might increase its position.
Into the 1980s and beyond, the LDP‟s dominance was even larger at the local level than it was nationally (Scheiner 2006: 41). Voters might contemplate defecting from the LDP in their national choices, but as outlined in Chapter 2, defecting in local elections with the
LDP still in power could severely affect fiscal transfers from the center. It is probably not coincidental that Japan‟s opposition parties gained ground in the 1970s when the center-local government relationships were in flux. Local communities were chaffing under the center‟s efforts to expand its role and authority, and local policies frequently clashed with national ones (Muramatsu and Iqbal 2001: 6-7). In such an environment, it is not surprising that more voters defected from the LDP. The perceived risk was lower as the reaction of the center and its ability to punish defection was less clear. But the center eventually prevailed over local governments – regardless of the party in power in those local governments – blocking further opposition growth.
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These events suggest that the end of LDP dominance would need to begin from above. Unlike in other dominant party systems, opposition parties needed to make gains nationally to be credible choices locally (Scheiner 2006). Because of the high levels of clientelism directed from the center, the only local politicians willing to defect from the
LDP were those in places where their national representative had defected – the calculation was entirely about maintaining the best possible ties to national spending decisions (61). But of course opposition parties, by virtue of being out of office for so long, usually do not have the resources or governing record to be viable nationally.
Scheiner is adamant that Japan‟s extensive clientelist system and fiscal centralization are the keys to understanding the long failure of the country‟s opposition.
The incentives created by the two prevent the kinds of grassroots opposition growth that has led to competitive party systems in other countries. Hence we can understand why the LDP remained in power for so long with abysmal approval ratings.
An early analysis of why the LDP lost to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in
2009 includes both national and local issues as explanations. Krauss and Pekkanen
(2010) attribute the LDP‟s loss to a national scandal over pension records, poor campaigning from the prime minister and savvy campaigning from the DPJ candidate, the economic crisis, and the DPJ‟s centrist platform. However, the electoral systems reforms instituted in 1993, combined with several other reforms in more recent years such as those for campaign finance and postal privatization, changed the incentives and resources available to political parties. Postal privatization was very important because postmasters were key links in rural clientelist networks; as described above, local
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notables can deliver votes for a national party, but rebellion against corrupt local notables can become a revolt against the national party too. Similarly, municipal mergers reduced the number of local politicians, further damaging the LDP‟s locally-based ability to mobilize voters.
Combined, these reforms fatally hurt the LDP‟s factions and their funding, and increased opposition incentives to coordinate. However, defenders of the status quo within the LDP succeeded in stalling many reforms. This elite factionalism produced the worse-case scenario for the dominant party, as the reforms caused much of the LDP‟s base to defect and the lack of completed reforms meant reform-minded voters did not support the LDP. In short, both factionalism within the dominant party and growing opposition viability produced a shocking defeat of 60 percent of the LDP‟s incumbents.
The analysis by Krauss and Pekkanen therefore clearly supports many of the important factors in dominant party system evolution identified here, such as the role of ruling party factionalism, the de-marginalization of opposition parties, and the importance of equalizing resources. However, they provide only weak support for the additional idea that these factors manifest first in subnational politics. Yet across the other cases examined in the last two chapters, those opposition strategies that focused on national growth were not as successful as those that focused on locally-based growth.
The clearest case is the contrast that can be made in Mexico, where Cárdenas understood democratization as a national, not local, process of mobilization; the PRD thus focused on national office, did not win many governorships, and did not devote much attention to governing them well (Bruhn 1999: 19-20). The PAN won local and then state offices,
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proved itself competent and fair (or at least no worse) in governing, and used that experience to win national office.
Japan is likely different for two reasons. First, it is more centralized than the other cases were at some points in their developments. Some of the others, like Italy and
India, were decentralized just before or during the period in which the dominant party weakened and opposition parties gained (Spotts and Wieser 1986: 225; Chhibber and
Kollman 2004: 137-141). However, it is difficult to state a clear conclusion regarding the role of center-periphery relations in the development of competitive party systems at the national level. Studies conclusively show that the degree of centralization matters in the development of party systems (Chhibber and Kollman 2004; Caramani 2004), but the cases here do not clearly delineate into categories that would explain the outcomes observed. This question can be addressed only by additional research.
The second reason that may explain Japan‟s difference is its homogenous society.
The other cases examined here are diverse, including some of the most diverse in the world. Along with the obvious multiple cleavages in Indian politics, Mexico and Italy had strong regional cleavages based on economic differences and linguistic dialects. The leaderships of Kenya and Tanzania ended democratic elections in part because the ethnic diversity of the countries made party fragmentation – and therefore, for these leaders, the loss of power – quite likely. But the LDP faced none of these challenges; even the economic diversity of the country was fairly limited, or at least easily managed. In future, further development of a theory of dominant party evolution must consider the
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degree of diversity and the presence or advent of politicized cleavages of the society as additional key factors.
3.5 Towards a Theory of Dominant Party Evolution
This chapter did not promise many conclusions about how local political dynamics impact party system evolution. Based on the extant literature of a diverse set of dominant and hegemonic party systems, this chapter noted some apparent general patterns and expectations of how subnational politics influence the evolution of a nationally dominant party system. The next step is to further confirm or disconfirm these patterns by asking whether they can be observed in contemporary South Africa.
Additionally, this examination will contribute to understanding the evolutionary path being followed by South Africa.
The remainder of this chapter summarizes the general patterns that emerged from the literature, and the expectations outlined in this chapter and the last one.
Where a dominant party system became authoritarian, we observe
• a severe and dramatic centralization of power to the national executive;
• a reduction in the number of opportunities for opposition candidacies;
• careful management of where and when opposition candidates win
subnational offices, and mostly passive acceptance of those victories by the
ruling party;
• a steady reduction in the number and importance of the offices won by
opposition;
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• restrictions on media coverage of opposition parties; and
• all of these actions motivated by and justified on the basis of a nationalist
ideology that questions the legitimacy of dissent and debate.
With regards to the growth and success of opposition parties in a dominant party system, the following was seen:
• Socioeconomic and other demographic patterns, along with patterns of
patronage and clientelistic networks, will influence where opposition parties
are likely to develop subnational strongholds.
• Party system change is the result of the strategies of political parties because,
across cases, dominant party system evolution cannot be explained by
demographic change.
• Usually, those opposition strategies that focused on national growth were not
as successful as those that focused on locally-based growth. Japan is an
exception to this, perhaps because of its high degree of centralization or its
low levels of social diversity; only national challenges were successful in
ending one-party dominance there.
• Successful experience governing municipal and state governments builds
opposition viability, and should lead to more opposition victories (i.e.,
Bruhn‟s additive effect).
• An opposition party should find more success in growing if it wins
subnational offices in important, visible places (usually meaning economically
successful urban centers), especially if it can have some influence on how its
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governing actions are portrayed in national media (i.e., Bruhn‟s exponential
effect).
• The emergence of a competitive party system may be a „tipping game‟ where
conditions for a significant change build and then the change seems to occur
suddenly.
Alternatively, if these last four propositions are incorrect, then:
• We should see “repeated and costly efforts to capture local government that
seldom lead to permanent consolidated bases or bigger substantive victories”
(the subtractive effect from Bruhn 1999: 27).
• A smaller-than-usual margin of victory in national elections or losses in
subnational elections can serve to warn the dominant party of its weaknesses.
It can modify policies or seek to co-opt a new group into its coalition in order
to shore up its position before the next elections, thereby removing the basis
for opposition success.
The cases reviewed strongly suggest that the dominant party‟s internal factionalism and the management thereof have serious implications for the development of the party system. Specifically, to remain dominant, defections must be avoided. The following patterns and expectations emerged in the previous two chapters:
• The dominant party‟s factions can have regional bases. Factionalism can also
be driven by disputes between the center and local elites, as the two groups
vie for jurisdiction over particular decisions, policy areas, or resources.
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Therefore, even elite-driven factionalism at the center may have underlying
causes that involve subnational politics.
• Party activists must be confident that coordinating with other factions will pay
off in the long term, that is, that they will have a future chance to regain some
power within the party. When the benefits appear to no longer exist, factions
begin to defect from the dominant party.
• To that end, when there are institutionalized, transparent, accepted methods of
decision making within the dominant party, we should see few defections or
elite splits. Conversely, where poor representation, perceived unfairness, and
a lack of transparency exist, we will see more defections and splits.
• When the national leadership resorts to ad hoc resolutions to subnational
factional conflict, we can predict that such solutions are not sustainable over
the long term.
• Candidate selection for office was a source of disputes in several cases, so
more defections may occur around elections as candidates learn they are not
their party‟s‟ choice.
• There is some suggestion that for defections to matter in the evolution of the
party system, those defecting must remain in politics challenging the ruling
party. If they choose, say, to leave politics and do something else, this will
weaken the dominant party but not contribute to the growth of a competitive
opposition party. As we will see, the evidence for this suggestion is stronger
in the South African case.
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Having outlined these patterns and expectations about dominant party system evolution, this dissertation now changes focus to examine that of the South African party system between about 1999, when politics and democratic institutions had more or less
„normalized‟ after democratization in 1994, and 2009. Which of these patterns can be seen in South Africa, and why?
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Chapter 4: The Shape of South African Politics
4.1 Introduction
I now turn to a contemporary case of one-party dominance, South Africa, to demonstrate the theory laid out in the previous chapters linking elite behavior within the ruling party with the strategies of the opposition. Fifteen years after both dominance and democracy began, which evolutionary path is South Africa following?
This chapter first shows that South Africa is indeed democratic and does not appear likely to de-democratize. The question, then, becomes whether dominance is likely to continue or whether the signs of an emerging competitive party system exist.
The answer to the last part constitutes much of the rest of this dissertation. To that end this chapter also presents some detailed information about South Africa‟s municipal governments and its parties, in order to explain the political terrain. I present an overview of South African political parties‟ platforms, levels and causes of mass support, and the regionalized nature of most of them. This regionalization creates the subnational strongholds described as a necessary first step in Chapter 3 for opposition party growth. I then turn in later chapters to answering the question of evolution: how and why the local party systems are evolving and what impact they have on the country‟s overall political system.
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4.2 Democracy in South Africa
To answer the question of South Africa‟s party system evolution, we must first establish that the country is both democratic and dominant. In Chapter 1 I set forth a definition of democratic dominance in which I argued that at a minimum the country must meet electoral definitions of democracy. That is, there must be regular fair elections, no legal restrictions on parties or political expression, and respect for human rights. However, dominance does cause problems with accountability of elected officials who may not feel sanctioned by the threat of losing re-election.
South Africa fits this description on both counts. It is democratic and has been since the end of whites-only rule in 1994. That is not to say its democracy consistently functions well nor necessarily that democracy is institutionalized and consolidated.
Indeed, there are some reasons for concern, elucidated below, with regards to media freedom and the dissent allowed within the ruling ANC. However, it is clear that South
Africa achieves minimum standards of democratic rule and in some ways exceeds them.
It is not sliding into hegemonic authoritarian rule.
4.2.1 De Jure Democracy: Institutions and Elections
South Africa‟s institutions and procedural rules clearly meet democratic standards
(Lodge 2002: 153). The Constitution creates a strong framework for rule of law, and is considered one of the most progressive in the world vis a vis the rights it enumerates. It has constitutionally-guaranteed free speech, an extremely active civil society, and relatively sound rule of law. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is seen as fair
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and independent, with 72 percent of survey respondents viewing the 2004 election as free and fair and only seven percent saying it was not (February 2009: 58).
The electoral system has “induced virtually all parts of political society to play the electoral game,” with a nearly total absence of anti-system groups (Mattes 2002: 24).
Political violence was rampant in the years leading up to the first democratic elections, but has steadily decreased in the subsequent 15 years. Leading up to the 1994 elections, it was estimated that hundreds of people were killed in political violence, mostly between
ANC and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) supporters in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). In 1999, deaths totaled less than 300 in the five months leading up to the election (Piombo 2005b:
251). Friedman (2005) explains this reduction in violence by noting that where the ANC has consolidated its dominance, intimidation is not necessary to win. The ANC – notably now-President Jacob Zuma – brokered peace KZN and tread very carefully for years in traditional IFP strongholds. For example, in the 2006 municipal elections campaign, it sent national and provincial leaders into the heart of the Zulu kingdom instead of allowing local leaders to campaign there.
Piombo (2005b) argues that where party dominance extends to a particular subnational arena, “the only problem remaining [with regards to violence] could be when despondent opposition supporters resort to intimidation and violence to prevent the ruling party from winning” (252). Opposition supporters have largely not done so.
However, in the subnational areas where the dominant party has not consolidated its dominance, some political violence continues. In 1999, in addition to the clashes between ANC and IFP supporters, violent flashpoints expanded to include places where
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the United Democratic Movement (UDM) was having some success in challenging the
ANC. Despite these ongoing areas of concern, by 2004 the election was considered
“routine” and “boring” (Piombo 2005b: 252-253).
Incidents of political violence and intimidation now are isolated and almost always occur during election campaigns, and appear to happen where ANC‟s dominance is not well-established. In 1999 and 2004, these included the Western Cape and KZN, along with areas of Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape where the United Democratic
Movement (UDM) appeared strong (Piombo 2005b: 252-3). In 2007, the UDM‟s one
Cape Town municipal councilor and, by dint of the UDM‟s membership in the Multi-
Party Coalition, the city‟s Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, was subject to death threats and was forced to move his family and travel with a security detail.1
Other potentially violent political forces did not materialize after the democratic transition. The Pan African Congress (PAC), the party which broke with the ANC in the
1959 over the ANC‟s adoption of a nonracial stance and subsequently became a more radical and militant anti-apartheid movement, accepted the democratic order and stands for elections. Its approach to contemporary politics is perhaps encapsulated by its reaction to the Cape Town Council coalition in 2006. It too found ANC governance in the city problematic, but could not bring itself to join the multiparty coalition given its composition. So the PAC remained neutral on the Council, abstaining from votes for the mayor.
1 Interview, D. Ximbi, 12 February 2007; also author‟s observation of speech by Helen Zille, Cape Town Council Meeting, 21 January 2007.
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Of more concern in the 1990s were white groups that resisted the end of apartheid. But they too accepted the new democratic order, or became politically insignificant. For the former group, parties such as the Freedom Front and Afrikaner
Eenheidsbeweging (AEB) were convinced to stand for election. Later they dropped their demands for political autonomy, opting instead for a platform seeking cultural rights
(Naidu and Manqele 2005: 212). The two parties merged to form Freedom Front Plus
(FF+), and later even accepted ministerial positions in the ANC national government.
Among the latter, the more extreme elements of the white rightwing, particularly the
Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) led by Eugene Terre‟Blanche, embarrassed themselves with a botched and bloody attempt at militarized action, lost most of their public support, and retreated into self-imposed isolation in a limited number of rural communities. The threat of violence from the white right-wing more or less evaporated.
After the 2000 municipal elections, exit polls showed “more than 90 percent of voters concurred that the election was free and fair.”2 During the 2004 campaign, the largest concern of political parties was vandalism of their campaign posters, rather than the threats, intimidation, and violence that occurred in earlier elections (Kabemba 2005:
98, 103). With the threat of political violence significantly lessened, election disputes between parties are resolved through a clear and institutionalized appeal process. For example, in 2004 the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) challenged the allocation of seats, arguing that it should have been given a seat that had been assigned to the Azanian People‟s Organization. The IEC heard from both parties, ruled the ACDP
2 Cyril Madlala. “IEC should take a bow for its role in elections.” Independent on Saturday. 9 December 2000. P. 9
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was correct, and changed the seat allocation (Fick 2005: 163). Further, in 2004 14 organizations from 27 African countries observed the election and all declared it free and fair (159); larger international organizations declined to monitor the election on the grounds that they were confident in South Africa‟s ability to hold a free election
(Kabemba 99). The Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) concluded the elections were “peaceful, orderly, efficient and transparent” (qtd in Fick 159). Those responsible for the rule of law surrounding elections appear committed to and capable of upholding it.
Because of its dominance, the decisions of the ruling party, the African National
Congress (ANC), are key to the functioning of the South African regime. In this regard, too, South African democracy seems relatively secure. The ANC has not engaged in widespread manipulation of institutions and electoral rules to the degree seen in the one- party dominant systems that became authoritarian. It does enjoy what McElwain calls
“hyper-incumbency advantages” (see Chapter 2). Perhaps the largest advantage among these is the lack of regulation or disclosure requirement of private contributions to political parties. It is widely assumed that the ruling party receives contributions from businesses looking for favorable relationships with the government (Kabemba 102;
Tshitereke 2002).
While this situation raises serious questions about corruption and therefore the quality of democracy in South Africa, the institutional environment is otherwise democratic. For example, the ANC has not moved to limit free speech or free association. Indeed, when it held enough seats in Parliament to enable it to change the
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constitution without the support of any other party, between 2004 and 2009, it largely refrained from doing so. This restraint is in stark contrast to the constitutional changes implemented by the soon-to-be one-party states of Africa in the 1960s, described in
Chapter 2, in which opposition parties‟ activities were curtailed and then made illegal.
The exceptions to the ANC‟s self-restraint in changing the constitution were also the only significant changes to electoral law in the past decade, first creating floor- crossing provisions in 2002 and eliminating them in 2008. The initial proposal for floor- crossing came from the opposition Democratic Alliance, although it was implemented only when the ruling ANC needed the provision to facilitate its absorption of the New
National Party. Twice during South Africa‟s two-week terms, elected officials could switch parties and retain their seats, thereby changing the party competition of the legislative body in question from that determined by the closed-list PR electoral system.
Floor crossings consistently and significantly benefited the ANC, since if any defection from a particular party were to be permitted, at least ten percent of that party needed to defect. Therefore, floor-crossing disproportionately affected small parties and often resulted in the ANC gaining a majority in a legislative body where it did not previously (Nijzink and Piombo 2005: 79-82; Booysen 2006). As floor-crossing benefited the ANC, and proved deeply unpopular with both the public and opposition political elites, we can understand its later elimination as responsive to their opinions and therefore as a commitment to democracy.
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4.2.2 De Facto Democracy: In Practice
Beyond its institutional framework, democracy in South Africa functions relatively soundly. There are some problems with much reduced but still present political violence, self-censorship by the media, and tensions within the ruling party over issues of succession. But South Africa also has “a vibrant civil society and an embedded protest culture” (Freedom House 2007). Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has become politically stable, with an unlikely absence of significant anti-system forces, and economically sound according to Washington Consensus standards (Butler 2008: 36-7).
I have argued that we can see dominant parties sliding into authoritarianism when they change laws and rules to limit opposition and the expression of pluralism both within and outside of the ruling party. Because of the ANC‟s liberation origins, many observers were – and are – concerned that South Africa would follow this path. Southall
(2003: 55) summarizes the fear:
Ottaway, writing before 1994, argued that the ANC‟s transition from a liberation movement to a political party would be difficult. Liberation movements inhabit environments which are uncongenial for democracy, while also stressing unity, rejecting partisan divisions and promoting the illusion that they stand for an entire nation. In contrast, political parties operating in a democratic environment do not pretend to represent an entire nation, but particular constituencies. „Transition to democracy is not impossible, but neither is the much less attractive alternative of another form of authoritarianism‟ (Ottaway 1991: 82).
However, to date in South Africa, while there is hostility to opposition, it does not reach the severity seen in those countries that abandoned democracy in favor of the continued power of the ruling party. Remember that in the soon-to-be hegemonic party regimes, the exigencies of development and nationalism led to a belief that any public dissent was illegitimate. In South Africa, the dominant party‟s rhetoric is critical of the
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opposition, including some ANC leaders publicly questioning the legitimacy of opposition given the legitimacy of the ANC derived from its liberation credentials
(Schrire 2001). However, legal restraints on formal opposition, with regards to free speech, organizing, or standing for election, are not different than standards applied in other democracies. The ANC‟s approach to opposition outside of the party, while not friendly, does not reach authoritarian levels.
Przeworski (1991: 10) defines democracy as a system “in which parties lose elections.” In dominant party systems, by definition, one party does not lose national elections. But if the system is democratic, it will lose subnational ones. I argued in
Chapter 3 that one way to recognize a hegemonic party fixing elections so that opposition parties won, to gain the ruling party the legitimacy accompanying „democratic‟ elections, is to look at the degree of ferocity with which the ruling party fought the election and its reaction to losing. If the national leadership appears complacent about losing an election where it previously won, it is likely it orchestrated its defeat purposefully. If it fought hard in the election campaign – say, for example, prominent national leaders campaigned for the local candidate – or quickly adopted the role of a confrontational opposition – say, by asking tough questions in the state legislature – then we can assume the national ruling party did not wish to lose the subnational election.
In South Africa, it is clear the ANC does not wish to lose anywhere it has grown accustomed to governing, and it also seeks to extend its rule to the subnational opposition strongholds. Members of the national leadership often campaign for the party in local elections, with the particular leader carefully selected to appeal best to the voters in a
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particular place. Since losing the city government of Cape Town in 2006, the ANC devoted a great deal of effort attempting to gain control of it again. These failed efforts will be described in more detail below, but it is clear that the ANC did not intend to lose nor did it restrain itself in competing for it in the future. Cape Town is but the most prominent of many examples of such behavior by the ANC. Therefore, the competitiveness of several South African subnational elections indicates the regime is democratic.
We can also ascertain the potential for an authoritarian shift by examining the capabilities and behavior of opposition parties. Part of the argument of Chapter 2 is that single-party systems are more likely when there are few independent sources of organization or financial support outside of the ruling party as this makes co-optation or elimination much easier. This condition does not obtain in South Africa, where (some) opposition parties have independent resources and a significant degree of organizational strength. These differences, in comparison to the hegemonic party regimes on the continent, are likely to South Africa‟s more developed economy, greater urbanization, and active civil society. Again, as stated in Chapter 3, the role of modernization levels in the evolution of dominant party systems must be addressed in future research.
None of this confirmation of the existence of a democratic regime is to say that there are not a lot of reasons for concern about the quality of that democracy. Freedom
House dropped South Africa‟s score to from 1.5 to 2 in 2007 and 2008 (Freedom House
2008, 2009). In and of itself, this drop does not signal a clear movement towards authoritarianism. On the Freedom House scale, a 2 is still „free.‟ Note, for comparison‟s
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sake, that Mexico‟s score improved to a 2.5 when it democratized in 2000. However, the reasoning provided for South Africa‟s drop in score indicates the weak areas in its democracy.
First, a free and vibrant press exists in South Africa, but it has come under increasing pressure in recent years. The state-owned SABC, from which most South
Africans get their news, operated independently. Beginning in 2006, however, this independence came under attack, with the government putting pressure on executives over editorial decisions and evidence emerging that critics of the government had been barred from appearing on the SABC‟s programs. The latter problem was revealed by the independent Mail & Guardian newspaper, becoming one of a series of issues over which the government asked the courts to prohibit publication of stories embarrassing to it. In
2007, after a similar dispute with the Sunday Times, Mbeki‟s “political allies participated in the purchase of the newspaper‟s parent company” (Freedom House 2008). The Times remains critical of Mbeki‟s opponents – now ascendant – within the ANC. Again, while there are clearly threats to media independence in South Africa, thus far they have not reached authoritarian levels: the ruling party does not shut down media outlets, jail journalists, change laws to prevent the publication of stories critical of it, or compromise the independence of the judiciary when it is deciding on matters pertaining to the media.
Observers should be concerned about the quality of South African democracy, not regime survival.
Second, further concern is prompted by South Africa‟s weakening rule of law and frequent corruption scandals. The judiciary is independent, although it and the National
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Prosecuting Authority did not handle ANC then-Deputy President Jacob Zuma‟s corruption and rape trials well. Although laws and institutions to prevent corruption do exist, enforcement of anti-corruption laws among public servants is lacking. Given scarce resources along with the legacy of bribery and nepotism inherited from the apartheid and, especially, homeland governments, none of this is terribly surprising.
Still, for most South Africans, the legal system works fairly and equally, if much too slowly.
Several large corruption scandals have emerged among elites, most notably one involving alleged kickbacks from a murky arms deal, one involving inflated travel expenses for legislators, and an oil deal under the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq
(Feinstein 2007). Among the general public, as seen in Table 4.1, perceptions of corruption fell from late-1990s peaks of around 50 percent saying local government officials were corrupt. In 2004, about 20 to 25 percent of the public said these officials engaged in corruption (Afrobarometer 2006 No. 43). Disturbingly, by 2006 large numbers of South Africans said that “„all‟ or „most‟ local government councilors (44 percent) or council officials (45 percent) are „involved in corruption‟” (Mattes 2008:
123). Twice as many respondents think local government councilors and officials corrupt than think national-level officials are (Afrobarometer 2006 No. 43).
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Table 4.1: South Africans’ Perceptions of Government Corruption 1997 2000 2002 2004 2006 National officials 50 45 - 21 36 National MPs 41 50 22 24 26 Office of the President 25 - 13 18 22 Local officials 44 46 23 23 45 Local councilors - - 22 24 45 Percentages are those saying “all” or “most” of each group are corrupt. Sources: Mattes, Chikwanha, and Magezi 2004; Afrobarometer 2006 No. 43.
These patterns are confirmed by other surveys. Researchers conducting the
Opinion Leader Survey of elites and drawing upon the World Values Survey find an even higher proportion of the public – just over 50 percent – thinks that most or all elected representatives are corrupt (see Table 4.2).
Table 4.2: Elite (2007) and public (2006) perceptions of corruption (percents)
Table from Kotzé and Steenekamp 2009: 112.
Comparatively, South Africans‟ views of corruption are mixed when compared to other countries. By 2008, 34 percent of South Africans perceived local councilors to be corrupt, sixth highest among the 20 African countries surveyed by the Afrobarometer and
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higher than these countries‟ mean of 26 percent (Bratton 2010: 14). However, when asked if they have personally “had to pay a bribe, give a gift, or do a favor to a government official,” only eight percent of South Africans said they had. This percentage makes South Africa the ninth best in the Afrobarometer sample (Bratton
2010: 18).
These conclusions regarding corruption in South Africa rely upon South Africans‟ own judgments of the situation. International judgment is less harsh. According to Kotzé and Steenekamp (2009: 110-1), Transparency International moved South Africa
from being 21st of 54 countries in 1995 to 34th of 90 in 2000. On a ten-point scale where 10 ranked the highest level (i.e. closest to „corruption free‟), South Africa scored 5.68 in 1996 and dropped down to 5.0 in 2000. The 2007 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) shows that South Africa is producing better results in the fight against corruption, with a CPI score of 5.1, a global ranking of 43 (of 179 countries) and 2nd on the African continent, behind Botswana (with a CPI score of 5.4) – the only two African countries to achieve a score above 5.
Thus we can once again conclude that while South Africa‟s democratic and legal institutions struggle to meet ideal standards, they do not fail to reach minimum standards of good governance.
Third and finally, the ruling party‟s attitude to inter-party opposition causes concern for some, and yet in the end it does adhere to the rule of law. One of the more concerning incidents in South Africa‟s democracy occurred in 2006 and 2007 when the
ANC-controlled Western Cape provincial government challenged the right of the non-
ANC Cape Town municipal government to govern the city. I will discuss this episode extensively in Chapter 6, so for now I will make two points. The first is that the motivation for these challenges had much more to do with internal ANC politics than it did with interparty relationships. However, one could argue that it does not matter why
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these challenges were made, because if they had succeeded they would have a chilling effect on opposition. This objection leads to the second point: the challenges did not succeed. When the province‟s actions were contested in the court system, the courts ruled against the ANC and the ANC accepted the decisions. Further, the ANC did not change the relevant established rules and laws, even though this episode occurred while the ANC had the requisite two-thirds majority of the National Assembly needed to change the Constitution. This demonstrates that the institutions are democratic, and the judiciary remains independent. Further, the challenges stopped when the center – the top
ANC leadership – told the province to stop its attacks on the Cape Town government. So while antidemocratic actions were attempted, both the dominant party‟s leadership
(belatedly) and the democratic institutions (consistently) prevented their success.
South African democracy has proved to be far from perfect, but resilient.
Institutions necessary for democracy such as the judiciary and elections are independent, and rights such as freedom of speech and assembly are exercised routinely. These aspects are sufficiently institutionalized that they have withstood and corrected the excesses of those in power. Unlike in Kenya and Tanzania in earlier eras, the ruling party does not appear to be ending the constitutional order.
4.2.3 Parallel Centralization of the Dominant Party and the State
As Chapter 3 made clear, the degree of centralization of both the state and of the ruling party does impact the evolution of a dominant party system. I suggested that
Japan‟s party system evolution may have proceeded differently than other dominant party
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systems because of the country‟s higher degree of fiscal centralization. In less centralized systems, opposition parties can use subnational victories to build experience and gain resources that can then be used to pose more challenges to the dominant party.
In South Africa the “parallel centralization” of both the state and the dominant party represents another notable problem for the quality of South African democracy
(Butler 2008: 45; see also Gevisser 2009: 269-270). In one-party dominant systems, the ruling party and the state can become significantly entwined, with individuals and organizational structures sometimes fulfilling both roles. In South Africa, this blurring of the line between state and party was further exacerbated by a shift of power to the top leadership of both.
For the state, observers have noted the removal of power from provinces, ascribing these shifts to the ANC‟s desire to remove the power of opposition parties which held two provincial governments and later to the ANC‟s leadership‟s desire to shore up their own positions vis a vis provincial-based intraparty rivals such as when
Mbeki removed then-Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga from his position (Gumede
2009: 42). Power, resources, and responsibility were shifted to the center and to municipalities, where Dickovick (2006) points out demographics suggested the ANC would more easily stave off electoral challenges from opposition parties than it did in provincial elections. This interpretation is not without controversy; many within the
ANC would argue either that such a shift in power did not happen or that it was necessary given the particulars of economic development and the importance of local knowledge in achieving development. But if Dickovick is correct – and many would argue he is – then
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changes to state structures were motivated by political considerations (see also Gumede
2009: 41-43; Southall 2008: 4-5). I posit that these sorts of adjustments may well benefit the dominant party and further the cause of its continued power, but much as McElwain concluded the LDP‟s manipulation of electoral laws did not end Japanese democracy, so I argue that South Africa‟s institutional adjustments are not in and of themselves undemocratic. Every sphere of government involved in these machinations is elected.3
The level of party discipline and dissent permitted within the ruling party is an important factor in the functioning of democracy in a dominant party system and therefore in how it evolves. If most politics are determined by one party, then the internal processes of that party become key to understanding the nature of politics. According to widespread reports, the ANC leadership became increasingly intolerant of dissent within the party in the fifteen years after it came to power. ANC centralization has occurred at both the de jure and de facto levels. In 1997, ANC internal rules were changed to strengthen the power of the National Executive Committee, adding responsibilities such as the selection of mayors rather than allowing local party structures to select candidates
(Gumede 2009: 42). The NEC derives its power from party conferences, which were moved from every three years to every five (Lodge 2002: 161). In theory these conferences are attended by delegates chosen by local party branches, providing
3 Dickovick‟s analysis that power shifted away from the provinces to the center and to the municipalities raises a series of fascinating questions for future research. Chhibber and Kollman (2004) show that increases in centralization causes party aggregation across subnational divisions. If Dickovick can be shown to be correct – he does not include a quantitative analysis such as Chhibber and Kollman‟s and other scholars‟ similar ones (e.g., Caramani 2004 and Morgenstern, Swindle, and Castagnola 2009 ) – then such shifts in power create another layer of power relationship shifts that have not been examined. Further, the questions of centralization of government and the nationalization of the party system have not been asked about South Africa‟s developing party system, nor have they been asked with regards to their specific effects in dominant party system evolution.
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representative accountability from below, but in practice the control of branches may be influenced or even decided by those much higher in the party organization. Anthony
Butler (2008: 45) makes the point that such actions are both positive and negative for democratic values:
On the one hand, the ANC head office in Luthuli House has controlled factionalism, neutralized ethnic and racial politics, regulated careerism, secured economic orthodoxy, and turned the ANC into a professional mechanism of electoral competition. On the other hand, centralization has been used to stifle debate, impose favoured candidates, and control competition for office so relentlessly that a backlash on the part of branch activists and provincial structures became inevitable.
Political intrigue also surrounds the ANC. Its “internal politics is . . . secretive, hostile to open debate and to the media, and increasingly paranoid in character – one discussion document suggests there are „forces opposed to transformation‟ seeking to sabotage change . . .” (Butler 2008: 43, quoting from ANC 2000). By about 2002, the centralization of the ANC combined with Mbeki‟s propensity for promoting only his close allies – from whom he apparently demanded absolute loyalty – made the relative strength of the ANC‟s factions much more important than it had been before (Gumede
2005). As will be described fully in the next two chapters, the increasing intolerance for pluralism within the ANC affected opposition fortunes along with the overall functioning of democracy in the country.
In summary, South African democracy is certainly not perfect, but it functions about as well as democracy in similar states, that is, newly democratic, multiethnic societies at middle levels of income and high inequality. One clear sign of the continued democraticness of South Africa is the existence of competitive party systems on the local level, despite clear signs that the ANC fervently wishes to extend its dominance to
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include those places. In this way, South Africa differs from competitive authoritarian regimes such as Mexico under the PRI (see Levitsky and Way 2002, Greene 2007). It is widely acknowledged that the PRI allowed opposition parties to win elections at the local and state level, in order to appear democratic despite the PRI‟s complete control of the electoral process. Conversely, the ANC competes intensely for local and provincial offices and does not display such acceptance of losses.
Several commentators have pointed to the ANC‟s continued quest to increase its share of representative bodies and offices it holds as evidence of its lack of commitment to democracy and representativeness. They argue that given how much of government it already controls, seeking any more can only be the aim of power-hungry autocrats.
However, as Trounstine (2006) points out, minimum winning coalitions are rational only once a coalition is “entrenched in government and competition has been severely reduced” (881). Until then, reducing the size and scope of the ruling coalition only gives a potential challenger less of an electoral obstacle to overcome. Thus seeking the continued broadening of the ANC‟s coalition is not in and of itself undemocratic. The facts are that opposition parties do win in many places and there are also signs of competition among ANC factions locally. The democratic regime continues to function despite the complications posed by the party system. It is to this system, and its component parties, that I now turn.
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4.3 Political Parties in Democratic South Africa
To explain the evolutionary path followed by the South African regime and party system, we must understand what constitutes that party system. For parties to play their potentially “fundamental role in democratization,” they should “comprise a legitimate, stable procedural mechanism for the alternation of power and the representation of majority and minority interests” (Lai and Melkonian-Hoover 2005: 552; see also
Ostrogorski 1902; Huntington 1968; Aldrich 1995). These mechanisms and representational goals make it important to understand parties‟ ideological positions and the degree of organization.
However, a party system is not simply the parties that compete, but “clearly involves something more than the sum of its component (party) parts, and incorporates some element of the understanding of the mode of interaction between these parties”
(Mair 1997: 51). A party system is not only the number of effective parties or the volatility of their electoral support, although those are important component measures. It is also “the system of interactions resulting from inter-party competition. . . how each party is a function . . . of the other parties and reacts, competitively or otherwise, to the other parties” (Sartori 2005[1976]: 39).
Party strategies are influenced by the likelihood for cooperation, either out of necessity (if election results require a governing coalition be formed) or out of a desire to see similar policy outcomes. Both these possibilities are influenced by the ideological positions taken by parties. While the precise evolution of parties‟ positions and strategies will be explored in depth in later chapters, it is valuable to begin the discussion with the
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broad outlines of South African parties and the party system in which they operate.
Further, most of the opposition parties have regionalized support. Since this support both creates subnational strongholds and potentially limits their growth if the regionalization is because of a geographically-limited niche appeal, these patterns will also be described.
4.3.1 The Dominant Party: Broad Coalition, Limited Expression
Democratic dominant parties are parties that embrace liberal democratic principles but nevertheless successfully maintain national electoral majorities for multiple terms. They often do this by building large coalitions of interests and groups, resembling congress parties as described in Chapter 2. Their “electoral appeal is to national unity and integration rather than division, to ethnic sharing and coexistence.” But “at the local level [a congress party] may share some organizational features and programmatic commitments with the ethnic party (such as the distribution of benefits through a vast array of patron–client networks)” (Gunther and Diamond 2003: 184-5). Because they bring together so many interests, dominant parties frequently suffer from a high degree of factionalism.
True to its name, South Africa‟s ruling ANC indeed is an ideal type congress party. The ANC claims it is a “broad church” of disparate interests and groups, purportedly united in vague programmatic goals such as political and social equality, economic growth, and democratic consolidation. It has thus far successfully built a cross-class coalition of business interests, the working class, and the unemployed and informally employed poor (Seekings 2005b). Since 1994 the ANC has participated in a
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pre-election alliance with the national union association COSATU and the South African
Communist Party (SACP). This Tripartite Alliance has operated effectively as a means of co-opting the left into the ANC‟s structures, even while the elected leadership shifted the country‟s economic policies towards neoliberalism. One ANC leader in Durban noted that there were large parts of the ANC that hold economic positions closer to those of several opposition parties than those of the unions and the SACP.4 This takes policy space from opposition parties; when asked what the ANC‟s successes are, opposition representatives say their macroeconomic policies.5 Gumede goes further, describing the
ANC as “a party with more liberal values than the Democratic Alliance, even if this fact .
. . is fiercely contested by the ANC leadership” (2005: 128).
The Tripartite Alliance is only part of the ANC‟s “promiscuous” partnerships with other parties and with community groups and non-governmental organizations, in which it “expects its partners to represent but also to control – to make representations to the ANC but at the same time to refrain from public denigration of the movement and its representatives in government” (Butler 2008: 39).
Mbeki, since becoming party president in 1997, has sought to “modernize” the party, transforming it from a movement to a centralized bureaucracy following a business model in pursuit of a social democratic agenda modeled on the German SDP or Britain‟s
New Labour. Creating the party‟s first permanent election office was part of the goal to create “a more efficient structure, streamlined to wind down between elections and
4 Interview. Senior Durban ANC councilor. 7 March 2007. 5 Interviews. Cape Town DA Councilor, 9 February 2007a; Cape Town DA Councilor, 22 February 2007a; Senior Durban DA councilor, 8 August 2008.
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ratchet up at ballot time” (Gumede 2005: 124, 126). The goal was to transform the ANC from a liberation movement into a party, one that would closely follow what Gunther and
Diamond (2003: 179) call a pluralist class-mass party that, while it seeks
to proselytize prospective members or voters, indoctrination and the demand for ideological conformity are minimal. While social integration through the activities of party and trade union allies is a significant objective, the party is primarily concerned with winning elections and taking part in the formation of governments. Recruitment of members is quite open, and the larger the party‟s mass base, the better, given the party‟s primary concern with securing electoral majorities and its traditional reliance on electoral mobilization through the activities of members.
However, Mbeki‟s modernizing, electorally-focused goals for the party were at odds with the much of the party base‟s ideologies and activities, and some commentators have declared the transition a failure (Fikeni 2009: 4). In 2002, party branches were forced to reorganize to align with municipal ward boundaries. This required the merger of smaller branches, rivalries for the resulting fewer leadership positions, and in many cases, the collapse of ANC activity in some areas (Gumede 2009: 43). Some branches are all but non-existent. Some branches are active only during campaigns, mobilizing to increase voter registration and turnout (Butler 2008: 38). Others are organized and independent enough to operate independently when they wish, as when particular branches protest against the party hierarchy‟s decisions.
Much commentary on post-1994 South African politics has focused on the political hegemony of the ANC and the maximization of its power through the concentration of central authority despite some constitutionally-defined devolution of powers (see Southall 2001; Mattes 2002; Piombo 2005a; Lodge 2006). Recall the importance of centralization for the evolution of a dominant party system. Until late
2007, all ANC legislators and executives owed their positions to the party‟s eight-
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member National Executive Committee, through its de facto control of candidate selection processes for the closed-list proportional representation elected positions. For example, in 2004, the ANC did not even bother to name its candidates for several provincial positions, including multiple provinces‟ premierships, until after the election.
The party simply ran – and won – based on its national reputation. The ANC‟s internal rules often “effectively close down dissent within the party” (Giliomee and Simkins
1999: 11) and in recent years appeared to many to be used to stop grassroots critics of
Mbeki from gaining ground (Mattes 2002: 25; Gumede 2005; Gevisser 2009: 325). As we will see in Chapter 6, such centralized control became the basis for the most serious intraparty revolt the ANC had faced in decades, and therefore an important dynamic in the evolution of the South African party system.
Controversy frequently erupted when a local ANC branch‟s nominated candidate was vetoed by the ANC hierarchy. The leadership did some of this for reasons compatible with liberal democracy, such as ensuring representation of women and minorities. Candidate lists were also changed in response to misconduct (e.g., corruption); if the local branch supported such a candidate because of patron-client relationships, the national leadership would step in to remove him or her from power
(Butler 2008: 45; Kagwanja 2009: xxi). Local factionalism could then result, as the rejected candidate may have stood as an independent or quickly organized his own party
(Ndletyana 2007). Usually the ANC‟s candidate still won (Langfield 2008).
As a result, occasionally a local ANC branch objected to these decisions to the point of organizing an alternative slate under an alternative (local) party name. In one
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case Ndletyana describes, a longtime community activist successfully stood as an independent after becoming unhappy with being passed over for higher office within the
ANC organization. Such people tend to deny that they opposed the ANC “as an organization” (104), instead maintaining that they object to its top-down decision- making. Gumede relates how a “secret internal investigation in 2000 showed that many
ANC members viewed the national deployment committee with deep suspicion, and concluded that „The composition and work of the deployment committee is viewed with suspicion and as jobs for pals” (2005: 145). Because of the level of controversy, the committee was disbanded in 2002. However, the broader pattern of the central leadership intervening in the selection of candidates and appointments of officials, to “rein in
„unruly‟ regions and branches,” did not stop (Kagwanja 2009: xxi; Gumede 2005: 146-
148).
Much unhappiness with ANC programmatic stances or policy outcomes center on failures of “delivery” of state-provided goods like access to water, electricity, sanitation, and housing. “Delivery protests,” demanding better government function and responsiveness and less corruption, have become a frequent occurrence, with over 6000 nationwide in 2006 (Letsholo 2006: 5; Atkinson 2007). In Moutse the electoral and legislative coalition between the ANC and the South African Communist Party collapsed over economic policy, with the local SACP leaders defying the (official) position of their national leadership and standing for election as independents (Ndletyana 2007). In
Khutsong, residents engaged in violent protests, including fire-bombing ANC municipal councilors‟ houses, when town was rezoned from Gauteng province (perceived to be
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better functioning) to Northwest. In a boycott of the 2006 election, only 123 votes were cast. Factionalism prevents some councils from functioning and so has rendered some municipalities “virtually ungoverned” (Southall 2008: 14).
Note that an important distinction must be made between political elite behavior – here, the choices and strategies of municipal council candidates – and the electorate‟s choices. The ANC has strong norms of loyalty among its activists and supporters. Even if an activist decides to defy ANC decisions, overcoming ANC party loyalty among voters may prove an insurmountable obstacle to (re)election. The vast majority of municipalities rocked by „delivery protests‟ leading up to the 2006 municipal elections still re-elected majority-ANC councils (Atkinson 2007: 54). (Note it is unknown if this paradoxical pattern is also true of the specific wards where protests occurred.) Protesting the ANC does not necessarily translate into voting for one of its opponents or otherwise holding ANC representatives accountable for delivery failures.
Several new civic movements have emerged to protest the lack of delivery, such as the Concerned Citizens Forum in Durban, which files court challenges against evictions and has marched on municipal councilors‟ houses, and the Anti-Eviction
Campaign in Cape Town, which stages sit-ins and occupations of empty homes (Gumede
2005: 280-2). So far, however, these and similar organizations across South Africa have largely eschewed participating in formal politics, preferring mass demonstrations and seeking redress in the courts. On the rare occasions they have participated in electoral politics, they have won very rarely (Friedman 2005: 17). If these patterns were to
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change, the new civics could potentially be a formidable opponent on the ANC‟s left
(Gumede 2005: 283-289).
As with so many other dominant parties, the ANC is accused of clientelist practices and the party‟s organizational structures lend themselves to the development of patronage networks. Jobs in government have become a key part of the party‟s coalition building. The activists of the ANC tapped for elected or administrative office
generally do not have well-established professions or trust funds to fall back on once they leave public service, and their incomes often support ten or more people.6 Not only their livelihoods but the well-being of their families and their fragile new status in the middle class . . . depended on the maintenance of the status quo [within the ANC. In 2002,] even if they were unhappy with Mbeki, they acted in their own interests and returned him to the leadership of the ANC and thus of the country. (Gevisser 2009: 308)
During Mbeki‟s presidency, leadership positions were awarded and taken away on the basis of loyalty to Mbeki (Gumede 2005, 2009; Butler 2008: 46; Fikeni 2009), as part of the Marxist-Leninist model of democratic centralism the exile wing learned during the apartheid years (Gevisser 2009: 325). Notably, when top leaders fell afoul of Mbeki, many were “redeployed” to the business world. Former ANC Secretary General Cyril
Ramaphosa, former Gauteng premier Tokyo Sexwale, and former Mpumalanga premier
Mathews Phosa – all once potential rivals of Mbeki‟s for the presidency – all became incredibly wealthy after leaving government in the mid to late 1990s (Gumede 2005:
225). They were pushed out of the top level of politics, but did not pursue political
6 Ward councilors come from the ward they represent; in poor wards, community activists are often tapped for the position. This creates a large cohort who is not necessarily, for example, computer literate. Wealthier municipalities such as Cape Town have instituted training programs for councilors to try to increase their skills. NGOs also provide such programs to municipal councilors (Interviews. Cape Town DA Councilor, 22 February 2007a; Durban NGO executive, 9 March 2007).
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careers elsewhere, not even after they accummulated resources that would have made doing so easy.
The party is also accused of using state resources to further its political battles with external opponents. It is widely believed that the ANC “is adept at building new clinics and schools in areas where it is electorally threatened, such as the Eastern Cape in
1999” (Seekings 2005b: 31). In 2009, allegations surfaced that personnel from the
Department of Social Development were providing food packages to potential voters in several provinces, on behalf of the ANC (Semple 2009). The ANC ideology and electoral campaigns promise development and the delivery of public goods and social welfare. However, given limited resources, decisions must be made about whom and where will receive such spending first, and it is at this stage that politics enter the calculation. One opposition politician described the ANC moving supporters into opposition-held wards to shift the electoral map, but that it rarely follows up by providing state services commensurate with those provided in ANC-supporting wards – because the ward is held by an opposition party.7 In his study of the Cape Town township of
Guguletu, Staniland (2008) found that personal ties to ward councilors and informal street committees are often necessary to receive benefits such as public housing or a job.
Mass protests have occurred where patronage decisions are perceived to be “too large, obvious, or unfair” (54). It does not appear that those protesting object to the general principle that those who participate in community organizations will benefit from state
7 Senior Durban DA councilor, 8 August 2008.
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patronage, but rather that they object when the accepted norms of patronage distribution are violated.
While the national organization will remove particularly corrupt candidates from electoral lists as described above, it does not do so consistently. After all, it is sometimes advantageous to gain the support of a local leader by co-opting him into the party, even if said leader is a less than ideal representative (Butler 2008: 41). As a result, there are widespread reports, especially in rural areas, of local officials driving expensive vehicles paid for with public funds, while none of their municipalities‟ governance goals are met
(Letsholo 2006; Southall 2008: 12-14; Atkinson 2008). Similarly, “an alarming number of ANC politicians, especially in far-flung provinces and local councils, have abused their positions to enrich friends, family members, and themselves. … the usual response has been for ANC leaders to close ranks and dismiss whistleblowers as opponents of transformation” (Gumede 2005: 238).8 The problem leading up to the 2006 local elections, according to one newspaper, was that the ANC “had presided over the near collapse of local government over the past five years.”9
Along with the centralization of authority during the Mbeki era (1999-2009), the
ANC is increasingly factionalized. Some of its divisions are formal, like the Tripartite
Alliance. More recently, from 2007 through 2009, the ANC experienced a tense fight between less well-defined factions over the leadership succession. The two sides are divided by a series of coinciding cleavages and views – including splits along lines of
8 Opposition parties also engage in such behavior, both allegedly and proven. In Cape Town in 2001, for example, the DA (particularly the Coloured NNP representatives, see below) and an African Party member allegedly “were using their influence in [public] housing allocations in Cape Town to buy votes and favour family members” (Lodge 2003: 127). 9 Business Day. 9 January 2006. Quoted in Southall 2008: 12.
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economic ideology, ethnicity and race, generational, apartheid-era exiles versus those who remained in the country (“inxiles”), foreign policy with respect to Zimbabwe, decision-making models (centralized and efficient leadership versus grassroots internal democracy) – as well as by loyalties to their respective camps and leaders, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Since Zuma‟s victory in the succession vote in December 2008, several
Mbeki loyalists have been replaced in their government posts.
4.3.2 Opposition Parties: Fragmentation from Ideology and Identity
I now turn to the opposition parties, to describe their platforms and support bases, so that we can understand the strategies they have employed, how and where they concentrate their election efforts, and how these strategies affect the evolution of the overall party system. Opposition in South Africa is highly fragmented (see Table 4.3), following the pattern set by the rest of Africa, of party systems with many parties existing in the legislature but one party enjoying an outright majority (Mozaffar and Scarritt 2005; on South Africa specifically see Southall 1998). For the most part, as described above, most of the South African ideological spectrum is covered by the ANC and its alliance with the left. Therefore, in the first decade or more of democracy, most parties struggled to differentiate their policy preference from each other and from the ruling party, tending to adopt “a vague populism during elections, and pitch their campaigns around their opposition to corruption, services for the population and general, if vague, promises of a better future” (van de Walle 2003: 304). For all parties, the pressing issues include unemployment, poverty, the delivery of government services, crime, and corruption.
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They differ only on how to prioritize these issues and on specific policies to address them
(Letsholo 2006; Makgetla 2008). With the universal acceptance of the democratic order and all the major parties advocating neoliberal economic policies, how best to achieve delivery arguably has become the primary policy issue in the political arena.10
Table 4.3: National Election Results (prior to any floor-crossing changes) 1994 1999 2004 2009 % ANC vote 62.6 66.5 69.7 65.9 % ANC National Assembly seats 63.0 66.5 69.8 66.0 Largest opposition % vote 20.4(NP) 9.6(DP) 12.4(DA) 16.7(DA) Number of parties in N.A. 7 12 12 13 Source: EISA. South African Election Archive. www.eisa.org.za/WEP/souelectarchive.htm
The second-largest party in the National Assembly for the past decade is the
Democratic Alliance (DA), with only 12.5 percent of parliamentary seats to the ANC‟s
69.8 percent. The DA casts itself as the promoter of classical liberalism, advocating free markets (which the government has largely embraced too) and the end of affirmative action policies. It formed in 2000 as an alliance between the New National Party (NNP), the successor of the party of apartheid, and the Democratic Party (DP), the successor to the liberal opposition parties of the apartheid era.11 It has thus far failed to recast itself as anything other than a conservative party that represents whites or to gain much support from African voters at all, despite efforts to do so (Gumede 249-250).
10 This statement makes an admittedly tenuous distinction between policy debates and more partisan or personal subjects, like whether a particular politician is racist or corrupt, or the fight within the ANC regarding who would succeed the term-limited Mbeki in 2009. 11 The reasons for, functioning of, and collapse of this alliance are discussed in depth in the next chapter.
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As such, its support among the electorate is somewhat concentrated, as residency patterns are still quite racialized. It is also stronger in more urban areas. This means that much of its support is in the Western Cape and Gauteng, although the DA is arguably the
South African opposition party with the most evenly distributed support. Indeed, in 2004 only it and the ANC won seats in every provincial legislature. However, as we shall see in later chapters, the DA may have the most potential for growth, as its economic positions mean it could appeal successfully to South Africa‟s growing middle class. As I showed earlier, modernization and the growth of a middle class seems to frequently benefit opposition parties in dominant party systems.
Thirteen other opposition parties have held seats in the National Assembly since
1999, most with regionalized support bases (see Table 4.4). They stretch across the ideological spectrum from the socialist-leaning formerly militant Pan-Africanist Congress
(PAC) to the conservative Afrikaner ethnic party, Freedom Front Plus (FF+). A few of the smaller parties have platforms resembling ideologically-based ones of the established
Western democracies, such as the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) that bills itself as rooted in the Christian Democratic tradition of combining moral conservatism with center-left economic positions. Its platform includes opposing the legality of abortion and arguing for the re-imposition of the death penalty. Drawing regionalized support largely in urban areas, it appears to be somewhat successfully capitalizing on the growth of religion as a primary source of identity in South Africa and of the belief that the country is facing “rapid moral degeneration” (Naidu and Manqele 2005: 209). The
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ACDP‟s relatively small polling numbers do not convey its importance; its few seats are often necessary to form governing coalitions at the municipal level.
Table 4.4: 2006 Election Results, Vote Percentages by Province Parties EC FS GT KZN LP MP NC NW WC ACDP 0.2 0.6 1.1 0.6 1.6 0.7 0.9 2.4 AMP 0.7 ANC 81.7 76.7 62.5 46.6 84.0 80.6 70.0 76.6 40.2 APO 0.1 0.4 0.1 0.8 0.1 0.4 DA 7.5 12.5 26.4 8.2 5.5 10.4 13.6 8.6 39.3 FF+ 0.1 2.2 1.7 0.1 0.6 0.8 1.2 0.4 ICOSA 1.1 ID 0.4 1.3 0.2 0.3 0.2 8.4 10.5 IFP 0.1 1.9 38.5 0.7 0.1 MF 1.6 NDC 1.0 PAC 1.3 1.7 1.2 1.5 2.0 UCDP 0.5 0.1 2.0 6.8 UDM 5.1 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.5 UIF 0.2 0.1 0.9 0.1 0.3 Regional concentrations of particular parties are italicized and bolded. Note also the variation in the ANC‟s provincial support. Totals do not add to 100 due to rounding and to exclusion of many smaller parties. Sources: IEC.
Another party that is important regionally is Patricia de Lille‟s Independent
Democrats (ID), the third-largest party in Cape Town and the first party without organizational roots in the apartheid era (Schulz-Herzenberg 138). De Lille is acknowledged as one of the more charismatic and popular politicians in South Africa today. Formed in 2003 when de Lille left the PAC, the ID was built largely around her personal appeal. To the left of the ANC economically, its primary platform is an emphasis on ending corruption and addressing HIV/AIDS. Despite its diligent efforts to have a racially diverse candidate pool, its electoral support is largely among poor and
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working class Coloured voters dissatisfied with the level of state spending in their neighborhoods (Hoeane 2005). Because of this racialized support base, its success outside of the Western and Northern Capes has been limited.
Another notable party is the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the Zulu nationalist party with regionalized support in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). It began the democratic era holding office exclusively or in coalition with the ANC in Durban and in
KZN, but is now the third-largest party in both. Its decline was in part because of the lessening appeal in a rapidly urbanizing society of its traditional, conservative platforms and the patronage of the Zulu royal house (Piper 2002). The IFP decline suggests that any examination of the role of modernization and urbanization in the evolution of dominant party systems must also address the effects of these processes on the fortunes of traditional parties with narrow niche appeals. The IFP struggled mightily to survive the past decade, vacillating between shoring up its Zulu identity and trying to win over conservative voters from all of South Africa. In doing so, it has won less and less support
(Piper 2005).
The majority of other parties are built around either specific ethnic identities and/or personalistic ties. For example, Bantu Holomisa‟s United Democratic Movement
(UDM) enjoys much of its success in the Eastern Cape, having grown in part from the remnants of the apartheid-era Transkei homeland government for members of the Xhosa tribe. Its initial base of support was disaffected Transkei civil servants who lost their jobs with the dissolution of the homeland system. Its direct competitor for votes is the ANC.
A similar evolution is true of Bophuthatswana homeland leader Lucius Mangope‟s
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United Christian Democratic Party (UCDP) in the Northwest province. These parties have spent time as the official opposition in their respective provincial legislatures and they win small percentages in cities where some of their supporters have migrated.12 The
Freedom Front Plus became „plus‟ in the 2003 floor-crossing, which combined three
Afrikaner conservative parties. In doing so, it shifted from its mid-1990s goal of
Afrikaner self-determination and even autonomy to an emphasis on cultural rights and anti-affirmative action. It now willing cooperates with parties such as the IFP given their common goal of minority group rights (Naidu and Manqele 2005).
It is also possible to identify localized parties that fit the ethnic/personalistic classification, such as the United Independent Front (Martin Fienes‟s vehicle in the
Coloured area of Mitchell‟s Plain in Cape Town) or the Minority Front (Amichand “The
Raj” Rajbansi‟s party based largely in the working class Indian neighborhoods of
Durban). The Minority Front has frequently enjoyed “kingmaker” status in Durban and
KZN, breaking ties between the ANC and the DA. In 1999, it even contributed its one vote in the National Assembly to the ANC‟s delegation, giving the ANC its much-sought two-thirds majority (Naidu and Manqele 2005).
Parties may register to run only in one municipality‟s elections. It is possible for a tiny, local-only party to win seats on a municipal council. These parties are mainly of two types. First, richer, white communities have a decades-long tradition of forming neighborhood ratepayers associations, and some of these have registered for election.
12 A possible direction for future research is to ask why the Zulu-, Xhosa-, and Tswana-speaking homelands gave rise to, respectively, the IFP, the UDM, and the UCDP, but the only other homeland granted “independence” by the apartheid regime, for the Venda, did not produce a political party with similar origins.
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Second, community associations may form out of a larger party such as the ANC when a local faction is dissatisfied with decisions taken by the party hierarchy. Running as a local party allows the leaders of these groups to claim they are not defecting from the larger party but rather are standing as its “true” representatives (Ndletyana 2007).
Thus, fitting with the theory of subnational politics in dominant party systems developed in Chapter 3, South African local demographics do contribute to the existence of pockets of support for opposition parties, places that are competitive among two or more parties, and of course areas where the dominant party is locally dominant. These are the background conditions facing political parties‟ leaderships as they formulate their political strategies.
4.4 Voting Behavior in South Africa
Political parties also must consider the preferences of the electorate when formulating their strategies. Those strategies are based in part on what parties think voters will support and what parties think they can convince voters to support. Therefore, we should briefly consider the preferences and voting behavior of South African voters.
South Africa‟s elections are frequently understood to be an „ethnic census,‟ in which voters‟ individual choices can be predicted nearly entirely by race (Johnson and
Schlemmer 1996, Lodge 1999, Reynolds 1994). This is particularly true for Africans and whites who make up about 88 percent of the population, and somewhat less so for
Coloured and Indian voters. In this way, South Africa appears to follow the pattern of so many other democracies with deep ethnic cleavages, in which voting is an expression of
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loyalty to a group rather than a choice about policies and interests (Horowitz 1985).
Further studies have found that South Africans appear to vote according to which social cleavage matters in a particular constituency; ethnicity trumps race where and when there are enough voters from a particular African ethnic group. That is, if local demographics are such that an African ethnolinguistic group is large enough to form a viable voting bloc, then the ANC‟s support among blacks will drop (McLaughlin 2007). Table 4.5 shows the national proportions of racial and ethnic groups in South Africa. No single ethnolinguistic group forms a majority of the South African electorate, but in KwaZulu-
Natal, for example, IsiZulu speakers constitute 80 percent of the population (see
Table 4.6). They therefore can constitute a viable political bloc in the province upon which the IFP can draw. Similar demographic and voting patterns for other parties can be seen in much of the country.
Table 4.5: Racial and Ethnic Demographics of South Africa, 2001 Racial Groups Ethnolinguistic Groups Black 79.0 IsiZulu 23.8 White 9.6 IsiXhosa 17.6 Coloured 8.9 Afrikaans 13.3 Indian 2.5 Sepedi 9.4 English 8.2 Setswana 8.2 Sesotho 7.9 Xitsonga 4.4 SiSwazi 2.7 Tshivenda 2.3 IsiNdebele 1.6 Source: Statistics South Africa, 2001 Census.
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Table 4.6: KwaZulu-Natal 2001 Demographic Groups and 2006 Election Results, Percentages Racial Groups Ethnolinguistic Groups Election Results Black 85.2 Afrikaans 1.5 ANC 46.6 Coloured 1.5 English 13.4 DA 8.2 Indian 8.3 IsiNdebele 0.2 IFP 38.5 White 5.0 IsiXhosa 3.5 MF 1.6 IsiZulu 80.0 NDC 1.0 Sepedi 0.1 ACDP 0.6 Sesotho 0.7 Independents 0.6 Setswana 0.1 SiSwazi 0.1 Tshivenda 0.0 Xitsonga 0.0 Other 0.5 Sources: Statistics South Africa, 2001 Census; IEC.
Thus many parties have regionalized support that appears based on ethnic or racial group identity. However, this is not necessarily the same phenomenon as voters supporting parties entirely because of their ethnic identities. A growing body of work convincingly argues that South Africans do not vote on the basis of their race and ethnicity. Race coincides with class, occupation, and religion (Mattes 2004) and so it is not surprising that voters from the same race prefer similar policies. Additionally, several scholars argue that voters use the perceived racial identities of political parties as a heuristic to understand the likely beneficiaries of parties‟ policies. This dynamic is similar to that found in India (Chandra 2004) and Zambia (Posner 2005). Schulz-
Herzenberg (2008) notes that South African voters may be able to assess the ANC‟s performance in office, but have largely lacked information to assess opposition parties, because they do not hold many offices. They must therefore find other sources of information to inform their electoral choices (132).
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The number of survey respondents who self-identify primarily based on their race is much lower than the number of voters who appear to vote based on race (Mattes 1995;
Ferree 2006). Instead, race predicts voters‟ evaluations of parties‟ policies and performances in office. In South Africa, if a party is perceived as a „white party,‟ then its policies are likely to benefit whites the best and therefore whites support it and those from other races do not (Mattes 1995; Mattes, Taylor, and Africa 1999; Mattes and
Piombo 2001; Ferree 2006). Whites and Africans both perceive the “other‟s” parties as racially exclusive. Presented with two political narratives about the sources and solutions of South Africa‟s problems, voters believe the party that appears to them to be inclusive and evaluate both the opposition and the ANC accordingly. These two perceptions in turn influence vote choice (Ferree 809, 814; see also Mattes, Taylor, and Africa 1999,
Schulz-Herzenberg 133). It is not race itself that drives voting behavior, but what race implies.
Further, there are a growing number of voices arguing that the degree and level of partisanship have been more varied than is commonly understood (McLaughlin 2007;
Schulz-Herzenberg 2008). Between 1995 and 2004, survey respondents who felt close to a particular political party varied between a low of 45 percent in 1999 and a high of 64 percent in 2002 (119). Surveys show that nearly half of African voters are independents, not strong partisans for the „black parties‟ they tend to support in elections (Ferree 2006:
808; Schulz-Herzenberg 121). This indicates potential sources of fragmentation of the
ANC‟s electoral support, and is one factor supporting my position that parties‟ strategies matter. Independents and uncertain voters – those who have lost faith in the party of their
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“own” group but have not yet decided to support the party of the “other” group (Ferree
2006) – are increasing in numbers (Schulz-Herzenberg 129). One result of this is declining turnout for elections (see Table 4.7).
Table 4.7: Percent turnout in South African national elections 1994 1999 2004 2009 Turnout of registered No 89.3 76.7 77.3 voters registration Turnout of voting age 86 71.8 57.8 59.3 population Sources: Schulz-Herzenberg 2007: 117; Kersting 2009: 128.
But political parties do not like potential supporters staying home on election day.
Therefore, they pursue strategies to prevent such abstention. A dominant party will seek to build a broad coalition with policies designed to motivate and excite enough segments of the population to ensure turnout. Opposition parties, in turn, may develop strategies to capture disaffected members of the electorate. They acknowledge the racial or ethnic basis of their support bases, but that does not mean they accept demographic patterns as an absolute restriction on their support or future growth. Indeed, all the opposition party representatives I interviewed stated their party‟s intention to gain the support of voters outside of their traditional bases. Regardless of the likelihood of some parties succeeding at this, they all recognized the necessity of it for growth. However, their current regional and ethnic bases provide the opposition strongholds identified in Chapter 3 as a necessary first step in the development of a competitive party system.
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Ferree (2006), concluding one of the more sophisticated analysis of South African voting behavior, writes that future voting patterns “will depend not on identity change but on decidedly political factors: the ability of each side to send credible signals to different constituencies about party labels, the effectiveness of campaigns, and the success of different parties in recruiting politicians attractive to target constituencies” (Ferree 814, emphasis in original). They will depend, in short, on party strategies: the effectiveness of the ANC to manage its coalition and the ability of opposition parties to become credible alternatives.
4.5 Competition and Competitiveness: Municipal Government and Politics
In several municipalities – including some large, powerful, and highly visible ones – competitive competitions continue. I will briefly explain the structure of local government before describing the extent of the competitiveness.
4.5.1 Local Government Structures
Municipal government in South Africa is one of three “spheres,” along with national and provincial. South Africa has had three rounds of local government elections since the democratic transition in 1994. In 1995 and 1996, interim reforms were instituted, with local forums deciding on new municipal structures and boundaries. In hindsight, it seemed that these forums often had instituted the wishes of coalitions of vested interests, motivated by the desire to avoid incorporating poor areas into wealthier ones and/or to maintain personal positions in government (Cameron 1999). Thus a
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nationwide municipal demarcation process was undertaken, reducing the number of municipalities nationwide from 864 to 284, deliberately combining poorer areas with those expected to generate tax revenues with the goal of creating financially viable entities. A series of legislative acts in 1999 and 2000 reformed the election systems, structures, funding, and management of local government. The 2000 local elections are referred to in government literature as the first democratic local elections, marking the completion of the democratization of South Africa‟s institutions.13
South African local governments are arranged into three groups with differing responsibilities, determined by the size of the population and how rural the area encompassed is. The number of seats on a municipal council is determined by the size of the population. If the population warrants more than seven seats, as it does in 237 municipalities, then half those seats are awarded on a closed-party list proportional representation system and half are contested in single-member plurality elections in geographically-defined wards. Municipal councils vary widely in size, with the largest in
Johannesburg with 217 council seats.
Of the 237 municipalities, the six largest are designated as “metros” and have somewhat more autonomy from other layers of government. The metros‟ population has increased from 32.7 percent of South Africa‟s in 2001 to 35 percent in 2007. They contribute nearly 60 percent of national economic output (National Treasury 2008: 10).
The country‟s largest cities – Johannesburg, eThekwini (Durban), and Cape Town – have
13 See Cameron 2001 for an account of the local government reforms and Cameron 2006 on the municipal demarcation process.
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populations of around 3 million people each and growing with large-scale migration to urban areas.
Municipal governments are the primary arm of government responsible for organizing the delivery of public goods, such as utilities and roads. South Africa is somewhat fiscally decentralized, with municipalities generating much of their own revenue. Their revenue comes largely from the collection of property taxes (rates) and through payment for public utilities such as water. Therefore, such revenue exists to a much greater degree in municipalities which have residents with higher incomes, and so large cities tend to have much more of this self-generated revenue. The share of municipalities‟ revenue that they receive from the national government hovered around five and ten percent for years, recently rising to between 15 and 20 percent. This increase is due primarily to a shift in certain transfers from the provinces to municipalities, along with national spending on 2010 World Cup preparations (National Treasury 2008: 41,
63). The center does distribute money to provinces and municipalities in the form of grants, some for particular projects and some calculated based on the population size and the economic needs of that population. It is widely accepted that, while no one outside of the Finance Ministry actually understands the details of the formula used to determine the latter “equitable share,” the formula is fair and not politically manipulated.
The center does have some ability to manipulate the awarding of grants for specific projects, but most respondents believe the capacity of a municipality to implement a planned project played a larger role in deciding on such awards than do political considerations. Indeed, the only exceptions to this view were ANC
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representatives in Durban who complained that Cape Town received grants unfairly or that Durban received fewer resources from the national government than that to which is entitled, because the city has sound management and finances.14 Councilors from both the ANC and the opposition complained about provinces passing on their constitutionally-defined responsibilities, such as libraries, to municipalities, without passing on the funding for such functions.15 The National Treasury itself notes the provinces‟ incomplete financial records and inconsistent transfers to municipalities
(2008: 55).
Municipal councilors understand that the unfunded mandates are largely the result of the provinces‟ lack of money. This conclusion fits with Dickovick‟s interpretation of the national leadership starving the provinces in order to marginalize intra- and interparty rivals (2006: 16-18). Along with the municipalities‟ increasing importance in delivering government spending, their importance has increased while that of the provinces has declined.
4.5.2 Competition and Competitiveness: Variation in Local Party Systems
While the ANC is dominant nationally, it is not dominant in every province and certainly not in several municipalities. In two provinces, the Western Cape and KwaZulu
Natal, the ANC has not controlled the provincial government for some periods in the democratic era. There is also an argument to be made that the ANC is not dominant in the province of Gauteng; while it has won elections there continuously since
14 Interviews. Durban ANC councilor, 6 March 2007; Senior Durban ANC councilor, 7 March 2007. 15 Interviews. Senior Durban ANC councilor, 7 March 2007; Senior Durban DA councilor, 8 August 2008.
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democratization, its margins of victory are much smaller than they are in other provinces.
However, the definition of dominance I use does not include a minimum threshold of seats held, and so I do consider the Gauteng ANC to be dominant, even while both it and opposition parties direct campaign resources disproportionally to this more competitive province.
Parties other than the ANC won 31 percent of wards nationwide in 2000 and 22 percent of wards in 2006 (Ferree et al 2007: 17). At the ward level, past analyses of the
2000 and 2006 election results have shown that demographics are systematically related to election results. First, wards with large proportions of Coloured and Indian voters tend to have a higher effective number of parties, fitting with surveys that show such voters are less unified in their preferences than are Africans or whites. Second, wards with high proportions of African voters tend to have fewer effective parties, because Africans tend to solidly support the ANC and also, as Duverger predicts, non-ANC voters and politicians have more incentive to unify where they know they will face one strong challenger (Ferree et al 2007: 26). Third, when controlling for racial fractionalization, higher levels of ethnic fractionalization decreases the effective number of parties – unless the ethnic groups involved include Zulus, Xhosas, or Tswanas, whose presence increases the number of parties (McLaughlin 2007; Ferree et al 2007). In short, South Africans tend to vote in racial or ethnic blocs in local elections much as they do in national ones.
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Continued de facto housing segregation means particular party‟s voters are concentrated in even the smallest geographic units of representation.16 Africans tend to live in particular areas and tend to support the same party, whites live in particular areas and support the same party, and so on. As a result, the ANC and opposition parties each dominate many wards. Table 4.8 shows, for each party winning at least one ward in
2006, the mean of the winning differentials, calculated by subtracting the percentage of the vote for the second-place party from that of the winning party. In ward elections the
DA wins, it enjoys a mean of 40 percent more of the vote than the second-place party. It is not just the ANC that is dominant in South Africa. Within specific wards, so are many other parties.
16 South Africa has legal provisions to create representative ward committees, which would in some sense represent a smaller slice of the electorate than the single councilor who represents the ward in Council. However, ward committees do not exist or function consistently, and so I omit them from this research.
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Table 4.8: Winning Differential by Winning Party per Ward, 2006 mean (SD) N national parties 64.6 African National Congress 3025 (26.8) 40.4 Democratic Alliance 444 (24.4) Freedom Front Plus 28.43 1 Independent Civic Organisation of 21.8 5 SA (17.5) 7.9 Independent Democrats 16 (5.8) 47.4 Inkatha Freedom Party 347 (27.9) 10.9 Minority Front 7 (6.8) National Democratic Convention 47.2 1 Pan Africanist Congress 19.5 1 United Christian Democratic Party 6.2 1 local parties Adelaide Residents Association 26.9 1 Knysna Community Forum 24.9 1 16.3 Independents 34 (13.1) 59.4 Total Nationwide* 3895 (28.4) * Results for the nationwide winning differential exclude 11 uncontested ward elections. When only one candidate registers for a ward election, no election is held. Source: calculated from IEC data.
Many South African political parties have learned to emphasize mobilization of their own support bases for elections. Turnout of each party‟s supporters often determines which party wins. Not surprisingly, certain demographic characteristics are also correlated with turnout rates, but in ways that do not conform to extant theories developed from patterns in other countries. In her analysis of turnout for the 2006
Johannesburg municipal election, Fauvelle-Aymar (2008) finds that turnout decreases as
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socio-economic status rises. In wards with high levels of deprivation, voters turn out in high numbers. Similarly, turnout is higher in wards where the population has lower education levels. Finally, rather than turnout increasing with the closeness of a ward‟s election because voters have higher expectations of their vote making a difference to the outcome, in Johannesburg turnout decreased the closer the race, regardless of whether the
ANC or the DA won.
Fauvelle-Aymar advances two explanations for the patterns found in ward elections. First, voters may participate “not to influence the results of the ballot (since they already knew it), but rather to express their support to South African democracy”
(161). Such expressive voting would explain activists in dissatisfied wards protesting and boycotting elections, rather than organizing to challenge the ANC through formal representative channels. The second explanation Fauvelle-Aymar advances builds on
Mutz‟s (2002) argument that political participation is higher in homogenous areas, because individuals are more likely to get involved where they find people of similar values.
To this I would add two more hypotheses. The first is closely related to the degree of homogeneity. In wards where a political party is dominant, its organization may be more developed. It can therefore successfully mobilize its supporters in those wards and increase turnout. Second, in wards with high levels of deprivation, individuals may vote in order to secure state benefits. In some poor wards in Cape Town, political participation – broadly construed – is required for citizens to be awarded a house or a job
(Staniland 2008); turning out to vote may have similar effects in Johannesburg. While
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exploring these hypotheses further is outside the scope of this dissertation, it is quite clear that more work is needed to understand both the electoral motivations of South Africa‟s citizens and the degree to which theories based on voting patterns in established democracies are applicable in new democracies.
At the municipal level, the degree of competitiveness varies widely. In some wards, the ANC‟s support is so strong that it runs unopposed. Where the ward is contested, the ANC‟s vote share varies between 10 and 85 percent (Fauvelle-Aymar
2008: 144). We can also see some change over time between 2000 and 2006. As
Table 4.9 shows, the number of municipalities in which no party gained an outright majority in the council increased from 12 to 31, nearly all in the Western Cape and to a lesser extent, KwaZulu-Natal. While nationwide most councils are controlled by one party holding a majority of seats, and moreover those municipalities appear to be dominated electorally by that party, in 2006 many places in the Western Cape had become more competitive. The regionalized patterns suggest that there is something systematic in these changes to local party systems. I will show that these changes can be attributed to the strategies employed by the particular political parties competing in these two provinces.
Temporal variation in election results suggests that voters‟ choices – and therefore the local party systems – are not as frozen as they may appear at first. Indeed, as scholars of South African voting behavior have now made clear, South Africans do not vote on the basis of the their race or ethnicity, but rather they use race as a heuristic for gaining information about parties and politicians. If they had additional information sources, they
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would add them to their electoral calculations. Parties campaign to provide such information, and when they gain public office their successes and failings in governing provide yet more information. Therefore, what political parties do, the strategies they employ, policies they develop, and decisions they make, are key to understanding both how the party system is evolving and how voters‟ choices may or may not change.
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Table 4.9: Number of councils controlled by party and by province, 2000 and 2006 2000 2006 Province No No ANC DA IFP other Total ANC DA IFP other Total majority majority Eastern Cape 36 1 - 1 1 39 37 1 - - 1 39 Free State 20 - - - - 20 20 - - - - 20 Gauteng 11 1 - - - 12 10 1 - - - 11 KwaZulu-Natal 13 - 36 - 2 51 19 - 23 - 9 51 Mpumalanga 20 - - - - 20 20 - - - - 20 Northern Cape 23 3 - - 1 27 27 - - - - 27 Northern/Limpopo 23 - - - - 23 23 - - - - 23 North West 20 - - - - 20 21 - - - - 21 Western Cape 4 13 - - 8 25 2 2 - - 21 25
- Total 170 18 36 1 12 237 179 4 23 0 31 237
165 Sources: EISA. “South African local election results 2000: Party councils controlled by province.”
- http://www.eisa.org.za/WEP/sou2000results4b.htm; IEC. 2006 Municipal Elections Report, p. 60; Verified with newspaper articles where possible. (As presented by IEC, Mpumalanga 2006 results have only 18 municipalities. North Cape results have 25 only. But there are 20 and 27 municipalities, respectively, in those provinces.) All assignments of lead party in council held only until the first floor-crossing period after the election, in 2002 and 2007 respectively.
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4.6 Conclusion
None of the transition-era predictions and fears of widespread ethnic conflict, significant secessionist movements, or severe party fragmentation has yet come true.
Instead, South Africa has experienced relative stability, unity, and a distinct lack of party fragmentation. The ANC and its leadership have achieved these tasks and successfully managed diverse interests and factions largely in the absence of institutions understood to facilitate doing so. Despite this, the ANC has been able thus far to strengthen both its own rule and a liberal democratic regime.
This chapter has summarized the conclusions of past studies of South Africa‟s two democratic local elections, showing both that subnational variation exists and that much of it can be attributed to demographics and the different interests demographic characteristics continue to imply. This creates the basis for opposition strongholds.
However, such factors cannot explain all of the variation, neither across geographic lines nor over time. It is my position that, while demographics will constrain the choices available to politicians and parties, there is still a role for strategic choices within those constraints. Parties form their strategies in the context of different situations, resulting in different effects on local competition.
The pertinent question is how the dominant party‟s internal dynamics and opposition strategies interact to determine subnational party systems and potentially cause national-level party system change. To that end, this overview of political parties and the institutions and rules of local government introduces several important features of
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South African politics. First, the ANC has incorporated a wide range of ideological positions into its intraparty coalition but has been less successful fully incorporating the complete spectrum of South Africa‟s racial and ethnic communities into its mass base.
Second, opposition parties are quite fragmented, thereby increasing the ANC‟s advantage nationally, but also they are quite concentrated, creating local opposition strongholds.
Third, the ANC contains many constituencies within its organization, contributing to highly contested relationships between the national leadership and various subnational forces. The degree of centralization, we will see in subsequent chapters, has become an important debate within the dominant party. This importance is in addition to the key role of center-periphery relationships play in the development of nationally viable opposition parties. Finally, the opportunities for clientelism and patronage in South
Africa are rife; this both creates resource advantages for those who control state institutions – in other words, the ANC more than other parties – and introduces a potential issue opposition parties might exploit for their gain among voters. It is to the interaction of these factors, and their effects on party competition and cooperation, in two
South African cities that I now turn.
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Chapter 5: Parties’ Local Successes and Failures
In a democracy, oftentimes other people win. – Alison Janney, as C.J. Craig in The West Wing.
Love your enemy. It will ruin his reputation. – unknown, but a popular quote amongst South African elites. 1
5.1 Introduction
This chapter will demonstrate the theory put forward in Chapters 2 and 3 that political parties‟ strategies subnationally shape political competition in dominant party systems, by applying it to explaining the past decade of South African politics. The theory of dominant party evolution presented in this dissertation argues that one piece of growth of a competitive party system is opposition gaining national viability through subnational politics. Grassroots opposition party growth can create a party capable of mounting a successful national challenge to the dominant party. To do so, as explained in Chapter 2 and summarized in Figure 5.1, opposition parties must overcome the dominant party‟s “hyper incumbency advantages” that create large hurdles to electoral success, such as the dominant party‟s exclusive access to state resources and the ability to manipulate electoral rules to its sole advantage (Greene 2002: 759-760). They also must convince voters and political activists that they are credible alternatives to the dominant party. These issues of viability can be overcome in some places and some contexts more easily than others, and then potentially built upon and spread elsewhere and to other levels of government. In this chapter and the next, I compare two South African cities,
1 It has been variously attributed to Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and others.
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Cape Town and Durban (eThekwini), to show how the factors identified combine to produce different outcomes with respect to competitiveness and dominance.
The importance of local and regional politics is not restricted to opposition parties. I also argue that, in understanding the evolution of the party system, dynamics within the dominant party at the subnational level are key. Scholars of dominant party systems point to the role of unmanaged elite factionalism within the dominant party in fracturing the party‟s coalition. Such factionalism can lead to defections and the formation of rival parties. The ruling party may no longer command enough support to maintain its dominant electoral position. I will argue in the next chapter that elite factionalism can be impacted by and even driven by the fortunes of the dominant party in different municipalities and regions.
Dominant Party Goal: manage own broad coalition to maintain power prevent defections and mobilization co-opt potential challengers balance tolerance for inter- and intra-party opposition while minimizing dissent and challenges Opposition Parties Goal: gain viability as credible alternative create track record in office overcome deficits in patronage resources and activist recruitment prevent ideological marginalization, fragmentation, and coordination problems overcome dominant party‟s ability to manipulate rules and institutions in its own favor Figure 5.1: Key Factors in the Evolution of Dominant Party Systems (based on discusion in Chapter 2)
First, though, to demonstrate how local intraparty and interparty politics drive the evolution of a dominant party system, I begin with an analysis of local politics in the democratic era. In Cape Town in the Western Cape, opposition parties first failed to
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coordinate successfully, but learned lessons that led to workable coalition arrangements.
This coalition created an important opposition stronghold that increased the opposition parties‟ credibility and viability in the eyes of voters and activists. As my theory suggests, this increased viability led to further opposition gains, which will be described in the next chapter. Governing Cape Town did not distract these parties from other battles in the political arena, nor was their success a short-term gain that proved unsustainable. Local politics provided a basis for further challenges to the dominant party and further growth of competitiveness subnationally.
In contrast, in Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, opposition miscalculation allowed local dominant party representatives to establish strong positions for future interparty and intraparty competitions. The different evolutionary paths of the party systems in Durban and Cape Town are due to differences in opposition parties‟ ideologies and therefore the development of different strategies to address changing demographics, differences in the coalitional attempts made and what lessons the opposition parties learned from them, and a much better organized ANC in Durban.
5.2 Establishing Strongholds: Early Attempts at Opposition Coordination
In the evolution of dominant party systems, subnational demographic patterns influence where opposition parties can gain electoral footholds. Table 5.1 shows the ethnic and racial demographics in Cape Town and Durban from the 2001 Census. Of note for their importance as bases for particular parties are the Coloured and Indian communities in Cape Town and Durban respectively, and the high percentages of people
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speaking Afrikaans, English, and IsiXhosa in Cape Town and English and IsiZulu in
Durban.
Table 5.1: Cape Town and Durban 2001 Demographic Groups, Percentages Cape Town Durban Ethnolinguistic Ethnolinguistic Racial Groups Racial Groups Groups Groups Black 31.7 Afrikaans 41.4 Black 68.3 Afrikaans 1.4 Coloured 48.1 English 28.0 Coloured 2.8 English 30.0 Indian 1.4 IsiNdebele 0.1 Indian 19.9 IsiNdebele 0.2 White 18.8 IsiXhosa 28.8 White 9.0 IsiXhosa 3.4 IsiZulu 0.3 IsiZulu 63.0 Sepedi 0.1 Sepedi 0.1 Sesotho 0.7 Sesotho 0.7 Setswana 0.1 Setswana 0.1 SiSwazi 0.0 SiSwazi 0.1 Tshivenda 0.0 Tshivenda 0.0 Xitsonga 0.1 Xitsonga 0.0 Other 0.6 Other 0.9 Percentages do not sum to 100 due to rounding. Source: 2001 Census; IEC.
Demographic change is also important to party system evolution. Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has experienced significant urbanization. For the comparison made here, of particular note is the large influx of rural black voters into both cities.
Cape Town became a destination for Xhosa-speaking Eastern Cape residents, while the population of KwaZulu-Natal shifted from the Zulu kingdom in the north to Durban and
Pietermaritzburg in the center. In seeking to maintain and grow their support, political parties‟ strategies needed to respond to these changes in the electorate. Of course, they had varying success in doing so.
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5.2.1 Dysfunctional Opposition Coordination in Newly Democratic Cape Town
In Chapter 3, I argued that, in other countries where opposition parties have successfully grown from local roots, single opposition parties did so somewhat in isolation. In India and Mexico, different opposition parties grew in different regions with different core constituencies. Unlike in other countries, in Cape Town politicians have cycled through several attempts at multiparty coordination, with varying but increasing success.
The difference between South Africa‟s opposition parties and the other two cases may be a result of different electoral systems. In India, following Duverger‟s (1954) prediction, single-member districts reduced the number of effective parties at the lowest level of office-holders, even while the country‟s diversity produced a multiparty system nationally (Chhibber and Kollman 2004). In South Africa, municipal elections use a mixed system with half of council seats determined by proportional representation calculations. Theoretical predictions would hold that this would produce more party fragmentation than in first-past-the-post systems. With higher levels of fragmentation, multiparty coalitions are more likely to become necessary. However, South African parties‟ strategies for coalition formation since 2000 demonstrate several ways of coordinating. Parties experimented with these options, learning what would work with respect to both governing and subsequent electoral appeals. In Cape Town, this learning facilitated the establishment of a governing coalition that in turn allowed for the further development of opposition viability and growth.
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Recall from Chapter 2 that dominant parties tend to capture the center of the political spectrum, co-opting opposition policies and personnel into their broad coalitions.
Opposition parties in turn represent small interest groups at the fringes of public opinion.
Opposition finds coordination difficult and tends to fragment. Fragmentation only strengthens the hand of the dominant party. Opposition resources are spread more thinly and less effectively, and the parties often spend more time fighting among themselves to win the support of an established block of opposition voters than they do seeking the support of new voters. This pattern was followed in the early years of the Cape Town metro‟s politics.
The first elections for the reorganized South African municipalities were in
December 2000. In anticipation, the leading opposition parties of the time – the
Democratic Party (DP) and the New National Party (NNP) – decided to unite in an electoral coalition in order to “prevent the ANC from obtaining a strong political position” in Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape province (Jolobe 2007: 83).
The two entities had little in common beyond their desire to keep the ANC‟s power in check, and indeed had been adversaries during the apartheid regime and retained deep ideological divisions on economic and social issues. Seekings calls these early efforts at interparty coordination “bizarre” because of the ideological combinations involved
(2005a: 22). Others attacked the alliance for appearing to adopt an exclusionary electoral strategy, since the non-black racial bases of the two parties were the only obvious commonality.
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For the DP, the successor party to apartheid-era white liberal opposition parties, the creation of the Democratic Alliance (DA) was a step towards its overall goal of creating a united opposition against the potential hegemony of the ANC. In his autobiography, the DP and then DA leader between 1994 and 2007, Tony Leon, explains that the DP‟s goal of a two-party system in South Africa required an end to the divisions among those already supporting opposition parties. After beginning the democratic era in
1994 with only 7 seats in the 400-member National Assembly, the DP had increased its share in 1999 to 38 seats representing 9.56 percent of the electorate (IEC), making it the largest opposition party. In his statement publicly announcing the DA proposal, he said,
“It makes no sense for the DP and the NNP to continue fighting each other for the support of the opposition voters. . . The DP is a strong party with resources and a national organization. . . It would be senseless to give up this clear identity and our sharply defined message of strong, effective and principled opposition. It is thus the DP‟s duty to lead the consolidation of the opposition” (Leon 2008: 540). As a first step, the DP would end the electoral threat from its most obvious competitor so that they could focus on winning votes from the ANC. In this way the DP sought to reduce opposition fragmentation and increase opposition resources, in order to control an important opposition stronghold.
For the NNP, the alliance was more one of necessity. The ruling party of apartheid had done relatively well in the first nationwide democratic elections in 1994, based in large part on support from the white and Coloured voters of the Western Cape.
As the second-largest party, with 82 of 400 seats in the National Assembly, it joined the
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ANC in a Government of National Unity. After helping to write the new constitution, it left the GNU in 1996 because, its then-leader and former South African President F.W. de Klerk argued, “the development of a strong and vigilant opposition was essential for the maintenance and promotion of a genuine multiparty democracy” (1999: 362). After
1996, the NNP quickly lost ground to the Democratic Party. In the 1999 elections, the
NNP won only 6.87 percent of the electorate‟s support for 28 seats (IEC). Joining with the DP was a lifeline for political survival (Jolobe 82-4).
The first test for the resulting Democratic Alliance (DA) was the 2000 local elections. In Cape Town, it exceeded expectations by winning 53 percent of the electorate‟s support and 107 of 200 seats in the City Council. Analysts attributed this success to the DA‟s strategy of campaigning on specific local issues and therefore maximizing turnout among its supporters, while the ANC “focused on issues of local government in the abstract and failed to produce election materials specific to the areas they campaigned” (Faull 2004b: 2). Turnout in the formerly white suburbs, the DA‟s base, was “exceptionally high” at 70 percent (Lodge 2002: 117). Conversely, in the black townships, the ANC failed to mobilize its base, producing less than 50 percent turnout among Africans in the city (Faull 2004b). These different outcomes from different party strategies provide a piece of support for the proposition from Chapter 3 that locally-based strategies by opposition are more likely to be successful.
Both the DA and the ANC sought to capture the large but fragmented Coloured electorate. Coloured voters had long been the swing voters in the province, constituting around 50 percent of both the province‟s population and Cape Town‟s (StatisticsSA). In
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2000, both the ANC and the DA nominated Coloured mayoral candidates and campaigned heavily in Coloured areas (Seekings 2005a). The NNP‟s well-developed organizational structures delivered enough of the Coloured vote that the DA was more successful. The former ruling party still had enough organizational resources to overcome the advantages of the now-dominant ANC.
However, the alliance between the DP and the NNP was fraught with problems.
As a long-term strategy, it was questionable whether the DA could grow into a party that attracted black African votes. The cooperation of DP and NNP politicians solidified the perception that they were interested in representing only whites, Coloureds, and Indians.
Further, they appealed largely only to middle- and upper-class members of those groups, as some observers noted that they did not even offer “substantive policy choice [different from the ANC] in terms of macro-economic policy, undermin[ing] their own viability” by not appealing to working class and poor voters (Habib and Taylor 2001: 216).
The alliance was also problematic for a host of other reasons. Because of legal barriers later removed by floor-crossing provisions discussed below, the two parties remained separate in the provincial and national legislatures even while they acted as one at the local level. The agreement uniting the two parties required both particular offices and the proportion of offices to be held by representatives of the DP or the NNP. The agreement made NNP leader Marthinus Van Schalkwyk the Deputy Leader of the DA, with the DP‟s Tony Leon taking the top leadership post. As one DP councilor said,
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requiring such ratios only “perpetuated the divisions” between the two groups, preventing integration of them.2
More important, according to those involved, were the very different organizational cultures in each party and the failure to create systems capable of navigating the differences. One veteran of the era said, “We underestimated the clash of organization cultures. It was a completely unmanaged merger.”3 While the NNP‟s organization and decision-making processes were hierarchical and fairly centralized, the
DP “was more like a debating society,” with free-wheeling debate in its caucus.4 Finally, the NNP itself suffered from factionalism; its internal leadership election following F.W. de Klerk‟s retirement had been far from unanimous and several of its councilors were uncomfortable with Van Schalkwyk‟s leadership.5
As a result, the Cape Town DA following the 2000 election struggled with factionalism and distrust. It proved incapable of managing its own leadership battles, let alone political battles with other parties. This was evident when the Cape Town mayor,
Peter Marais, became embroiled in a now-infamous street-naming scandal. In April
2001, Marais proposed renaming two major streets in downtown Cape Town to Mandela and De Klerk Avenues in order to promote racial reconciliation. When he encountered opposition to the plan, he began a petition campaign to show the level of support for it.
2 Interview. Cape Town DA Councilor. 9 February 2007a. 3 Interview. Cape Town DA Mayoral Committee (Mayco) Member. 9 February 2007b. Several DA councilors identified a lack of attention to organizational culture as the problem with the DP-NNP merger. 4 Ibid. 5 Interview. Cape Town DA Mayco Member. 22 February 2007c.
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Over the following months allegations that signatures on the petition were forged became national news and preoccupied Cape Town politicians.
The DA created a commission of inquiry to investigate the actions of Marais and his advisors; the report found evidence of fraud among other issues. DA Leader Leon moved to remove Marais from office. The DA began to splinter in earnest when the party‟s Deputy Leader from the NNP wing, Van Schalkwyk, publicly challenged Leon‟s authority to do so. The different institutions and committees of the DA divided according to whether they were controlled by the NNP or DP faction. As Jolobe writes, “The main purpose of the [DP-NNP] coalition was to secure an electoral majority against the ANC, and once that objective was achieved cracks began to appear. The lack of effective internal policy co-ordinating structures made the collapse of such a coalition, when facing a political crisis, imminent” (88). The first lesson to learn about opposition coordination and coalition formation was the need for clear agreements on the nature of the coordination and some attention to the question of integrating separate party organizations.
The NNP leadership‟s primary goal in joining the DA was to survive politically in the new South Africa, to create a new party capable of keeping them relevant to national politics. With the embarrassing infighting and severe distrust among the DA‟s factions, these leaders began looking for another lifeline. In late 2001, with the complete breakdown of effective communication between the NNP and DP leadership, the NNP leaders began negotiating an alliance between themselves and the ANC.
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Jolobe (2007: 88) argues the resulting ANC-NNP coalition worked because of clear agreements about how to govern, rather than the DA‟s emphasis on combining voter mobilization efforts. The formal agreement, signed in June 2002, emphasized that cooperation would take place in the context of the parties‟ “mutual respect for each other and their different points of views and party identity.” In fact, the leaderships found they had much in common, given the similar origins of both parties with respect to their goals: both parties had formed to further the social and economic development of a particular demographic group (blacks and Afrikaners, respectively). The purpose was “to bring stability to local government” in order to achieve development goals.6 This would mark the beginning of an emphasis on achieving institutional and political “stability” by all parties in Cape Town.
Crucial resignations and various institutional rules resulted in the new ANC-NNP coalition taking control of the Western Cape provincial government. Political musical chairs resulted in the embattled former Cape Town mayor, Peter Marais, becoming the
ANC-NNP Western Cape premier and the former premier, Gerald Morkel, becoming the
DA mayor in Cape Town. By 2002, the ANC pushed through national legislation creating floor-crossing provisions. These provisions allowed elected officials to change parties but keep their offices, even though they had been elected from a closed party list, during two-week windows every second and fourth year after an election. The floor- crossing measures appear to fit clearly into my theory of opposition marginalization
6 “Agreement between the African National Congress and the New National Party Establishing a Developmental Local Government Framework to Attack Poverty and Racism in the Western Cape.” Signed 20 June 2002. Accessed 7 May 2007, www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/misc/agreement.html
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through the dominant party‟s manipulation of electoral rules, as the specifics of the legislation disproportionately benefited larger parties, that is, the ANC. However, the irony is that the idea originated with the DA to facilitate the DP-NNP merger but came to be to facilitate the ANC-NNP coalition.7 Once the legislation was in place in 2002, many of the NNP‟s elected representatives crossed to the ANC, giving the dominant party control of the Cape Town city government along with coalitional membership in the
Western Cape and KZN provincial governments.8 In a classic dominant party action, co- opting the NNP extended ANC rule to every province in South Africa.
In part because it controlled both Cape Town and the province, the ANC regrouped in the Western Cape in time for the 2004 concurrent provincial and national elections. Analysts attribute its success not to the ANC winning the support of more voters. Instead, the ruling party was quite successful in mobilizing its supporters to vote
(Lodge 2005a). Conversely, the infighting and controversies surrounding the DA between 2000 and 2004 hurt its mobilization efforts among its own base (Booysen 2005).
In its efforts to overcome the advantages of the dominant party, the DA had created a track record in office, but one of scandals and gridlock. It was not a track record that helped electorally.
In Cape Town, the ANC also benefited from the rapidly increasing proportion of the population that was black. Apartheid laws had prevented blacks from moving to the
Cape; only about 10 percent of the city‟s population was black before the 1990s. After
7 See Nijzink and Piombo 2005: 79-82 for a detailed account of how these provisions developed. 8 The defection of the NNP from the DA was not complete; several NNP councilors stayed with the DA and continue to be active in it today.
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democratization, poverty in the Eastern Cape province (traditionally an ANC stronghold) created huge migration to Cape Town. Demographic projections predict that Cape
Town‟s electorate will be more than 50 percent black by 2012. In turn, Seekings (2005a:
22) predicted that, given current voting patterns among demographic groups, the Cape
Town party system would change in favor of the ANC. The electoral landscape appeared determined by demographics and parties‟ relative success in mobilizing their support bases. Meanwhile, through the 2004 elections, opposition parties in Cape Town and the
Western Cape damaged their viability, by damaging their credibility as potential governors with infighting, fracturing, and scandals.
5.2.2 Too Much Too Soon: Durban and the Coalition for Change
The city of Durban, at the other end of the southern coast of South Africa, had very different political experiences in the first several years of reorganized local government. The province of KwaZulu-Natal was long an opposition stronghold, with the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) winning an absolute majority of support in 1994 and a plurality in 1999. However, since 2000, it has moved from a competitive party system to one of ANC dominance. Here, I present the reasons for this shift, which can be explained primarily by the poor strategies employed by opposition parties but also by the ANC deftly co-opting and dropping partners as needed to build a strong coalition.
Durban‟s first democratic local elections in 2000 were a bright spot for parties other than the ANC (see Table 5.2). The ANC won only a plurality of votes, 46.94 percent, which translated to 95 of the 200 Council seats. It governed in coalition with the
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Minority Front (MF), an Indian ethnic party which won 10 seats. The new DA became the second-largest party in the city, winning 53 seats. A veteran of the campaign sees this success as stemming from the large turnout of NNP and DP supporters, just as Cape
Town‟s electoral results appeared driven by the parties‟ joint mobilization and turnout.9
Table 5.2: Durban (eThekwini) City Council Seats, 2000 and 2006 Elections Party 2000 2006 African National Congress 95 117 Democratic Alliance 53 34 Inkatha Freedom Party 35 23 Minority Front 10 13 African Christian Democratic Party 2 3 (eThekwini) Ecopeace 1 0 National United People's Organisation 1 0 Pan Africanist Congress of Azania 1 0 United Democratic Movement 0 1 Azanian People's Organisation 0 1 Action Independent Peoples Party 1 -- National Democratic Convention -- 2 Independent Democrats -- 2 Truly Alliance -- 2 Scara Civic Party -- 1 independent candidates 1 1 Total 200 200 This table shows the number of seats for each party awarded from the election. The number of seats per party changes multiple times during a six-year term due to floor-crossing (defections) and by-elections. Dashes indicate the party did not run in Durban in that year.
As in Cape Town, demographic patterns do appear to form the basis of much of
Durban‟s party system, except that these patterns cannot explain short-term changes. In
2000, the DA made significant inroads in Durban‟s large working-class Indian
9 Interview. Senior Durban DA councilor. 8 August 2008.
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community. Using rhetoric that has become routine in the intervening years, the DA attacked the Minority Front (MF) as a tool of the ANC (Lodge 2003: 117-118). As with the Coloured voters of Cape Town, Durban‟s Indian community began a pattern of dividing its support and became the important swing constituency in the city for years to come.10 While Durban‟s Indian community constitutes about 20 percent of the city‟s population in contrast to the nearly 50 percent of Cape Town‟s population that is
Coloured (StatisticsSA), both communities are seen as – and have acted as – the kingmakers in each city. All parties actively seek Indian support in Durban.11
Meanwhile, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the Zulu ethnic party, lost support.
The IFP‟s traditional electoral – and through the last decade of apartheid, violent – rival is the ANC. In the 1980s, the IFP was “out-competed by the ANC” in urban areas of the
KwaZulu-Natal province, prompting it to adopt a strategy “to defend the KwaZulu homeland, traditional leaders, the Zulu king and the „Zulu nation‟” in order to shore up its rural support (Piper 2002: 76). While this strategy in effect largely conceded urban areas to the ANC, it also made the IFP successful in gaining a share of the post-apartheid
Government of National Unity in 1994 along with the ANC and the NP. This necessitated lessening its long-standing demands for Zulu autonomy, as the ANC steadfastly refused to countenance any hint of succession. Soon IFP and ANC elite interests were served by further cooperation and by 1997 there were rumors of an impending merger (Piper 2002: 84). IFP party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi was offered the deputy presidency in 1999, but anti-ANC hardliners in his organization forced him to
10 Interview. Senior Durban DA councilor. 8 August 2008. 11 Interview. Senior Durban IFP councilor. 15 August 2008.
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decline the position. Schrire (2001: 142) concludes that the IFP had “become in effect just another component of the ANC‟s broad church” nationally but “lacked either the talent or the will, or both, to use its potential leverage effectively.” It was co-opted by the dominant party but without many of the benefits of policy influence or personnel positions.
The IFP‟s electoral message weakened significantly after South Africa‟s democratization. Post-1994, it faced “ambiguity, indecision and internal conflict as the
[nationalist] strategies of the past … waned without being replaced by a coherent alternative” (Piper 2002: 86). Inkatha marginalized itself by failing to develop a clear and consistent ideology in response to the seismic changes in South Africa‟s politics.
The ANC gained votes from the IFP‟s rural base, a trend that would continue steadily for at least the following decade despite occasional flare-ups of antagonism between local party representatives.12 There are also widespread reports of local IFP activists defecting to the ANC, presumably for the reasons dominant parties are more appealing to ambitious activists: they provide access to policy decision-making and state resources.
The IFP‟s decline was neither linear nor sudden. After the 1999 elections, it and the ANC continued to share power in both the national and KZN provincial governments, largely because of the ANC‟s benevolence.13 The demarcation of the new municipalities ahead of the 2000 local elections apparently benefitted the IFP over the ANC throughout the KwaZulu-Natal province (Lodge 120). Further, the ANC itself in northern KZN was
12 For example, see Jaspreet Kindra, “ANC/IFP stand-off in Nongoma.” Mail & Guardian. 4 May 2000, p. 10. and Jaspreet Kindra, “Zuma rescues ANC-IFP coalition.” Mail & Guardian. 8 August 2000, p. 11. 13 It is likely that the ANC‟s motivations for including the IFP were about sustaining the new fragile peace in KZN.
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“wracked by faction fighting” in the months leading up to the election, “contributing to disillusionment among its supporters.”14 It failed to manage its coalition of former adversaries, and was surprised by electoral losses.
The IFP‟s success, however, was fleeting. In the aftermath of the ANC‟s 2000
“loss” (i.e., winning only a plurality) in Durban, and winning control of only 13 of 49 municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, the party‟s provincial chairman S‟bu Ndebele said, “to all Africans, Coloureds, and Indians who voted DA, be warned there‟s going to be consequences for not voting ANC. When it comes to service delivery, we will start with the people who voted for us and you will be last” (qtd in Lodge 118). Given the numerous studies that show the pervasiveness of clientelism and patronage both in dominant party systems (see Chapter 2) and in middle-income countries (Kitschelt and
Wilkinson 2007), it would be surprising if the ANC were not using state resources as one of its strategies to maintain support.
While data to examine whether Ndebele‟s warning was implemented proved to be unattainable and Ndebele quickly backtracked, the idea is taken seriously by opposition politicians. Said one, “The ANC has got lots of promises. The poor people believe everything, because they are in desperation. Whoever promises, they will try their vote with those people and see what works.”15 Representatives of multiple parties report that the ANC directs resources to wards where it is competitive with other parties, “to garner support. They use their deployed members to take those deliveries to those areas.” For example, in anticipation of the 2009 election, in MF-held wards in the Chatsworth area of
14 Jaspreet Kindra. “IFP steams ahead in KZN.” Mail & Guardian. 8 December 2000, p. 8. 15 Interview. Senior Durban IFP councilor. 15 August 2008.
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Durban, “Councilor Visvin Reddy is mobilizing people and telling them what housing deliveries will take place, in terms of middle-income earners. And those issues are not brought through the various structures of Council. …I haven‟t seen any house being built in Chatsworth. It‟s [just] promises.”16
Another opposition politician described a similar dynamic, claiming that while the
ANC does create public housing in opposition-held wards and places its supporters in that housing, it does not then follow through and provide public services to the area.17
This promise without follow-through is supported by occasional media references to “the
ANC‟s well-timed handout of „sweeties‟ on the eve of the elections – such as the symbolic return of District 6 to its former inhabitants” in Cape Town just before the 2000 elections.18 More generally, Lodge (2006: 155) says that the ANC has generally benefitted from being seen as the agent of public service delivery such as paved roads and electricity by virtue of its control of state resources. Additionally, interviews and media reports include accusations of the ANC using government jobs across the country, but especially in Durban, “as its "recruitment agency" for ex-ANC councilors and for rewarding floor crossers.”19 As Chapter 2 showed, such co-optation of opposition parties‟ activists and leaders is common in dominant party systems, as many who want a share of the spoils of power – whether such spoils are financial or policies – gravitate to where the power is. Thus, while lacking firm evidence of politically-driven spending in
16 Interview. Senior Durban MF councilor. 13 August 2008. 17 Interview. Senior Durban DA councilor. 8 August 2008. 18 Howard Barrell and Barry Streek. “DA set to dent ANC majority.” Mail & Guardian. 1 December 2000, p. 5-7. 19 Quotation is from Zukile Majova. “'Jobs for pals' claim at eThekwini council.” The Mercury. 21 April 2006, p. 1. The idea was echoed in interviews with: Cape Town DA Councilor, 9 February 2007a; Senior Durban DA councilor, 8 August 2008; Senior Durban MF councilor, 13 August 2008.
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Durban, we do know that opposition parties believe themselves to be at a resource disadvantage. It is also likely that some substantial portion of the public holds similar beliefs. This will affect opposition party strategies.
After the 2000 elections, the opposition parties in the city council found themselves in a somewhat cooperative relationship with the ANC; because of the ANC‟s plurality of seats in Durban, it was “forced to find common ground with the other parties.”20 However, opposition parties‟ involvement in governance did not create a track record in office that they could build upon in appeals to voters. After all, the ANC could claim a similar record and so the opposition parties could not distinguish themselves from the dominant party. Further, opposition failure can be attributed to the marginalization and electoral collapse of the IFP, and to the lack of a clear or effective message from opposition parties generally.
In the 2002 municipal floor-crossing, when the NNP elements of the DA defected to the ANC, the ANC in Durban became the majority party (Faull 2004a). These gains were increased two years later as a result of poor strategic choices by the opposition parties. For the 2004 national and provincial elections, the DA and IFP agreed to a pre- election cooperation effort in KwaZulu-Natal. The Coalition for Change agreement created joint campaign events and arranged to share resources to develop policy positions. The two parties publicly declared they would create governing coalitions in
KZN if election results indicated the ANC was likely to gain power otherwise (Piper
2005). DA leader Tony Leon “viewed a closer association with the IFP as meeting a
20 Interview. Senior Durban DA councilor. 8 August 2008.
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number of [the DA‟s] needs. It would negate perceptions that the DA was confined to minority racial politics. It would signal that [the] ill-starred marriage with the NNP had not foreclosed other options for opposition co-operation” (Leon 577). Thus having combined organizational resources to win votes in the Western Cape in 2000 with the
NNP, the DA was convinced of the value of joint voter mobilization efforts. In 2004 in
KZN, it promised co-operation in governing with the IFP only if necessary. It had learned the problems associated with party mergers.
The DA-IFP venture is now considered at best ill-timed by those involved.
Representatives of both parties say that KZN‟s voters were not “ready” for such cooperation, that they did not understand it. One politician involved described it as “the
Collision for Change. . . . It actually switched off both our bases and we ended up having a low turnout in [2004].”21 An IFP representative called the Coalition for Change the
“biggest mistake of our lives… The timing was wrong. Also . . . we lost out because our members were not well-informed as to how it works. I remember I was working at the polling station and you could hear our illiterate guys saying, you just cross [on the ballot] whatever - DA, IFP, it‟s one thing. They didn‟t quite grasp it clearly, that we are a coalition but we are different. It turned out to be a disaster, as our numbers dropped.”22
While the DA‟s results in KZN remained stable compared to 1999 (seven seats in the 80- member provincial legislature in both elections), the IFP lost two seats and the ANC gained four. While these numbers are small, they meant the ANC no longer needed the
IFP as a coalition partner.
21 Interview. Senior Durban DA councilor. 8 August 2008. 22 Interview. Senior Durban IFP councilor. 15 August 2008.
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The 2004 Coalition for Change clearly backfired for DA and the IFP, in vote returns but also beyond election day. It further damaged their credibility with voters, as voters perceived these parties‟ cooperation to be merely for convenience or anti-ANC and therefore, by extension, anti-liberation. The DA continued to struggle to convince black voters that it could or would represent them. The Coalition for Change continued the trend of the opposition parties trading supporters amongst themselves rather than winning over erstwhile ANC supporters or new voters. For the IFP, media coverage of the
Coalition served to create the impression that the IFP was the junior partner. It was an admission on the part of the IFP that it was not a significant player in national politics, as it had been claiming (Piper 2005: 160), and so it only further damaged the IFP‟s credibility.
In the 2004 elections, the IFP‟s loss of the KZN provincial government to the
ANC was a sea change after 30 years of supremacy in the province. The extension of
ANC rule into the historic areas of the Zulu kingdom has its source in both ANC actions and IFP failures. The IFP‟s losses gave the ANC more power in KZN, of which it quickly moved to take advantage. No longer needing the cooperation of the IFP institutionally or symbolically, the ANC abandoned its “pragmatic cooperation” with the
IFP in order to pursue confrontational politics (Piper 2005: 149-150). The ANC built effective organizational structures in places where only 10 years before it could not campaign because of political violence, while the IFP largely failed to create party branches in cities. Turnout in 2004 indicated that, much as the ANC had gained on the
DA in Cape Town, the ANC mobilized its supporters while the IFP failed to do mobilize
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its own (Piper 2005: 163). Superior resources and strategies made the ANC‟s campaign more successful.
The IFP failed to construct a coherent and consistent message to replace its early
1990s demands for independence or at least autonomy; rather than completing a transformation into an ethnically-inclusive conservative party, it is “trapped” between its old platform and its new one:
… the party continues to rely on rural Zulu people for support, but is less and less able to use traditional leaders and old tactics of coercion combined with appeals to Zuluness. At the same time its efforts to reach out to new constituencies have not worked because the party has not developed the required leaders, policies or record in government. (Piper 2005: 149).
It seems “incapable of replacing elderly leaders” (Lodge 2006: 165). The role of urbanization in South Africa is important here. Urban voters do not rely on Zulu social and economic structures for their livelihoods, nor does the IFP‟s underdeveloped platform appeal to a modernizing electorate.
These failures even prevent some possible opposition cooperation. While some individual leaders of the DA and IFP work well together, other parties in the Durban
Council note the lack of clear positions. Said one, “The IFP is very, very unpredictable.
They have so much to offer [given their potential support, they could retake the province]. Maybe it is their leadership, but something is lacking… what we see is inconsistency.”23 Without credible leaders, a governance record built outside of governing coalitions with the ANC, or even a coherent campaign platform, the IFP simply is no longer a viable alternative to the dominant ANC.
23 Interview. Senior Durban MF councilor. 13 August 2008.
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5.3 Opposition Success: Cape Town
The two cities‟ politics continued to diverge from these first few years of local political contests. The ANC not only gained more power in Durban, but the Durban party branches gained more power within the ANC. In Cape Town, the opposition parties recovered from their disastrous first five years of subnational politics. This section will explain how Cape Town became the foothold South African opposition parties need if they are to see the national party system become competitive.
5.3.1 Opposition Unity in Cape Town
The 2006 municipal elections in the Western Cape province produced an outright majority in only four municipalities of 25. A competitive multiparty system had begun to emerge in the electorate.
This increased competitiveness was due in part to the formation of a new party, the Independent Democrats (ID). Led by the popular former Pan-African Congress leader Patricia de Lille and drawing much of its support from the Coloured community, in the 2006 local elections it drew 10.6 percent in the Western Cape (IEC). The lack of clear municipal council majorities in the Western Cape can be attributed to the ID drawing support from both the ANC and the DA. Much of its base is formed by voters who have been trying to find a political home for more than a decade, first largely supporting the NNP, then splitting between the ANC and the DA. The new party slowed the predicted migration-driven realignment of Cape Town‟s party system, preventing an
ANC majority. However, it also slowed the DA‟s goal of uniting opposition to the ANC
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under one party banner. The ANC did not hold onto the Cape Town government it had controlled due to floor-crossing defections, but neither did the DA repeat the majority it won in 2000. Instead, the election results left no party with a majority on the 210- member city council (see Table 5.3). Paradoxically, competitiveness with the ANC was gained through further fragmentation of the party system.
Table 5.3: Cape Town City Council Seats, 2000 and 2006 Elections Party 2000 2006 DA 107 90 ANC 77 81 ACDP 8 7 UDM 3 2 AMP 2 3 PAC 1 1 IFP 1 0 Middle Party 1 -- ID -- 23 FF+ -- 1 UP -- 1 UIF -- 1 Total 200 210 This table shows the number of seats for each party awarded from the election. The number of seats per party changes multiple times during a six-year term due to floor-crossing (defections) and by-elections. Shaded boxes show the original Multiparty Coalition government. The number of seats held by each party and the parties included in the coalition have changed several times since 2006. Dashes indicate the party did not run in Cape Town in that year. The Demarcation Board adjusted both the number and the borders of wards between the two elections, creating ten additional wards for the 2006 elections.
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The 2006 election results could have resulted in the ANC co-opting the ID, much as it co-opted the MF in KwaZulu-Natal. It could have distributed resources to ID supporters along with its own, and continued to govern the city. However, the ID strongly emphasized its independence; it would not be co-opted and would not countenance any appearance of corrupt uses of state resources. Thus the ID was not co- optable – by any party – and the ANC was not able to build a governing coalition. The arithmetic meant the DA would need nearly all the smaller parties to form a majority government in the city.
Thus interparty opposition coordination had an opportunity to develop. After various negotiations most of the opposition parties formed a governing coalition with what proved to be a durable set of agreements. This succeeded because the largest opposition parties themselves became much less internally factionalized and more coherent. It is not that the parties are free of factions, but rather that they learned how to manage them effectively. Indeed, the DA itself still has plenty of infighting – according to one councilor, there are divisions along racial and linguistic lines – but that infighting takes place behind closed doors.24 The public face of the DA is less fraught with problems than its earlier iterations were and thus voters are less distracted by credibility- damaging incidents.
In creating a governing coalition for Cape Town, the DA especially sought to avoid the problems that had plagued the DP‟s alliance with the NNP. It now proceeds
24 Interview. Cape Town DA councilor. 29 July 2008a. Notably, there was some division on the subject amongst my DA interviewees along linguistic lines: most Afrikaner and Coloured councilors interviewed reported group-based „cliqueness,‟ while English-speaking white councilors described party caucuses as venues for open debate and disagreement. I hesitate to draw strong conclusions from my small sample, but it suggests that at best the DA still struggles with cultural misunderstanding.
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cautiously when creating coalitions, interpreting the events of 2000-2002 as the result of
“rushing [into opposition consolidation]. . . We are in a much better space now for realignment [in South Africa] because we have learnt from experience and can get the conditions right before we move forward. [Any future coordination] will be no shot-gun marriage.”25
Importantly, the DA also abandoned its goal from the first part of the decade of creating one united opposition party. Its campaigns used to attack other opposition parties‟ weaknesses, arguing that South Africa needed a single strong opposition party and the DA could fulfill that function best. The DA‟s Athol Trollip argued during the
2004 campaign, “We firmly believe that a vote for a smaller party is a wasted vote. We believe in strong opposition and we have seen in the past how smaller parties split the vote.”26 The DA‟s first goal was to unite the opposition, so that then the ANC could be challenged with a single platform and pooled resources.
These two goals appear to have changed places in the minds in the DA leadership.
After 2006, the rhetoric is no longer about achieving a two-party system so that the ANC can be challenged, and instead focuses on creating a “new political force” to challenge the ANC at the polls. Nothing in the new rhetoric precludes multiparty coalitions or requires party mergers, and DA leaders frequently praise leaders from other parties who they deem to be acting in accord with the DA‟s goals of transparency and fair delivery of state functions. This approach is a way to address the multiple cleavages in South
25 Helen Zille. “On opposition realignment.” Speech given at the Mpumalanga congress of the DA, Ermelo, August 1 2009. 26 “DA Ad Defames De Lille: ID.” South African Press Association. 15 March 2004.
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African politics, by recognizing they exist and representing them through multiple parties.27 Thus the DA‟s learning process regarding coalition-building continues.
For their part, the smaller parties entered the 2006 Cape Town negotiations in order to gain access to governing power. Some were tired of being blocked by the ANC, arguing that they could not align with the ruling party because it simply overruled them on every policy decision.28 The smaller parties also saw the 2006 election results as an opportunity to deepen South African democracy. One member argued that the Multiparty
Coalition was
not out of a fundamental disagreement with the ANC. It‟s also about protecting the space for opposition parties in the future. Because if we don‟t take the opportunities for opposition parties now, history has shown us that the dominant party may well become the only party. That‟s not in the best interests of South Africans. So we need to have this contrast.
Those who put together the coalition quickly gained agreement that the opportunity to form a non-ANC subnational government was not to be abandoned.29
However, the smaller parties were concerned that their voices would be swamped by the DA in any possible governing coalition. For many of them, their goal is to achieve a “balance of power” in the political system.30 It makes little sense then to simply shift a preponderance of power from the ANC to the DA. The six smaller parties of the coalition, with their 15 seats, decided that they would caucus together without the DA.
They decided on common positions amongst themselves, and only then negotiated with the DA leadership to decide on the policy of the governing coalition. This arrangement
27 Interview. Cape Town DA councilor. 29 July 2008a. 28 Interview. Cape Town Mayco Member (non-DA). 12 February 2007a. 29 Interview. Senior member of Cape Town government (non-DA). 29 July 2008b. 30 Interview. Cape Town Mayco Member (non-DA). 12 February 2007a.
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created a formal system for managing the factionalism inherent in such a large coalition and, the smaller parties argue, gives them a united front that guarded against possible DA hegemony within the coalition. They are determined to avoid co-optation by any larger party, so that they too can build credibility with voters through a somewhat independent governing record.
Even with these arrangements, tensions existed among the parties of the coalition.
The smaller parties‟ leaders suggest that they do not receive the same information the DA caucus does, and certainly not as quickly. Notably, interviews with representatives from these parties did not reveal tensions among the smaller parties. This pattern is remarkable given the diversity of the parties, including the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) emphasizing Afrikaner heritage, the United Democratic Movement (UDM) that grew out of the former Transkei homeland government, and a variety of parties representing sections of the poor Coloured community and featuring various colorful personalities.
Instead, the tensions described were all between the DA and one of the other parties, or between the DA and the rest of the coalition partners together.
Two parties did not join the Cape Town multiparty coalition after the 2006 election. At the last minute the Pan-Africanist Congress chose not to join, largely on ideological grounds, although it also declined to support the ANC. The ID likewise chose to remain neutral, although it had backed the ANC Mayor, Nomaindia Mfeketo, against the DA‟s candidate, Helen Zille. For nearly a year, the ID steadfastly stuck to its
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commitment to independence, voting with or against the coalition according to the particular issue; it did not want to be beholden in any way to the DA.31
The coalition has faced challenges and defections. Indeed, its members accuse the ANC of trying to bring down the Cape Town government 12 times in its first two years. These attacks took the form of various legal challenges, such as using provisions that allow provinces to take control of any underperforming municipality, a charge that was rejected by the judicial system.32 The ANC also sought to break up the governing coalition, in hopes of forming its own. In January 2007, the African Muslim Party
(AMP) defected from the coalition; without its three seats, the MPC became a minority government. However, the ANC failed to put the final piece in place to build its own majority coalition, as the ID rejected its overtures. The ID instead contributed its 23 votes to keep Zille in the mayor‟s office for the sake of government stability given the challenge of preparing for the 2010 World Cup, in exchange for the Deputy Mayor‟s position. The Deputy Mayor from the African Christian Democratic Party, Andrew
Arnolds, stepped down to make this deal possible. Arnolds and the ACDP also emphasized the need for „stability‟ in Cape Town government and policies. This emphasis from all parts of the coalition was probably in part an effort to explain to voters why the parties were joining in government. The Coalition for Change had shown the need to explain coalitions to the electorate; the ID especially, given its prior reticence to
31 Interview. Cape Town ID leader. 12 February 2007. 32 I return to this in Chapter 6, but also, for the issues surrounding one of these events, see Marianne Merton, “‟Meddling could spark crisis.‟” Mail & Guardian. 4 May 2006, p. 11. For a general discussion of this era of Cape Town politics, see Faull 2006.
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do anything to damage its independence, must have been concerned about how the public would understand its decision.
As of this writing, the Cape Town MPC continues to govern the city, although the precise power-sharing arrangements shifted again (for example, the ACDP reacquired the
Deputy Mayor‟s office) and the number of parties involved has reduced drastically.
Controversy again surrounded Cape Town politics in May and June 2009 when separate disputes developed between the DA, on one side, and the ACDP and the FF+ on the other, and both parties withdrew from the coalition.33 The current coalition consists only of the DA, the ID, and the UDM.
5.3.2 Explaining Opposition Unity
Why did the 2006 coalition work when earlier opposition attempts at unity had failed so badly? The answers largely confirm the patterns of opposition growth in dominant party systems set out in Chapter 2. First, the DA gained viability from the defection of the NNP‟s leadership. It was not only that the formal jettisoning of the party of apartheid made many voters more comfortable with the party. The remaining DA activists and officeholders held more similar views than members of the new party had in
2000, making the party‟s positions and statements more coherent. Organizationally the party became less internally divided, meaning its resources could be used effectively
33 The FF+ denied DA allegations that it had joined the ANC in a national coalition, an apparent reference to party leader Pieter Mulder accepting an offer to be Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, calling the DA “an unreliable but also a dishonest coalition partner” (Mulder 2009). Media reports attributed the split between the DA and the ACDP to “recent allegations that the ACDP had colluded with the ANC during the election campaign and voted against DA leader Helen Zille in the vote for premier soured relations between the party and the ACDP” (see Anel Lewis. “Nielson is Cape‟s new deputy mayor.” Cape Times. 28 May 2009, p. 3). For the ACDP‟s account of events, see Meshoe 2009.
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rather than fought over by different factions. As the largest opposition party became less internally polarized and factionalized, it made itself a more credible alternative to the
ANC. The opposition, that is, the non-ANC parties, was also as a group less polarized in
2006. While they remained steadfastly committed to their own individual ideological identities and political independence, they shared the goal of building opposition to the
ANC and creating political stability in a city where little had existed.
Second, the coalition drew explicitly on lessons learned from earlier opposition coalition attempts. One DA leader noted that building a single party, as the DP and NNP tried, proved very difficult, “but you can pull [other parties] into an anti-ANC
[governing] coalition without buying into their values, or asking them to buy into your values.”34 In this way, coalition members can cooperate for those issues on which they agree, but do not necessarily need to hash out common positions on every subject. These arrangements also avoid any need to merge party organizations as the DP and NNP found so challenging. Not only can different structures and management styles continue unabated, but these coalitions avoid some of the resistance that might come from party activists. Branch members are not necessarily asked to work directly with their counterparts from a coalition party, let alone defer to them. Just as dominant parties face problems managing a broad coalition of interests, so would a broad opposition party – but without the uniting benefits of holding national office. Coalitions are much easier than mergers.
34 Interview. Cape Town DA Mayco member. 9 February 2007b.
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Relatedly, previous experience taught the opposition parties that post-election
(legislative and executive) coalitions are easier to explain to South African voters than pre-election alliances. The opposition leaders in Cape Town drew upon the experience of the 2004 cooperation effort between the DA and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in
KwaZulu-Natal. The Coalition for Change agreement created joint campaign events and arranged to share resources to develop policy positions. The two parties publicly declared they would create coalitions in KZN if election results indicated the ANC was likely to take over (Piper 2005). Representatives of both parties say that KZN‟s voters were not “ready” for such cooperation, that they did not understand it. Party elites are now well-aware that any arrangements they make with council or parliamentary colleagues must be explained to the voters. Opposition strategies in a dominant party system must, therefore, include clear media strategies to communicate the reasons for parties‟ decisions. In a dominant party system, opposition parties cannot rely only on partisan loyalty but must be vigilant in maintaining their image.
Coalitions are easier to explain when election results produce no majority party, as it is clear to everyone that they are necessary. As the previous chapter showed, party competitiveness in many municipalities has increased, with mere pluralities and hung councils becoming more common. Hence subnational offices are vital for opposition growth in South Africa; they are where opposition forces can in some important ways reduce fragmentation and demonstrate their alternative to the dominant party.
The learning process is not linear or constant. The DA approached its Cape Town coalition parties in the lead up to the 2009 election, seeking cooperation agreements that
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the parties would promise to join in governing coalitions if electoral results necessitated it
– with the explicit exclusion of the ANC. This proposal is reminiscent of the 2004
Coalition for Change with the IFP. Most parties decided not to link themselves to the DA in this way, preferring to maintain their independence to choose what party or parties to work with depending on specific situations. Some, for example, at least officially will consider working with the ANC if necessary, although it is not their preference.
However, the parties of the Cape Town coalition did commit to campaigns emphasizing the issues, rather than attacking one another. Doing the work of delivery and governance is at least rhetorically strongly cited as the first priority, regardless of who one must work with to accomplish it. This emphasis is, again, probably a response to voters‟ dissatisfaction with government services in South Africa, and thus is a strategy to create a track record likely to appeal to the electorate.
5.4 Opposition Failure and the Extension of Dominance in Durban
The party systems of Durban and KwaZulu-Natal evolved into dominant party systems from their previously competitive patterns. This section will examine how this occurred. The demographic changes brought by migration to Durban benefitted the
ANC, the ANC made some brilliant co-optation decisions, and opposition parties have failed to develop strategies that can mobilize their supporters reliably, let alone gain additional voters.
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5.4.1 The Extension of Dominance to Durban
In the 2006 local elections, the ANC won sole control of the city council of
Durban. In the 200-seat council, the ANC won 117 seats, with the DA coming in second with 34 and the IFP third with 23 (see Table 5.2). Once in place the ANC deftly consolidated its position in the city and the province, making it difficult for opposition parties to recover their previous shares of power. The ANC managed its coalition of interests in the city successfully, maintaining the support bases brought by co-opting some political elites.
Establishing dominance in Durban also put other parties at a greater disadvantage with regards to their viability with voters. Both the DA and the IFP are now largely blocked from building track records in office, having developed publicly acrimonious relationships with the ANC and its appointed city administration. Since South African government uses a parliamentary design, opposition parties are effectively barred from taking part in policy formation unless the governing party invites them to contribute.
Interparty acrimony apparently is exacerbated by the Municipal Manager Michael
Sutcliffe, who is frequently the subject of accusations such as bringing “a new style of
„blatantly politically partisan leadership‟ into the previously apolitical administration.”35
One City Council meeting was derailed by numerous points of order, culminating in the
35 Mbulelo Baloyi, Veven Bisetty, Bheko Madlala, and Keeran Sewsunker. “There‟s no kingpin controlling municipality, says ANC.” Independent on Saturday. 10 July 2004, p.2, quoting DA councilor Lynn Ploos van Amstel. See also Niren Tolsi, “Party tricks and power play.” Mail & Guardian. 1 August 2008, p. 16.
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IFP delegation walking out, singing, in protest. Debate or discussion of the tabled legislation was largely nonexistent.36
Whether or not Durban‟s opposition parties are „consulted‟ on the issues of the day appears to be a matter of opinion determined by one‟s political loyalties. The DA claims that its ideas are frequently co-opted by the ANC, that “a few months down the line you see an element of what you proposed being worked in somewhere.” Further, committee meetings are reportedly productive and cooperative; controversial issues are aired publically but most of the City Council‟s work proceeds calmly out of the spotlight.37 However, that prevents opposition parties from being able to claim their successes effectively; they continue to lack a record in office that would make them more credible alternatives for voters.
The Minority Front takes a different approach to ANC dominance. Their goals – poverty reduction and service delivery to a community that suffered under apartheid – are similar to the ANC‟s. Therefore, in order to serve its constituency, the MF adopts a more cooperative relationship with the ANC. ANC leaders in Durban describe it playing a
“useful opposition role, making suggestions” in contrast to the “obstructive role” of the
DA.38 The ANC-MF relationship has been complicated by their coalition at the provincial level; the MF in Durban is sometimes told by party leaders not to challenge the
ANC on a particular issue to preserve the relationship in the provincial capital.39 In
36 Author‟s observation, Durban City Hall, eThekwini, 28 February 2007. 37 Interviews. Senior Durban DA councilor, 8 August 2008; Senior Durban MF councilor, 13 August 2008. 38 Interview. Senior Durban ANC councilor. 7 March 2007. 39 Interview. Senior Durban MF councilor. 13 August 2008.
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effect, the MF silences potential challenges to the ANC on policy issues, minimizing the potential effects of holding seats locally and provincially.
This cooperation also leaves the MF open to attacks that it is no different from the
ANC. These accusations are so persistent that its website has multiple red banners denying the accusation, such as “True Partnership: We have not joined the A.N.C. We are separate and independent. The ANC controls Durban and we work well with them.”40
The MF‟s approach has mixed results, or perhaps more precisely, results that are inconsistent over time. In the aftermath of the Coalition for Change, the MF benefitted from the other opposition parties‟ troubles, increasing its 10 seats won in 2000 to 13 in
2006. It continues to use the 2004 DA-IFP coalition in its own rhetoric. For example, it argues, “Do not believe any lies by any party about alliances [with the ANC], because when the DA formed a coalition with the IFP in 2004, they said it was the coalition of change, but it did not work at all for you.”41 Thus Durban‟s politics now have the characteristics of an established and stable dominant party system. Opposition politics in the city are now characterized mostly by fragmentation and a lack of coordination among opposition parties, as the parties fight for the support of limited numbers of opposition voters.
Despite the MF‟s modest gains in 2006, there are few reasons to expect significant further growth.42 While this proposition remains untested, in the longer-term
40 Minority Front website. http://www.mf.org.za/ Accessed 23 December 2009. 41“The MF is not in an alliance with the ANC!” Minority Front. http://www.mf.org.za/site/MF/Respond/40/ Accessed 28 July 2008. 42 That is not to say that the MF does not want to expand. Said one of its Durban leaders, “If we remain in the Indian community, we‟ll die. We know that [and so are trying to expand with other groups].” Interview, 13 August 2008.
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it seems that some voters decide to support the ANC directly if their primary concern is patronage or the provision of club goods. It is more efficient to elect the ANC rather than elect another party to negotiate with the ANC. Alternatively, if a voter‟s primary concern is to cast a vote registering opposition to the dominant party, then those interests may be better served by a vote for a more confrontational opposition party. Co-opted parties tend to lose viability over time. An additive effect of subnational opposition success will not occur for a party so tied to the dominant party. In such cases, it is likely voting is an expressive act of identity rather than based on ideology or policy positions. Hence we can conclude from the MF‟s experience – along with the center-left parties of Italy in the
1970s – that formal or informal coalitions with the dominant party are unlikely to contribute to opposition party growth.
Finally, there are a number of parties that have held one to three seats in Durban‟s
City Council. However, after the 2006 elections in which the ANC won 59 percent of the seats, there is little incentive for the larger opposition parties to coordinate or work with the small ones. In Durban, “to a large degree the opposition remains very fragmented, because it is so competitive [with] a host of parties competing for essentially the same pool of voters.”43 The smaller niche parties remain marginalized and unlikely to expand.
5.4.2 Explaining Dominant Party Success in Durban
Durban and the surrounding province of KwaZulu-Natal are notable in South
African democratic politics for their status as the largest and most important areas in
43 Interview. Senior Durban DA councilor. 8 August 2008.
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which the ANC has wrested control from an opposition party and consolidated its rule.
This extension of dominance to a previously competitive area can be explained by both the dominant party‟s strategies and the lack of viable opposition forces.
In contrast to Cape Town, the ANC‟s main rival for dominance in Durban was a party in decline. Where the Cape Town ANC faced a growing DA and the splashy success of the new ID, the Durban ANC was able to focus on gaining votes from the IFP.
Here again we find suggestions of modernization theory at work: the IFP‟s decline worsened in urban areas where new migrants quickly lost their cultural and economic ties to the Zulu kingdom, and the ANC had well-developed branch structures ready to mobilize new members.
Further, Inkatha did not change strategic focus away from national results as the
DA did. The DA, especially in Cape Town, has learned the lessons of earlier elections where the results were a function of the parties‟ relative turnouts of their own supporters.
To win office, parties needed to mobilize their own voters rather than trying to gain the support of new voters. Winning office and then governing well proved to be how to win new voters, rather than seeking new voters in order to win office. In contrast, the IFP had enjoyed ministerial positions in the national government following the 1994 election. It loathed ceding national-level power, even as its relationship with the ANC fell apart. So it focused on national-level electoral gains, spread its resources too thin, and ceded subnational ground to the ANC. Once in place, the ANC used its national and subnational advantages to all but finish the electoral kill. Having lost so much ground, the IFP now has few organizational or financial resources to counterattack. The IFP
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provides clear evidence of the proposition from Chapter 3 that opposition strategies focused on national gains do not work.
One question that remains is why the DA has not enjoyed more success in
Durban. The party‟s image as an English-speaking white party, which admittedly it worked to shed during this period, fits with Durban‟s demographics more than with Cape
Town‟s. The answer may lie in the differences in „available‟ voters. With the electoral collapse of the NNP, its supporters in the Western Cape migrated to other opposition parties. In contrast the collapse of the IFP caused an electoral migration to the ANC.
Further, the DA‟s abortive cooperation with the IFP clearly had more damaging effects in
KwaZulu-Natal itself than 1000 miles away in another province.
Finally, especially now with former IFP supporters integrated into the ANC, the non-ANC vote in Durban is significantly smaller than it is in Cape Town. What is more, the opposition parties in Durban, in talking about future election strategies, are more focused on winning over each other‟s voters than are the opposition parties in Cape
Town. They have not yet articulated strategies to bring disaffected ANC voters to the polls to support an opposition party.
5.5 Conclusion
Obviously demographics matter in local South African politics. But the changes over the first ten years of democratic local government show that party strategies are also key in how the party systems evolve. In the early years of democratized municipal government in South Africa, opposition leaders cycled through several attempts at
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coordination, but succumbed to infighting and to ANC attempts to divide them. In authoritarian regimes, opposition parties‟ “coordination problem is one of the most significant challenges” to their growth and success (Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009: 412).
The failures of South African opposition parties, sabotaging themselves with voters and in their cooperation attempts, show that the coordination problem also exists in democratic regimes with dominant party systems.
In Cape Town the first six years of the municipality‟s existence included “five mayors, an acting mayor, four municipal managers, an acting municipal manager, five restructuring initiatives, four governments, two multi-party coalitions, a high turnover of senior civil servants and the contingent haemorrhaging of skills and institutional memory” (Faull 2006). However, when the opposition parties were forced by election results into a post-election coalition, they found that governing increased their viability.
They created a record in office, wrested some control of state resources away from the dominant party, reduced the ill-effects of fragmentation, and reduced the dominant party‟s ability to manipulate institutions to sideline them. Their increased credibility as real alternatives to the ANC created strong incentives to make interparty cooperation work. The risk of uncooperative fragmentation still exists, as shown by the departure of some parties from the Cape Town coalition. However, the fact that these departures came only after the coalition had enough seats to survive such defection is telling. The
Cape Town coalition increased its members‟ viability and, we will see in the next chapter, did not distract opposition resources in ways that contributed to national losses.
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The ANC‟s strategies have also changed over time in response to changing election results and shifting opposition challenges. Where the ANC extended its dominance, it quickly adopted more contentious attitudes to former allies like the IFP.
When co-optation was no longer needed in order to gain a large enough coalition to access the halls of power, the co-optation was jettisoned and the IFP lost even more electoral share. Since a party‟s maintenance of dominance rests on its ability to balance the breadth of its coalition with its manageability, this action makes sense. The ANC‟s current relationship with the MF can be similarly explained: it accedes to many of the
MF‟s policy suggestions so that the party‟s supporters have less incentive to defect to the
DA. These concessions are not costly as they are not inconsistent with the ANC‟s policies of development and nonracialism, and they keep the largest opposition party in
Durban from the most obvious block of voters it could seek to win over. The equivalent party in Cape Town, representing an ethnically-defined bloc of swing voters, the ID, is both larger than the MF and, when forced to in the January 2007 coalition crisis, chose to side with the DA not the ANC.
The ANC controls the national, provincial, and municipal government in Durban.
It gains the benefits of this dominance: governing makes it easier to co-opt activists and opposition parties, increases its capability to manipulate state resources in its favor, and shuts out opposition parties from the kind of access that would allow them to build viability with voters.
In the next chapter, I will show how these factors strengthened the hand of KZN- based ANC leaders in intra-party fights. These leaders were able to gain control of the
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party‟s organization and the national government. In contrast, failing to maintain control of Cape Town threw the Western Cape ANC into turmoil. The Cape Town coalition of opposition parties expanded upon their success, subsequently winning other elected offices. In these ways the dynamics of local politics described in this chapter impacted party system evolution nationally.
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Chapter 6: The Impact of Local Politics on the National Party System
The leader must keep the forces together, but you can’t do that unless you allow dissent. People should be able to criticize the leader without fear or favor. Only in that case are you likely to keep your colleagues together. - Nelson Mandela, at the 1997 ANC conference where Mbeki was elected party president.1
6.1 Introduction
This chapter continues the narrative of the South African subnational politics, with the focus here of demonstrating that these events impacted the evolution of South
Africa‟s national party system. Having won control of Cape Town, opposition parties gained the elements of viability identified from the extant literature presented in
Chapter 2 as needed to mount successful challenges to a dominant party. In Durban the largest opposition party, the Inkatha Freedom Party, lost its share of power and quickly lost what viability it did have.
My theory of dominant party system evolution holds that these two trajectories are likely to have national effects in somewhat decentralized democratic states. I posit that opposition viability gained from governing an important, visible city can lead to more opposition growth and expansion, to other places and higher levels of government; in this chapter I will show how this did occur in the Western Cape.
I further posit that the fortunes of factions within the dominant party can be changed by the fortunes of the party in different parts of the country. With the loss of
1 Quoted in Gumede 2005: 54.
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Cape Town, the Western Cape ANC imploded. With the extension of the ANC‟s dominance to include Durban, the faction based there became ascendant. This faction‟s assertion of its position brought it into conflict with the national ANC leadership, creating serious tension within the party. As outlined at the end of Chapter 3, a dominant party without institutionalized and transparent methods of decision-making – especially if they lack accepted candidate selection processes – will struggle to keep factionalism in check.
Such became the case for the ANC. Poorly managed factionalism leads to defections and elite splits that, as we know from Chapter 2, have often proved to be the downfall of dominant parties. While the ANC remains dominant in South Africa, its factionalism in the last few years of this decade did see it suffer the most important defection in the democratic era. Thus while South Africa has not become a fully competitive party system, we can observe both a weakening dominant party and surging opposition parties that could be indicative of such evolution in the offing.
The rest of this chapter expands upon these events within the ANC and in the two subnational party systems to demonstrate how competitive local politics impacts the evolution of a nationally dominant party system. I conclude with discussions both of why competitiveness may increase and of the limits of local politics‟ impact on national events.
6.2 The Importance of Subnational-Based Strategies
South African opposition parties have provided us with a good comparison of the effects of nationally-focused strategies versus the effects of subnational ones. In 1999,
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opposition parties thought their futures rested on their success in national elections.
Piombo (2005) argues that the state‟s centralization of power, as it sought to establish its authority after apartheid, led opposition parties to focus their 1999 campaigns on increasing their power nationally, rather than directing resources to winning the provinces where they enjoyed the most support:
[An] obvious strategy, if the electoral system had required geographic concentration in vote distribution and the provinces had sufficient power to offer the spoils of office, would have been for the party to wage an all-out war to win control of the Gauteng and the Western Cape provincial governments, and not expend much effort in other provinces where the party could not hope to win enough votes to influence provincial level administrations. (462)
Similarly, the Inkatha Freedom Party should have similarly concentrated on maintaining power in KwaZulu-Natal. However, since neither of the conditions identified by Piombo held, campaign strategies accordingly de-emphasized maintaining opposition provincial strongholds in favor of strategies designed to maximize their share of the national vote.
Instead the IFP sought to expand its electoral support outside of KZN and beyond the
Zulu ethnic group, by trying to appeal to other minority groups with conservative social and economic positions and advocating decentralizing power away from the national government (Piombo 2005a: 464). It continued this strategy in 2004, in which it spent almost half of its resources outside of KZN trying to gain new voters (Piper 2005: 154).
Similarly, the DA strategy was to win the Afrikaner support base of the National Party, as that would – and did in 1999 – enable the DA to become the official opposition in
Parliament.
As shown in the previous chapter, these strategies caused the main opposition parties to, first, fight amongst themselves for voters dissatisfied with ANC rule. Then,
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recognizing the drawbacks of focusing on an existing small bloc of opposition voters, some opposition parties began cooperating with one another. These efforts included the disastrous attempt in 2000 to merge the DP and NNP into the DA and then, in 2004, the
DA-IFP Coalition for Change. Both efforts, of party merger and of pre-election coalition, failed to increase the opposition‟s share and further confused potential opposition voters about the positions of their purported political leaders. Opposition parties‟ share of the vote decreased as the Democratic Alliance (DA) lost both Cape Town and the Western
Cape and the IFP collapsed in the province of KZN.
In Cape Town, in the Western Cape, lessons from these failures led to workable post-election opposition coalition arrangements. From 2005 onwards, the DA and other opposition parties somewhat unexpectedly learned that such arrangements could work where pre-election coalitions and mergers had not. The resulting coalition for the municipal government created an important opposition stronghold, increasing opposition parties‟ credibility and viability in the eyes of voters and activists. An explicitly subnationally-based growth strategy emerged as these parties capitalized on their new positions.
Conversely, in Durban and KwaZulu-Natal, opposition miscalculations – most notably, taking KZN‟s competitiveness for granted and shifting resources elsewhere – allowed local dominant party representatives to establish strong positions for future interparty and intraparty competitions. Factionalism within the ANC overshadowed
South African political life by early 2007, ahead of an intraparty succession vote between the so-called Mbeki and Zuma camps. Durban and KZN, in which the ANC had only
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recently consolidated its dominance, is the base of the Zuma faction. The subnational success translated into a stronger position within the ANC and therefore to Zuma‟s victory in the succession battle. In this way subnational politics influenced the most important political moment of the decade in South Africa. Hence, unlike the assumptions underlying parties‟ strategic decisions in 1999, I will show in this chapter that local politics in South Africa do provide routes to gains in national politics, both by the grassroots opposition growth highlighted by the literature on dominant party systems and,
I argue, within the dominant party itself. I turn first to the development of unmanaged factionalism in the ANC.
6.3 ANC Factionalism: From Broad Church to Rebellion
The first decade of local government democracy coincided with a tumultuous and controversial era of the ANC. My theory of dominant party evolution holds that a key factor is the attitude of the ruling party to both inter- and intra-party opposition, and the strategies used to manage and challenge opposition. Therefore, this chapter first describes the evolution of the ANC itself, from a congress party successfully combining a broad spectrum of interests under a banner of civic nationalism to a party struggling to manage its different constituencies. I then turn to the key role of subnational politics in this evolution.
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6.3.1 National Fissures within the ANC
Nelson Mandela stepped down as state president in 1999, replaced by the Deputy
President Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki had been in charge of day-to-day governing operations since about 1995 and became president of the ANC in 1997 (Gumede 2005: 62). Mbeki took the helm of an ANC that clearly had the potential for factionalism and defections, as it had earlier co-opted the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the
South African Communist Party (SACP) through their endorsement of the ANC for all elections. The ideological fault line among the Tripartite Alliance partners was clear since at least the negotiations to end apartheid and so the potential for factionalism and party splits was long recognized and relatively well-managed.
However, after the ANC embraced economic liberalism in 1997 with the Growth,
Employment and Redistribution Programme (GEAR) emphasizing macroeconomic growth, it was unclear if the Alliance would hold given GEAR‟s announcement as “a fait accompli” (Mangcu 2005: 75; see also Gumede 2005: 132-137). It was at this point that
“the boundaries of opposition and debate (particularly within the alliance) progressively narrowed” (McKinley 2001: 185). While the left was a large and important part of the
ANC‟s electoral coalition and activist base, it found itself not particularly influential on state policy (Southall 2003). This marginalization remained the status quo for years, with resentment growing “out of the perception that government was usurping the role of the party, which ought to inform government policies rather than the government dictating policies to the ANC” (Fikeni 2008: 5). The party lacked institutional mechanisms for
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managing internal debate; those discussions that occurred did so at the whim of the top leadership, and macroeconomic policy was not on the agenda.
The first decade of the new century saw the development of two rival factions within the ANC along several fissures in addition to economic ideology (Fikeni 2008: 5-
14). First, Mbeki‟s leadership style did not lend itself to accommodating his intraparty opposition. As discussed in Chapter 4, the parallel centralization of both the party and the state, especially in personnel appointments, was justified on grounds of efficiency and anti-corruption. But Mbeki also increased his control over decision-making at the center and clearly contributed to the development of ANC political culture into something increasingly “secretive, hostile to open debate and to the media, and increasingly paranoid in character” (Butler 2007: 43). Its public discussion and policy documents during Mbeki‟s presidency speak of vague anti-liberation and anti-transformation forces against which the ANC must defend (e.g., ANC 2000; see also Butler 2007: 43).
Habib (2008) argues that Mbeki‟s centralizing leadership style had its roots in the economic conditions and recalcitrant institutions Mbeki faced. Having accepted the need to adopt neoliberal policies, and therefore seek private investment in order to grow the economy, Mbeki needed to sideline the leftists in the ANC if the policy was going to take effect. Having established the policy, he then needed provincial premiers and the mayors of major cities to implement it. The only way to ensure implementation was to appoint allies to those positions, and in 1997 the ANC adopted a „deployment‟ policy that gave him the power to do so.
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Mbeki gained a reputation for requiring absolute loyalty from his political allies
(Gevisser 2009: 263, 268). He forced out of government those who opposed him.
Members of Parliament sitting on oversight and ethics committees found themselves sidelined or forced out when they raised concerns (Feinstein 2007). Ignoring tradition,
Mbeki did not include in his government leaders who had independent support bases, such as COSATU‟s Zwelinzima Vavi, SACP‟s Blade Nzimande, and the ANC Youth
League‟s Fikile Mbalula, because they disagreed openly with the President about economic policy (Gevisser 2009: 251). However, Southall (2003: 59-61) correctly points out that Mbeki did not always succeed in his attempts, for example, to control the selection of provincial premiers. His was never absolute power, but at times appeared to want to be.
Mbeki‟s choice of economic policy and the state institutions needed to implement it made further centralization imperative. Additionally, his leadership style and the resentment it caused can be understood as consequences of rival political cultures within the ANC. During apartheid, necessitated by the threat posed by the apartheid regime‟s spies, the ANC in exile – which included Thabo Mbeki – was centralized and emphasized discipline among the ranks. Decisions were made by a small circle of trusted leaders and were to be followed as military orders. Meanwhile, in South Africa, anti-apartheid groups were decentralized and relied on mobilizing at the grassroots in order to minimize attention from the police state. The “inxiles” or “remainees” developed a political culture of consultation and open debate completely at odds with the top-down control of Mbeki‟s political education (Fikeni 2008: 6). By 2003, observers suggested that “the exile,
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authoritarian tendency is pre-eminent” in the party (Southall 2003: 57). ANC members at the grassroots perceived high-handedness and elitism, and were increasingly resentful of
Mbeki (Gevisser 2009: 270).
Additionally, the inxiles were suspicious of many of the “Western imports” of the exiles, such as liberal democratic institutions and neoliberal economic policies (Butler
2007: 42); GEAR was seen by some as a betrayal of ANC leaders selling out to neocolonialists (Gevisser 2009: 253-255). They emphasized the need to draw upon
African traditions and heritage in an effort to “humanize” and adapt the “impersonal forces of modern bureaucracies, international markets and electronic technology . . . to
African needs” (Lodge 2003: 230-232). Others have labeled this camp “Africanists,” indicating their privileging of supposed African values and structures with the explicit rejection of “imported” options. The more exclusive attitude is seen by many as a serious departure from the ANC‟s non-racial and inclusive traditions (see, for example, Feinstein
2007: 87).
In contrast, in 1997 Mbeki introduced a goal of South Africa leading an “African
Renaissance.” In this, Africa should strive for modernity “by means of fibre-optic cables, liberal democracy and market economies.” Development will be achieved through foreign investment and access to markets for African exports, which will occur only when risk assessments of the continent change. Therefore, to achieve self-reliance,
Africans needed to both fix their own political institutions and actively discredit international perceptions (Lodge 2003: 227-230; Gumede 2005: 175-194; Gevisser 2009:
254-5, 340-1). Such „fixes‟ included adopting many of the institutions and approaches
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that the Africanists viewed with skepticism. Thus the historical context of rebuilding the
ANC as a political party after decades of exile and operating underground further contributed to the growing intraparty factionalism.
Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, the ANC‟s intraparty divisions took on ethnic undertones. Ethnically-based factions are not allowed in the ANC (Butler 2007:
45). However, while not publically acknowledged, there was an increasing sense that
Mbeki favored his fellow Xhosa speakers (Kagwanja xxvi). Mandela had warned that having three consecutive Xhosa leaders of the ANC would come to haunt it; he was proved correct. The perception of bias grew when Mbeki reshuffled his Cabinet during his second term and included a disproportionate number of Xhosas (Butler 2007: 42).
While the ethnic split in the party was by no means an absolute rule – in 2007, forty percent of the Eastern Cape‟s delegates voted for Mbeki‟s Zulu rival – it certainly played a role in the development of ANC factionalism (Cardo 2008).
Table 6.1 summarizes the issues dividing the two ANC factions. The intraparty rivalry contained few cross-cutting cleavages across which compromise could be reached.
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Table 6.1: Characterizations of ANC Factional Divisions Issues Mbeki camp Zuma camp Economic policy center-left Left Decision-making top-down, centralized bottom-up, accountable and responsive to rank- and-file Apartheid-era experience Exiles Inxiles Ethnic bases Xhosas non-Xhosa, especially Zulus Organizational support National Executive COSATU, SACP, ANC Committee, some ANC Youth League, MK Women‟s League leaders, (military wing) veterans, business interests those sidelined by Mbeki Regional base Eastern Cape KZN International orientation modernity through African Africanist; more critical of Renaissance; “quiet Mugabe diplomacy” on Zimbabwe It is important to note that members of the two camps would reject some of these characterizations. This table summarizes both the acknowledged and perceived divisions.
Further and more importantly, the party did not have strong institutional procedures for resolving intraparty fights, which I have argued was an important factor in the longevity of one-party dominance in both Italy and Japan. As a result of Mbeki‟s centralization, the party had few ways to even discuss these divisions, let alone to resolve them or to find compromise solutions. Since Mbeki excluded those who disagreed with him from the halls of power, the party conference became the only clear way to challenge his decisions. However, in the 1990s the party had moved from holding party conferences every three years to every five years. The delay in openly addressing differences and, subsequently, the inability of the party to hold Mbeki accountable for his government‟s policies further magnified the resentment among those who disagreed and especially among the rank and file (Gumede 2005: 131). Thus differences manifested
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among both national elites and the mass membership. Since the membership is largely organized geographically, this added a regional dimension to the factionalism.
6.3.2 (A)part of the Palace Intrigue: The ANC’s Mass Organization
Rifts also formed within the ANC at the local and provincial levels, paralleling the fissions seen nationally. Indeed, in many cases, factional uprisings were led by the rank-and-file membership. The Tripartite Alliance‟s leftist organizations and some local branches of the ANC itself pushed back against the center and, more specifically, Mbeki.
Officially local branches were supposed to nominate candidates, but the national leadership interfered frequently through the party‟s „deployment committee.‟ In some provinces, national leadership had to resolve stalemates among divided groups, some of which manifested as declining to re-nominate Mbeki to the presidency for his second term in 2002. Candidate selection for the 2004 provincial and national elections proved similarly competitive and even intractable in several provinces. As part of bringing the various provincial factions into line, the national leadership did not name its candidates for provincial premiers until after the election. Reportedly it was feared that the losing factions in such decisions would not campaign for the ANC (Lodge 2005a: 115) and thus damage the party‟s voter mobilization efforts.
In the Western Cape, three different ANC candidate lists circulated. The
“Africanist” list was multiethnic and urban-based but excluded all of the sitting provincial leadership, while another list drew support nearly exclusively from rural
Coloured communities. A third, compromise list won support from the leadership of
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both of the first two groups (Lodge 2005a: 114). The factionalism, however, was not resolved, as the two groups continued their “battles, as much about control of the province as ideological differences or race” (Feinstein 2007: 103). Again, political cleavages coincided, rather than integrating citizens across geographic and ethnic divisions.2 The dominant party‟s structures increasingly failed to reach agreement or compromise, and increasingly relied on ad hoc elite intervention to do so. This produced an approach to dissent and debate within the party characterized by belated, inconsistent, and forced compromises. Not surprisingly, this approach proved unsustainable.
Similar problems with candidate selection arose in 2000 and 2006 for municipal elections; in many cases it appeared the national leadership did not even attempt to smooth over the divisions. For example, in 2000 in Middelburg, Mpumalanga, the award-winning mayor and ten of his allies in the municipal council were expelled from the ANC when they objected to staff appointments made by the provincial leadership
(Lodge 2003: 127-8). In East London and Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape, 42 ANC members expelled from the party by national leadership for standing as independents after not being selected as ANC candidates. ANC spokesperson Phakamisa Hobongwana said, “This time around we will have no mercy. We are not going to entertain any discussion on this issue.”3 By 2006, ANC leaders were adament that a vote for an independent candidate was a vote against the ANC.4 As my theory suggests, the lack of
2 See Lipset and Rokkan 1967 on the role of parties in formalizing cross-cutting cleavages, and therefore furthering national integration. 3 Peter Dickson. “E Cape ANC outrage as 42 members stand as independents.” Mail & Guardian. 3 November 2000, p. 16. 4 Personal conversation. Durban ANC leader. 25 September 2006.
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space for internal opposition and debate in the dominant party, most often evident in candidate selection disputes and therefore locally and provincally, would lead the ANC to further divisions. Without accepted and effective party institutions to manage factionalism, the situtation escalted into a crisis over its future unity and policies.
6.3.3 Elite Factionalism
Nationally, ANC factionalism congealed into the so-called Mbeki and Zuma camps. Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma were close colleagues, having worked together in the ANC‟s covert operations in the 1970s. Zuma was one of the most prominent Zulus in the ANC, rising to be its intelligence chief. He is widely credited with brokering the peace between the ANC and the IFP, the Zulu ethnic nationalist party, in KwaZulu-Natal in the early 1990s. Zuma became Deputy President of the party and then of South Africa as Mbeki became President of each. However, their relationship deteriorated after 1999 as Zuma felt sidelined and Mbeki thought Zuma was supplying information to alleged coup plotters (Gevisser 2009: 322-3). Nevertheless, for years after Zuma loyally implemented Mbeki‟s decisions, becoming a “super-whip” in Parliament and chairing the much-loathed, centralized „deployment committee‟ that removed leftists and critics of
Mbeki from ANC candidate lists (Gumede 2009: 271, 297). Zuma, as part of the
Cabinet, had not held different policy positions than Mbeki in the past. Indeed, he had never taken a position contrary to ANC policy and was part of the leadership for decades.
At the same time, he was available to ANC members in a way that Mbeki simply was not and was much more well-liked (Gumede 2005: 311; Gevisser 2009: 322).
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In June 2005, Mbeki fired Zuma as state Deputy President. A close associate of
Zuma was convicted of corruption and it appeared to many that Zuma was involved. In
December 2005 Zuma took a leave of absence as the ANC Deputy President when he was indicted on rape charges. Many within the ANC saw these events as yet another conspiracy to sideline any threat to Mbeki‟s power. Zuma “was suddenly adopted by the aggrieved and alienated leadership of the ANC alliance partners” – those COSATU leader Zwelinzima Vali had called “the walking wounded” – and elevated as their candidate for the presidency (Fikeni 8; Gevisser 2009: 325).
The dismissal of Zuma set off open defiance of Mbeki in which the factions in the
ANC became more defined and took on heightened importance. One ANC leader interpreted the divide in the ANC as about personalities of the leaders. As he said, “[The lack of policy differences is] why [Zuma‟s] speeches are so boring. The songs are much more fun.”5 Nevertheless, “Mbeki‟s apparent hold over the party suddenly shattered, as his many detractors coalesced in support of Zuma as a way of voicing their dissatisfaction with him” (Gevisser 2009: 323). The factions shown in Table 6-1 solidified behind the two leaders.
6.4 The End of the Mbeki Era
Leadership succession battles have often been the downfall of dominant parties, as they lead to defections and a smaller coalition. Prominent examples from Chapter 2 and 3 include the weakening of India‟s Congress Party under Indira Gandhi and the PRD
5 Personal conversation. Durban ANC leader. 25 September 2006. Zuma often regaled crowds of supporters with renditions of, most famously, the anti-apartheid song “Umshini wami,” which translates to English as “Bring Me My Machine Gun.”
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split from the PRI in Mexico. In contrast, in Italy and Japan, well-managed succession procedures and formalized contests among party factions contributed to the DC‟s and
LDP‟s long tenures in power.
Among the problems with the ANC‟s internal decision-making rules and its dysfunctional faction management, the 2007 presidential candidate selection process proved the most fraught. The South African President is limited to two five-year terms.
The ANC presidency also has five-year terms but with no such limitation. Party leadership is selected at the national party conferences, now held every five years about
20 months before national elections. Thus Mbeki became ANC President in 1997 before
Mandela stepped down as state President in 1999, and in turn term limits required Mbeki to step down in 2009. The question for the ANC, then, was who to elect as ANC
President at the 2007 party conference: Mbeki, who would then be „the power behind the throne‟ of a state president to be chosen at a later date, or another candidate who would then be the obvious selection for state president? For the first time in decades, the ANC had to hold a contest for its top leadership post.6
While the ANC had formal procedures in place to select leaders, they did not prevent unmanaged factionalism. This failure was due in part to the quasi-official ANC position that “competition for [leadership] positions encourages „individual ambition,‟ the pursuit of „selfish interests,‟ and the abuse of elected office for personal enrichment” (i.e.,
6 History had prevented contested leadership successions. Oliver Tambo was selected by a few fellow leaders in exile, since an internal party election could not be held. Mandela‟s selection was simply a given after he was released from prison. The ANC departed from its “usual” procedures when Mbeki was made deputy president, with party heavyweights deciding among themselves prior to the ANC conference. For the formal party vote, Cyril Ramaphosa withdrew from consideration and Mbeki stood unopposed (Gumede 2005: 44-49).
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“careerism”). Individuals were strongly discouraged from even acknowledging they wished to stand for party elections (Butler 2005: 733, quoting from ANC 2001). Thus the formal procedures creating internal party democracy were undermined by the de facto norms of the party that prevented open debate in that democracy.
In 2007, Zuma largely rejected this tradition of not campaigning, which only increased the disdain with which Mbeki-ites viewed him. Meanwhile, Mbeki himself did not respond to the electoral threat until very late in the game (Russell 2009: 254).
Campaigning occurred at the local level, as 90 percent of voting delegates to the conference are chosen by local party branches. Internal party factionalism increased as the succession vote drew closer. By the time it arrived, even the ANC could not deny the level of rancor or the damage it was causing to the good functioning of democracy in
South Africa. The Secretary-General‟s own report to the party conference (Motlanthe
2007) said,
the process of nomination of candidates has exposed the manifestations of two contending factions within the movement, each of which is ferociously lobbying in support of two lists, one of which is headed by the President (and which excludes the Deputy President), while the other is headed by the Deputy President (and excludes the President).… Despite … guidelines on the process of nominating and electing leadership, these members have … completely ignored both the spirit and letter of these guidelines in order to participate in public campaigns to condemn and denigrate some leaders within the movement and glorify others. In the course of these factionalist activities, aimed at securing election to the leadership of the movement of one chosen group over another, branches have been treated as 'voting fodder' ... We have received numerous complaints from branches concerning a variety of infringements of the guidelines, and there have been references to the possibility of money, some intimidation and promises of government positions being thrown into the electoral pot. … it would be to bury our heads in the sand not to acknowledge that the Mbeki/Zuma template has become a part of the frame of reference, including amongst the membership and within senior leadership collectives...
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My theory of dominant party system evolution argues that to stay in power democratically, a dominant party must maintain a broad coalition and therefore must allow some debate and internal opposition. Doing so requires the existence of transparent and fair procedures for resolving disagreements. The ANC under Mbeki increasingly failed to allow internal debate or the expression of differing views. However, despite this, the party had maintained the vast majority of its coalition. An individual leader here and there had defected to another party, but rarely did this have much effect on electoral returns. More often, elites would move into the business world and mass disappointment with the ANC appeared to manifest in decreased turnout in elections.
The genius of the long-ruling dominant parties of Italy and Japan was the provision of internal democracy that rotated power regularly, thus avoiding reducing control of the party – and therefore of the state – to a zero-sum game. The ANC failed to do this. The 2007 succession decision created a winner-take-all fight.
6.4.1 Regional Powerbases
Geographic variation affected the jockeying for control of the party nationally.
Between 2005 and 2007, the ANC membership increased about 55 percent, to its highest ever (Motlanthe 2007). This increase was the result of factions seeking to strengthen their positions by increasing the number of delegates they would send to the conference
(Fikeni 2009: 15). Among the nine provinces, the “membership of the ANC in both
KwaZulu Natal and Free State … nearly doubled, whilst the Eastern Cape [saw] the largest growth in numbers. Limpopo is the only province where the number of ANC
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members is not significantly higher than it was ten years ago” (Motlanthe 2007).
Gauteng and the Western Cape – rich provinces with populations growing 13.9 percent and 16.7 percent, respectively, between 2001 and 2007 – remained steady in membership.
Rural provinces gained large numbers of ANC members while urban areas did not;
COSATU‟s call for the union‟s rank and file to join the ANC in order to influence its policies at the 2007 conference apparently failed (Fikeni 2009: 15-16).
Table 6.2 shows the percentage of the membership from each province over the ten years of the Mbeki era. What is most notable is that despite the huge increases in raw membership numbers, the relative percentages found in each province remained relatively consistent, except for in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo.
Table 6.2: Percent of ANC membership from each province, by year 1997 2002 2005 2007 Eastern Cape 11.58 21.39 16.03 24.65 Free State 10.42 7.94 8.70 9.87 Gauteng 11.10 12.66 13.21 9.64 KZN 16.85 12.84 17.03 16.54 Limpopo 17.77 10.58 12.81 10.89 Mpumalanga 9.86 11.66 10.95 8.84 North West 9.28 9.93 8.85 7.62 Northern Cape 5.16 5.85 4.90 6.00 Western Cape 7.98 7.15 7.52 5.95 Total number 385,778 416,846 440,708 621,237 of members Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding. Sources: Motlanthe 2007; Faull 2007.
Nevertheless, in an important development for the 2007 ANC conference vote, membership nearly doubled in KwaZulu-Natal, providing the KZN ANC with more
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resources. In the span of about 10 years, the province went from governed by the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party to competitive, to dominated by the ANC (see Piper
2005). The ANC sought cooperation with the IFP when the two were fairly evenly balanced, and even maintained the provincial coalition after it won a majority in the province. This cooperation began in 1994 in an effort to end the political violence that wracked the province, and continued as Mbeki tried to co-opt the IFP both as a gesture of reconciliation and to eliminate one of the ANC‟s largest challengers (Gumede 2005: 246;
Gevisser 2009: 243, 322).
This fits with theoretical expectations. As Trounstine (2006) points out, minimum winning coalitions are rational only once a coalition is “entrenched in government and competition has been severely reduced” (881). Reducing the size and scope of the ruling coalition only gives a potential challenger less of an electoral obstacle to overcome. Once power has been consolidated, it is safe for the ruling party to trim its coalition back to minimum needed to win office.
Hence the ANC was not particularly concerned when the IFP abandoned all of its coalitions with the ANC in 2006 (Gumede 2009: 46). Tensions, political and interpersonal, had grown as the IFP tried to find a path to remaining relevant in South
African politics. Hardliners in the IFP had gained control of the party, and fired many
ANC officials from the provincial government (Gumede 2005: 246-248). More importantly, the ANC had consolidated its electoral position, and no longer needed the coalition with the IFP. This was the experience of several Mbeki allies, who fell victim
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to his “knack of assembling unlikely constituencies to back his programmes, then dropping them when they have outlived their usefulness” (Gumede 2005: 62).
However, as with other characterizations of Mbeki, this “knack” should be understood as part of a wider pattern among dominant party systems. Dominant parties often co-opt a rival party into a coalition, thereby blurring the policy distinctiveness of the smaller party. Having sidelined the party electorally, the dominant party ended the cooperative relationship, denying the opposition party access to the power or patronage that may have sustained it. Additionally, having co-opted the opposition‟s leadership and/or policy positions, the dominant party has widened its own coalition. This scenario is precisely the experience of the IFP in KwaZulu-Natal.
The ANC campaigned heavily in KZN in 2004, determined to win the province.
“ANC victories in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape would have huge psychological and symbolic significance, but, more importantly, would forever lay to rest the fallacy peddled by the apartheid regime that the ANC is Xhosa-dominated and enjoys scant support among the Zulu and the Coloureds” (Gumede 2005: 248). The ANC did not shy away from using its access to state resources, with top-ranking officials visiting remote rural areas to find out what the traditional Zulu leaders wanted. By the end of the campaign, residents of the Zulu heartlands were referring to the IFP‟s Buthelezi as „the spectacles man,‟ because the IFP‟s campaign posters feature him wearing glasses, and to
Mbeki as „the man who gives grants‟ (Lodge 2005a: 125; see also Piper 2005: 155-6). In
2004 the ANC won a plurality in the province for the first time, and for the first time in its three decades of existence, the IFP found itself without a share of power in KZN.
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The KZN ANC gained many members, especially in Durban as people migrated from the rural areas of the province to the city in search of work. Those new arrivals became ANC members due to good mobilization efforts, attributed by insiders to having a strong party secretary and chair,7 much stronger branch organizations,8 and the development of a strong financial base backed by local business interests.9 All these are party organization resources needed to contest elections, whether interparty or intraparty.
The ANC was strengthened vís a vís its interparty rivals in KZN and the provincial ANC was strengthened vís a vís its intraparty rivals in other parts of the country.
As shown in Table 6.3, by the 2007 ANC conference, the proportion of delegates from each province bears limited resemblance to the relative population of each province.
Although under-represented compared to the proportion of the country‟s population living in the province, KZN had the second-largest number of ANC members and therefore the second-largest number of voting delegates, behind the ANC‟s over- represented traditional base of the Eastern Cape (Fikeni 17). Given that less than ten years before KZN contained dozens of „no-go‟ areas, where ANC and Inkatha representatives could not campaign in each other‟s territory for fear of violence, the
ANC‟s growth in KZN was remarkable.
7 Interview. Durban ANC leader. 3 October 2006. 8 Interview. Durban ANC councilor. 6 March 2007. 9 Interview. Senior Durban ANC councilor. 7 March 2007.
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Table 6.3: Percent of ANC delegates to 2007 National Conference and percent of South African population, by province Delegates Population Eastern Cape 22.2 14.4 Free State 8.9 6.2 Gauteng 8.7 20.2 KZN 15.0 20.9 Limpopo 9.8 11.3 Mpumalanga 8.0 7.4 North West 6.9 7.1 Northern Cape 5.4 2.3 Western Cape 5.4 10.1 Others 9.8 At least 90 percent of party delegates must come from branches; the remaining delegates (“others”) are drawn from the National Executive Committee, the ANC Youth League, the ANC Women‟s League, and each Provincial Executive Committee. Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding. Sources: Motlanthe 2007; Faull 2007; Statistics SA.
This success in KZN gave the provincial and Durban ANC power within the party. This power was both concrete, in the form of the voting bloc at the party conference, and symbolic. The provincial leaders had defeated one of the clearest rivals to ANC power and extended the party‟s rule to the last of the nine provinces.10 Further,
Mbeki appeared to be sidelining Zulus at precisely the time the ANC incorporated former
IFP activists into the party, following the IFP‟s collapse. These activists, having pursued a Zulu nationalist agenda for years, were not impressed (Butler 2007: 42).
10 It may be that union membership in KZN may be particularly high compared to other provinces, so the union faction may be stronger in Durban than elsewhere, contributing to the organizational strength of the KZN branches. However, there are industrialized areas in the Eastern Cape too (e.g., car factories in Port Elizabeth), so this hypothesis would need to be explored in further research.
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As a result, something of a perfect storm formed when Zuma emerged as Mbeki‟s rival in the leadership struggle. Zuma did not hesitate to use his Zuluness to political advantage (Russell 2009: 233-9). This was not purely an ethnic appeal but rather a traditionalist one; Zuma gained support across ethnic lines from those who felt Mbeki was remote and elitist. Zuma appeared “to be rooted in his home culture, to come from somewhere, and thus seemed to understand the needs of ordinary people, even if this somewhere was a Zulu rather than a Xhosa or a Sotho one” (Gevisser 2009: 326; see also
Russell 2009: 236-7). ANC members in KZN attended rallies wearing t-shirts that said
“100% Zulu” and “100% Zuma.” Crowds became openly hostile to any appearance by
Mbeki, who was still both the state and the party president (Fikeni 2008: 13-4). Sitas
(2008: 91) recounts how “it takes one platform orator to mention GEAR and poverty and the chants start against the presidency and move quickly to” apartheid-era militant refrains as an expression of “radical populism.” Zuma‟s populism, built in KZN, trumped Mbeki‟s technocracy.
Mbeki belatedly tried to bolster support among his fellow Xhosas in the Eastern
Cape, but largely failed. Thus the Eastern Cape‟s delegation to Polokwane did not create a monolithic voting bloc for the incumbent.
Tensions within the ANC had become “volatile, not in the sense of violence, but in terms of ideological debate.”11 In back-to-back interviews of ANC elected officials, I heard strikingly different characterizations of the state of the ANC. The first opinion, from someone with an exile background, lamented party colleagues airing their opinions
11 Personal conversation, ANC Youth League leader, March 2007.
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in public rather than working within disciplined structures to “sort things out.”12 The second interview, with someone with an inxile background, said, “I don‟t know what‟s the big deal; any political formation is going to have different strands of thoughts.”13 The debate was not just over economic policies or leadership styles, but also over what the debate was about and whether it should be happening at all.
Remember from Chapter 3 that one hallmark of dominant parties at risk for defections was when intraparty debates turned into zero-sum contests for power. This clearly occurred in South Africa. As each ANC faction tried to gauge its level of support relative to the other, individual activists and officials became concerned for their political futures in case they found themselves on the losing side. In their quest for political protection, many ANC office-holders stopped speaking in public, for fear of offending or disagreeing with the wrong person. One non-ANC Cape Town councilor described how reporters called her asking how best to contact ANC representatives for comment on issues of the day relevant to her office, as the reporters had failed in their attempts.14 The interviews for this dissertation, conducted mostly in 2007 and 2008, also suffered from this self-imposed silence.
Despite the “volatility,” at the December 2007 party conference, the KZN ANC won praise for its conduct, with the Secretary-General‟s report (Motlanthe 2007) noting that the provincial leaders had overcome previous “tensions and instability” as well as the
12 Interview. Durban ANC councilor. 6 March 2007. 13 Interview. Senior Durban ANC councilor. 7 March 2007. 14 Interview. Cape Town DA Mayco member. 29 July 2008.
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tensions inherent in Zuma‟s court appearances in the province‟s capital, Pietermaritzburg, to
ensure . . . that comrades deployed in government work together with ANC structures and our people on the ground … also has lessons that should be studied by all of us. [They] have strengthened the appeal of the ANC across the province, and mobilised more and more people into our ranks, as well as building a better life for our people. . . . In this trying context, in which national challenges found sharp expression in the province of KwaZulu Natal, it must be said that the province remained united and acquitted itself well.
This statement was no doubt meant as a warning to other parts of the ANC that had not remained united. It apparently had limited effect, as eight months later several provincial leadership contests broke out in fights and violence.15 The apparent resolution of the national leadership contest had not resolved any of the underlying issues dividing the intraparty factions.
6.4.2 Regional Weaknesses
Across the country, the situation for the ANC in the Western Cape and Cape
Town was much different. The provincial party had experienced a rollercoaster of electoral successes and failures, ultimately weakening it both for interparty contests and for intraparty factional battles during the 2006-2009 period.
Events in the Western Cape were documented in the last chapter. To review, in
2000 the ANC had lost Cape Town to the newly formed DA, and then triumphantly gained control of it when the NNP leadership defected from the DA in 2002. The ANC-
NNP coalition then won the 2004 provincial election, the first time the ANC had won
15 Charles Molele and Dominic Mahlangu. “‟I have never seen such a level of disrespect.‟” Sunday Times. 10 August 2008, p. 13; “ANC name not for sale.” Sunday Times. 17 August 2008, p. 13.
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control of the province. It held both the city and provincial governments for two years, when the 2006 municipal elections threw Cape Town politics into the spotlight as no party won a majority of seats. Embarrassingly, the ANC failed to build a governing coalition of its own and was forced to cede power to a hodgepodge coalition of seven parties with little in common other than a desire to see the ANC on the opposition benches and away from the allocation of government resources.
The Western Cape ANC always faced factionalism of its own. In the 1990s it was
“wracked by frequent hostility between the black and coloured branches.”16 After 2000, differences were put aside as the party focused on integrating the NNP elites into the party and on governing both the province and Cape Town. But the divisions never went away, and became explicit again after the June 2005 provincial party conference, at which James Ngculu won the chairpersonship away from the province‟s premier,
Ebrahim Rasool. Across the Cape, Coloured activists claimed the ANC structures had pushed them out or down candidate lists.17 As Faull rightly argues, “The truth is far more complex, relating to the strategic direction of the party in the province, but relations between the two factions remain bitter and highly personalised” (2006: 3). Race is not the factor driving the fights but instead, as with so much of South African politics, race coincides with several other issues.
Efforts to limit the damage from losing the 2006 Cape Town election became a way to wage intraparty battles. The divisions within the Western Cape ANC matched the national divisions, especially on the issue of the party leadership insisting that ANC state
16 Marianne Merten. “Cries of racism heard in W Cape.” Mail & Guardian. 13 October 2000, p. 14. 17 Marianne Merten. “Crackdown on ANC poll rebels.” Mail & Guardian. 2 February 2006, p. 2.
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office-holders should be accountable to them. Further, Rasool and most of his cabinet were clearly in the Mbeki camp – as were nearly all office-holders in the ANC by this time – while Ngculu and other provincial party leaders joined the Zuma faction (Faull
2006).
In its attempt to gain a measure of power back in Cape Town, the provincial party forced provincial minister for Local Government Richard Dyantyi to challenge the city government on (widely viewed as bogus) constitutional grounds. Dyantyi eventually convinced the national Minister of Provincial and Local Government, Sydney Mufamadi, to intervene on the grounds that the problem was now an intergovernmental one between the city and the province and thus properly resolved by national-level officials of the state. This defeated the provincial ANC party structures by putting “the matter firmly within the ambit of the institutions of state, and relegated party political structures to the chattering classes” (Faull 2006: 6). State power trumped party power, and kept the non-
ANC city government in place.
The national leadership of the party assigned the blame for this incident and others to both sides, and made explicit the allegation that the Western Cape turmoil was motivated by the quest for resources and patronage. Its 2007 report noted that
when the ANC was in opposition [in the Western Cape] we were more united and cohesive. Now that we have access to public resources, the demon of factionalism has reared its ugly head. . . . ANC comrades deployed to government and those elected to lead the ANC simply fail to listen to each other, thus once again raising the question of the ANC as the ultimate strategic centre of the power and creating the perception that there are two ANCs - one in government, and the other outside of government. The province has recently seen ongoing campaigns of ill discipline by some members, especially during regional conferences in 2005 and in the build up to the 2006 local government elections. Organised groupings waged a campaign for their own ends, which led … to the disruption of branch, regional and provincial meetings of the movement. (Motlanthe 2007)
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As DA Cape Town leaders pointed out, it must have become very embarrassing to be a
Capetonian at national ANC meetings.18
In short, the Western Cape ANC failed at every task required of it if the ANC was to establish itself in government in the province. It co-opted NNP leadership in 2002, but failed to convince many of the NNP‟s voters to follow. It failed to form a governing coalition for Cape Town in 2006 and thus failed to co-opt any other party. It reacted to losing the city government with hostility and even took arguably anti-democratic actions against the multi-party coalition in the city. It failed to grow its membership, sending the smallest delegation to the 2007 party conference. Even the Northern Cape, with a fifth of the population, registered more ANC members (Faull 2007: 6). The ANC failed to manage intraparty factionalism in a way that meant the various parts of the party could operate smoothly or present a united front to the electorate. This weakened the ANC organization in the province, damaged its voter mobilization efforts, and gave opposition parties the opportunity to “demonstrate their alternative” governing skills, and thus increase their viability and grow from the grassroots.
In sum, in approaching the December 2007 party conference, the ANC was enjoying very different fortunes in different parts of South Africa. It was ascendant in
KwaZulu-Natal, having presided over the decline and defeat of the IFP and won the support of several major powerbrokers in the province. The opposite was true in the
Western Cape, where the provincial ANC was deeply divided between two nearly irreconcilable groups and the opposition-held Cape Town government was defying all
18 Interviews. Cape Town DA Mayco member, 9 February 2007b; Cape Town DA Mayco member, 29 July 2008a.
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predictions of instability in the multi-party coalition. These local and regional factions interacted with factionalism among national elites, adding to already disputed center- periphery relationships. All these disputes were occurring in a context of an under- institutionalized dominant party in a state in which bureaucratic independence remained unconsolidated. It was not a stable situation.
6.5 Factionalism Comes Home to Roost
The theory of dominant party evolution set out in this dissertation argues that poorly managed factionalism leads to divisions and defections, and therefore to a weakened dominant party and even the emergence of a competitive party system. The
ANC has experienced the first few parts of this pattern in the latter years of the decade.
This section explains how.
6.5.1 Zuma Wins, Factionalism Continues
Many inside and outside the ANC expected the intraparty factionalism to be resolved when the succession decision was made at the party‟s 52nd National Conference at Polokwane in December 2007.19 However, it was not. As I wrote in Chapter 3, party activists must be confident that coordinating with other factions will pay off in the long term, that is, that if they accept another faction winning and help the party win the next election, they will have a future chance to regain some power within the party. When the benefits appear to no longer likely to be given, factions begin to defect from the dominant
19 Several personal conversations, January-March 2007.
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party. In 2007 and 2008 several ANC activists and leaders concluded that the ANC no longer offered them sufficient future benefits.
At the Polokwane conference Jacob Zuma won the presidency of the ANC over
Thabo Mbeki with a final vote of about 60 percent to 40 percent. Further, the Zuma camp won all six top leadership positions, with about the same percentages, and Mbeki- ites were largely blocked from the remaining 80 National Executive Committee spots.
The organizations within the ANC that send delegates to the conference lined up for their preferred bloc of candidates in relatively homogenous ways. However, while clearly there was a “change of guard and leadership style,” the policies and positions adopted at
Polokwane did not depart dramatically from Mbeki-era ones (Fikeni 2009: 16-21). One significant change reversed the centralization instituted by Mbeki; now party structures, not the president, choose premiers and mayors and even vet cabinet appointments (Cardo
2008: 28; Gevisser 2009: 270). These changes returned formal power to the grassroots level and revised the most contentious source of internal party disputes. In effect the party was formally decentralized. It remains to be seen whether this one rule change will be sufficient to provide a more effective and accepted candidate selection procedure and therefore remove candidate selection as a source of rancor.
The party and the country now faced an 18-month gap until Mbeki‟s term as
South Africa‟s President ended. Dashing the hope that the resolution of the party succession decision would allow ANC members to move on, those who had won the political battles apparently took revenge on their rivals. Perhaps most notable were the removals of the Mbeki-supporting premiers of the Eastern and Western Capes (Fikeni
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2009: 23). The 2009 campaign was becoming “in essence an intra-party zero-sum struggle for access to state resources: the control of municipalities and provinces; to appear on the list for deployment as public representatives and state officials; and to be in the patronage chain of tenders and procurement” (Jolobe 2008: 76). The ANC‟s internal factionalism continued to be the focus of many ANC personnel and officials despite the looming national and provincial elections.
Perhaps nowhere was this more apparent than in the Western Cape. Premier
Rasool was unceremoniously forced to resign, replaced by Lynne Brown. A party spokesperson gave the reason as “a political intervention to give the ANC a chance [to organize] ahead of the [2009] elections.”20 In an interpretation to be repeated all over the country, Mbeki-ites saw the move as simple political revenge from the other faction now in the ascendency with Zuma‟s election.21 Many of Rasool‟s allies and ministers resigned in solidarity, although Brown kept half of Rasool‟s cabinet. Commentators and opposition parties scoffed at the idea that the change would do anything but harm the
Western Cape ANC with the key swing voters in Coloured communities.22 They were proved correct.
The Western Cape ANC proceeded to collapse. For local by-elections in late
2008, the ANC even failed to register candidates on time. In light of this, national party structures appointed an election team to manage the 2009 national and provincial election
20 Nic Dawes. “Rasool‟s exit „won‟t help ANC.‟” Mail & Guardian. 1 August 2008, p. 12. 21 Nic Dawes. “…and goodbye.” Mail & Guardian. 25 July 2008, p. 4. See also Pearlie Joubert. “Hello…” Mail & Guardian. 25 July 2008, p. 4. 22 Nic Dawes. “Rasool‟s exit „won‟t help ANC.‟” Mail & Guardian. 1 August 2008, p. 12. Both Rasool and Brown are Coloured, but Rasool is perceived to have more support and networks within the Coloured community. Brown was understood to be something of a symbolic puppet of the ANC‟s provincial party leadership team.
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campaign in the province. In April, the ANC won only 26 percent of the province‟s votes. Within a few weeks, many were calling for the dissolution of the provincial party leadership body, attributing the ANC‟s “destruction” to internal factionalism in the province. An internal party report admitted that these factions appeared to run along racial lines and urged the development of a strategy to “change the impressions which have been created [by fellow ANC provincial leaders] of a divided ANC in the province which is anti-coloured, corrupt and Africanist.”23 Such a strategy was slow to emerge, so an important piece of the ANC coalition may be lost. The lack of room for dissent within the party damaged the breadth of the coalition and thus weakened the party. From 2006 to 2009, the Western Cape ANC followed several patterns identified in Chapters 2 and 3 as signs of a seriously divided dominant party rife for formal splits. These included the lack of widely accepted candidate selection procedures, the view of official positions as part of a zero-sum intraparty contest, and party structures more concerned with fighting one another than the next election.
The drama in the ANC was far from over. In September, Pietermaritzburg High
Court Judge Chris Nicholson threw out the corruption case against Zuma on procedural grounds. He also noted that it appeared Mbeki had interfered in the case to derail Zuma‟s political ascendancy.24 Within two weeks, the ANC leadership told Mbeki to resign as state president. Zuma himself was against the idea, saying that it would be a waste of energy to "beat a dead snake" and that he would rather focus on healing the rifts in the
23 “Political Report on the Problems and Challenges for the ANC in the Western Cape.” As quoted by Pearlie Joubert. “Axe hovers over W Cape ANC.” Mail & Guardian. 25 May 2009. 24 The ruling was later overturned on appeal, with the Supreme Court of Appeals quite critical of Nicholson for it. See Gevisser 334-5.
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party (Gevisser 2009: 335). The new ANC Youth League President Julius Malema replied, "Fine ... we are no longer beating it and we are burying this snake this weekend."25 This defiance of Zuma‟s public position made many observers worry that he did not have control over the often firebrand factions that supported his bid for the presidency. There are parallels here to Indira Gandhi‟s battles with those who helped elevate her to Prime Minister. Zuma, however, does not confront his erstwhile supporters directly. Indeed, he does not even discuss these issues publically.
Mbeki announced his resignation on national television that Sunday26 and a third of his cabinet ministers followed in sympathy (Gevisser 2009: 336). Parliament convened to select a new state president. However, Zuma was not eligible, as he was not a member of Parliament. Respected by both factions, ANC Deputy President Kgalema
Motlanthe was selected as a “caretaker” president for the seven months until the national election. He quickly drew praise for his Cabinet selections, striking an astute balance in convincing key Mbeki allies like Finance Minister Trevor Manuel to stay and bringing in well-respected party activists who had been pushed aside by Mbeki such as the new health minister Barbara Hogan, along with appointing Zuma-ites (Gevisser 2009: 293,
336).
Given the rancor of the succession process, in which one of the key disputes was over the proper relationship between the ANC as a party and the ANC in government, perhaps in hindsight it is not surprising that Mbeki stepped down early. Overall, however, it is clear that the ANC again failed to manage its coalition and its succession
25 “Burying the 'dead snake.'” The Pretoria News. 19 September 2008, p. 2. 26 “Mbeki resigns before the nation.” Mail & Guardian Online. 21 September 2008.
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processes smoothly or successfully. Even Mbeki‟s resignation, Zuma‟s attempt to allow him to leave with dignity, and Motlanthe‟s efforts at calming the situation did not end the animosity, let alone begin to resolve the policy and ideological differences dividing the party (see Gevisser 338-9). These efforts had the same effect as the elite-imposed ad hoc solutions to factionalism that proved unsustainable in other dominant parties. Apart from the shift in control of candidate selection back to the party structures, nothing has changed either to resolve the ideological divisions or to create formal methods to better manage intraparty factionalism. The patterns described in Chapter 3 suggest such conditions will lead to defections from the party, and this did occur in South Africa.
6.5.2 Failing to Manage Factionalism: COPE Breaks from the ANC
As in the party systems used comparatively in this dissertation, such as Mexico and India, a succession fight led to a significant organized defection from the ruling party. Two months after Mbeki‟s resignation, former ANC officials Mosioua Lekota and
Mbhazima Shilowa formed a new party, the Congress of the People (COPE), with several
Mbeki allies. Continuing the regional pattern to the ANC‟s factionalism, COPE‟s electoral base was clearly in the Eastern Cape among Xhosas and in areas where the
ANC‟s divisions were especially tense like the Western Cape.
COPE‟s platform was designed to copy the ANC on most policy matters but to correct for the negative consequences of the party‟s stranglehold on government. It included a call to change the Constitution so that executives of all three levels of government be elected directly, rather than by the relevant legislative body, and be
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removed only by the judiciary rather than by their party. Embracing neoliberalism, it held a fairly standard set of pro-employment, anti-corruption, anti-crime, and pro-poor policies,27 setting out to appeal to the black middle class (Gevisser 2009: 338). This strategy is a fairly obvious one, but also a potentially successful one as there is increasing evidence that this growing cohort of voters are dissatisfied with ANC governance. If this electoral strategy were to work, COPE would become another example of modernization leading to a more competitive party system evolving from one-party dominance.
COPE quickly won 10 of 27 by-elections in Western Cape municipalities in
December 2008.28 Then the party seemed to lose steam. It was rumored that its selection of a presidential candidate, Methodist Bishop Mvude Dandala, was forced by Shilowa over the objections of Lekota.29 Lekota was rumored to be quitting his own party. While such an event did not transpire, COPE‟s efforts to woo voters were clearly hurt.
Nevertheless, COPE emerged from the 2009 elections as the official opposition in the
Eastern Cape, Free State, Limpopo and Northern Cape and, with seven percent of the national vote, the third largest party in the national Parliament behind the ANC and the
DA. It joined the ANC and the DA as the only parties with seats in all nine provincial legislatures.
COPE did not earn all its support from ANC defectors. For example, the United
Democratic Movement, with its base in the Eastern Cape along with COPE‟s base, lost about half of its support in comparison to the 2004 election results (IEC). Hence the
27 “New SA party promises reforms.” BBC News Online. 24 January 2009. 28 “ANC breakaway scores poll upset.” BBC News Online. 11 December 2008. 29 Mandy Rossouw and Mmanaledi Mataboge. “Bishop elbows aside Lekota, Shilowa.” Mail & Guardian. 20 February 2009.
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potential exists for COPE to become just another opposition party fighting over a limited block of opposition voters. However, its simple existence means the ANC can “no longer lay claim to being sole legitimate representative of black South Africans” (Gevisser 2009:
338). COPE is the first South African opposition party with both a base in the black electorate and policies appealing to the median voter. Therefore it begins life with some limited viability and hence is the first opposition party that could gain broad appeal.
The roots of the ANC‟s divisions lay in large part in a backlash to Mbeki-era centralization. Local party activists resented losing control over who represented them in government, losing a voice for their views and policy preferences. When combined with elite divisions driven similarly by perceptions of loss of power to the President‟s office and a lack of influence on policy decision-making, it led to intraparty factionalism with both leadership and mass involvement. The lack of organizational structures that could prevent intraparty contests becoming winner-take-all fights led to a significant organized defection.
As I pointed out in Chapter 2, dominant parties are vulnerable to elite splits precisely like this one. However, I also noted that the opposition party that splits off of the dominant party is rarely, if ever, the party that eventually grows large enough to unseat the ruling party from power. For example, Indian regional and local parties made the first significant dents in Congress‟s dominance in 1967, but it was the BJP that unseated Congress from national power in 1998. Similarly, in Mexico, in 1988 leftist
PRI defectors won nearly 30 percent, but it was the right-leaning PAN that ended the
PRI‟s decades-long stranglehold on the President‟s office in 2000. The pattern is that a
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split from the dominant party weakens it by reducing the size of its coalition and by giving symbolic credence to the idea that there are alternatives to consider. Then, another party is able grow from the grassroots to take advantage of the weakened dominant party by winning the support of voters willing to consider alternatives. To that end, while the
ANC was preoccupied with its internal factionalism, opposition parties were strategizing how to increase their own share of power.
6.6 Capitalizing on Opposition Government in Cape Town
With the ANC distracted, the opposition parties gained viability. We can see additional opposition growth building directly from the Cape Town government.
Various iterations of opposition coalitions in Cape Town all shared two goals: to prevent complete political and bureaucratic control by the ANC by capturing at least municipal offices, and to use their position in the city to pursue the same at the provincial and national levels. The latest iteration of this strategy, the DA-led Multiparty Coalition formed after the 2006 elections, is thus far successful on both counts. In the 2009 provincial elections, the DA won the Western Cape outright. This was the first time the province had elected a government with an outright majority. The DA and analysts attributed this outcome to the success of the Cape Town coalition and similar ones in several of the province‟s larger towns. Given the experiences of opposition parties in other dominant party systems that took decades to expand, how did this increased competitiveness occur relatively quickly? I argue that there are two key aspects to the
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newly realized success in Cape Town and, more importantly from the perspective of national party system change, the Western Cape.
6.6.1 Using the Viable Alternative
First, opposition parties are gaining viability by “demonstrating the alternative” to
ANC. Recall that opposition viability had four main parts: credibility as governors, access to resources, minimizing the risk of co-optation by the ruling party, and developing or maintaining relative mainstream positions. The Multiparty Coalition was able to create a highly visible governance record. With Cape Town constituting more than 60 percent of the Western Cape‟s population, much of the provincial electorate knows what the city government has and has not accomplished. The coalition‟s parties benefit from the concrete examples they can cite in support of their candidacies.
Elites believe this to be the key importance of the Cape Town coalition. Said one non-DA member of the coalition,
I‟m the expression of my party in office. To voters we will say, if you want to see how [my party] will manage a political office, then have a look at these examples…So here is a track record now that we‟re able to build up… During an election campaign, we need to trumpet what we have done in office [here], because it‟s applicable anywhere in South Africa.30
Others support this analysis. Said one DA leader, “By showing [DA policies] as a meaningful alternative, and be able to put your alternative policies into practice, I think it scares the daylights out of the ANC.”31 Opposition leaders looked forward to creating a
30 Interview. Senior member of Cape Town government. 29 July 2008b. Similar sentiments were expressed in interviews with three senior Cape Town DA leaders, each interviewed separately on 22 February 2007. 31 Interview. DA Durban leadership member. 8 August 2008.
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similar coalition for the Western Cape province, claiming it would “also serve as the basis upon which the ANC will finally be beaten throughout South Africa.”32 The plan, expressed in numerous interviews, was to capture the Western Cape from the ANC in
2009 and then to use that as a springboard for further growth in subsequent elections.33
After the 2009 success, this strategy remained in place, with DA leader Helen Zille saying,
We must continue to do all we can to grow our party. This means an unstinting commitment to developing a diverse and excellent corps of new DA leaders. It means forming alliances with other parties that share our core values. It means showing South Africa that life gets better for all where the DA governs.34
The Cape Town coalition government improved additional aspects of the parties‟ viability. The coalition has more resources, or at least controls more state resources, by being in power. If the DA‟s accusations of ANC favoritism and the DA‟s own claims of fair decision-making are true, then the opposition control of the Cape Town municipality reduces the opportunities for the ruling party to distribute patronage and support clientelist networks in the city. It at least allows for some competition in state delivery between different levels of government controlled by different parties.35
Further, one senior city councilor noted that holding office creates additional campaign resources for his party without much additional effort on his part. When he was in opposition in the provincial legislature, his public appearances and legislative
32 “FF+: The Freedom Front Plus on the possibility of a Western Cape coalition government.” 2 March 2009. Polity. www.polity.org.za 33 Interviews. Cape Town UDM leader, 12 February 2007a; Cape Town DA Mayco Member, 29 July 2008a; Cape Town DA Mayco member, 4 August 2008. 34 Speech. 28 November 2009. 35 However, lack of cooperation and coordination among different levels of government has been noted as a problem in securing delivery of state projects such as public housing, so competition could quickly become stonewalling.
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work garnered very little attention. But as part of the Cape Town leadership, his speeches are reported in the media. He personally presents the policy proposal that was devised in committee, which is then reported and the public gives him the credit, he said.
Being in government, rather than in opposition, makes voters aware of what he, and by extension his party, does.36
This visibility of office-holders explains why, upon the retirement of DA leader
Tony Leon, his replacement, Helen Zille, decided to remain the Mayor of Cape Town rather than moving into Leon‟s national parliamentary position as Leader of the
Opposition. The subnational office was more important to the DA than its national opposition role.
Finally, while party elites did not note this effect of the Cape Town governing coalition, we can expect that the viability of their parties is increased because the chance of defection and co-optation by the ANC is lessened. Recall that in other dominant party systems, ambitious and talented personnel are easily co-opted into the ruling party because they can accomplish more within the existing power structure (Greene 2007).
With the ANC no longer the only apparent path to power in South Africa, opposition parties should find it easier to retain their activists and office-holders. Thus the Cape
Town multiparty coalition government strengthened several aspects of opposition party viability.
Any hint of the center encroaching on local government powers is met with strong criticism. This is not surprising, given that decentralization was an “important
36 Interview. Senior member of Cape Town government. 29 July 2008b.
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concession” during the transition negotations, providing smaller parties the “possibility of winning office” (Lodge 2005b: 738). However, just before the 2009 election, the Cabinet approved a draft bill to amend the Constitution – a first while it had the supermajority necessary to do so without the support of other parties – to reduce the powers of local government. The ANC said this change was motivated by a reorganization of electricity providers, but the DA response rejected this justification, claiming that the broad language of the bill “empowers national government to usurp powers from local government . . . the ANC will destroy the capacity of other parties to deliver where they govern.”37 The DA understands the potential power of its control of subnational governments, so long as the country is not more centralized.
6.6.2 Debating Who Is a Better Democrat
The second reason for the increased competitiveness in the Western Cape is that the opposition has changed the most salient political issues, and therefore created a platform less co-optable and more likely to win over the median voter. The DA renewed its efforts to change its image from a party trying to maintain white privilege. Then-DA- leader Tony Leon writes (2008: 622) that after the 2004 election
it seemed to us that much of what passed for the other opposition parties…were desperately positioning themselves within the ANC‟s analysis – rather than challenging it or seeking an alternative vision. . . I would point to the dangers of the ANC‟s hegemonic impulses and the jeopardy it posed to our constitutional order.
37 Helen Zille. “DA Press Release: Zille: ANC determined to abuse power and walk over Constitution.” 16 April 2009. This bill has not progressed, as the ANC did not retain its two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
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Accordingly, the DA‟s 2006 local election campaign slogan was “Stop Corruption. Start
Delivery. Vote DA” (DA 2006). In the 2009 campaign, the DA frequently spoke of
“two political philosophies … These diametrically opposed options can be described, in summary, as the „open, opportunity driven society for all‟ versus the „closed, crony society for some‟” (Zille 2009). The advantage of this emphasis over the DA‟s 1999 controversial “fight back” campaign is that an anti-corruption platform can be understood to be in the interests of all South Africans rather than being perceived as a racially exclusive position.
Thus the DA now characterizes the ANC as “deeply illiberal, authoritarian and fundamentally power hungry” (Leon 2008: 509). The ANC leadership does not
“…understand the constitutional democracy... They think that they have sole moral right to govern because they were a legitimate liberation movement.”38 Therefore, “it is imperative that [the DA] keep the ANC below a two-thirds majority nationally, so that it cannot change the Constitution to continue the power abuse designed to enrich its leaders and shield them from the consequences” (DA 2009). The narative the DA tells about the past 15 years accepts that the ANC was “the defining democratic movement in the country” but argues the liberation force has changed. Specifically, the DA (2008) says, the ANC
occupied the moral high ground uncontested, and its intentions and actions were almost always interpreted in the best possible light. Yet, with time, that position has slowly been eroted away. Little-by-little, the ANC has acted on and argued for positions which run contrary to the ideals that define South Africa‟s constitutional democracy. And, as a result, little-by-little, as its intentions have become increasingly self-serving and its agenda less democratic, so it has lost the moral high ground it once dominated.
38 Interview. DA Cape Town Mayco Member. 4 August 2008.
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This is an argument that encourages defections from other parties, as it supports the idea that votes for other parties in the past may have been the right decisions at the time but that the situation is very different now. This may also be why the DA‟s rhetoric attacks particular individuals in the ANC, as in “doing all we can to stop Jacob Zuma‟s assault
39 on the Constitution,” as this separates the current ANC from the ANC that receives credit for ending apartheid.
Comparisons with Zimbabwe‟s ruling ZANU-PF or „situations like those found to our north‟ are common. In 2009, prominent campaign materials said, “We have the clearest example of the ultimate failed state – the closed, crony society of Robert
Mugabe‟s Zimbabwe – right on our doorstop. We must make the conscious choice to move in the opposition direction” (Zille 2009). Voters are cautioned that “The only guarantee against a slide into irreversible power abuse, corruption and systemic state failure is the periodic transfer of power between competing political visions and forces.”40 Thus the DA seeks to build a coalition of voters united in the common cause of good governance. Such a coalition would overcome the other cleavages that divide opposition voters, and thus potentially overcome the problems of fragmentation that face opposition parties in dominant party systems.41
39 Speech. 28 November 2009. 40 Helen Zille. “On opposition realignment.” Speech given at the Mpumalanga congress of the DA, Ermelo, 1 August 2009. 41 In formulating this theory, I am indebted to the work of authors such as Magaloni (2006) and Greene (2007) who identify a “regime cleavage” in hegemonic Mexico, which shifted the salient political issue away from economic policy – on which opposition parties were divided – and to the question of democratic reforms – on which the opposition parties and even some PRI supporters were united. This regime cleavage united voters against the PRI when it lost the 2000 presidential election. I am in essence arguing that the same cleavage can be created in a democratic dominant party system. I return to this idea in the next chapter.
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The ANC would argue they have worked very hard to create non-identity-based politics. However, it also admitted that it failed in the Western Cape to “hegemonise the principle of non-racialism in our own ranks… which ultimately led to many coloured people believing that the ANC was anti-coloured and to vote for the DA.”42 For example, some in the Coloured community saw themselves as losing their fair share of housing allocations to black ANC supporters, whose “recent” arrival from the Eastern
Cape gave them no moral right to get in line ahead of members of a centuries-old community.43 The validity or lack thereof of this complaint is largely beside the point: provincial and local factionalism within the dominant party led to the perception that much of the ANC was anti-Coloured and thus played into the opposition‟s strategy to appeal to voters with a fairness and anti-corruption platform.
The two aspects of opposition‟s success, increased viability in subnational offices and creating a new cleavage among voters, work well together. A top DA leader argues,
“The only way you get rid of identity and race-based politics is by winning somewhere on the basis of issue-based politics, and by demonstrating, from the bottom up, that that‟s what you can do.”44 Campaign materials in 2009 drew upon the DA‟s record in subnational government, making its “strong track record in government” and
“government that delivers on its promises” a key piece of its appeal to voters (DA 2009; n.d.).
42 Pearlie Joubert. 2009. “Axe hovers over W Cape ANC.” Mail & Guardian. 25 May. 43 Interview. Cape Town Independent Democrats leader. 19 February 2007. 44 Interview. DA Cape Town Mayco Member. 4 August 2008.
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Recall from Chapter 4 that South African voters use a party‟s associated racial identity as a heuristic in their voting choices, because they lack any other information.
Schulz-Herzenberg (2008: 138-9) concurs, pointing out that the Cape Town coalition government gives the DA a chance to create a “track record which black African voters can turn to to evaluate the party, before they turn to using the DA‟s traditionally negative party image [with regards to race].” Opposition strategies to demonstrate an alternative and make the debate about good governance can change the basis on which South
Africans decide their votes. That in turn can lead to party system change.
6.6.3 Where Next for Opposition?
But how extensive might this change be, and does it have limits, geographically or otherwise?
In the 2009 national and provinicial elections, the DA‟s overall goal was divided.
On one hand, its campaign materials emphasized reducing the size of the ANC‟s national majority so that it could not change the Constitution. But the 2009 slogan indicated greater ambitions: “Vote to Win!” with a „sub-slogan‟ of “The ANC has split – we can win!” Further “growth at national level is important to the DA,” as it aims “to be part of the national government in 2014” (DA 2009). Having won the 2009 Western Cape provincial election, the DA now seeks to repeat its „demonstration of an alternative.‟ DA leader, erstwhile Cape Town Mayor, and now Western Cape Premier Helen Zille wrote that the victory gave her party
...the opportunity to demonstrate in provincial government the difference that our alternative vision, principles and policies make in practice, for everyone – just as we
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have demonstrated where we have won at the local government level. Winning power in the Western Cape will allow us to show what co-operative governance between local authorities and a province can achieve.45
The DA‟s strategy is clearly to continue the bottom-up growth in electoral success. In the aftermath of the 2009 election, it seemed the DA will have an opportunity to consolidate its Western Cape base as the ANC struggled even to maintain its organization and leadership committees in the province, let alone work on reclaiming the support of voters.
However, extending this opposition growth to other provinces may prove difficult. There are several factors that could prevent such an expansion. To the extent that the opposition success in the Western Cape appears to still be confined to the non-
African parts of the electorate, demographics will restrict further growth. The Northern
Cape has broadly similar demographics as the Western Cape, with a large proportion of
Coloured voters, but the ANC there has high branch membership rates relative to the population. This may give it sufficient organizational resources for campaigns to counter opposition party efforts. KwaZulu-Natal has a similar if much smaller block of Indian voters, and highly urban Gauteng – the province of Johannesburg and Pretoria (Tshwane)
– is ethnically and politically diverse. The ANC in Gauteng and the Western Cape is low in terms of membership numbers compared to their population sizes (see Table 6.2), indicating weak party organization. However, combined, Gauteng, KZN, and the
Western Cape comprise 51 percent of South Africa‟s population, so even large opposition majorities restricted to the three would have only limited immediate effects on the national party system. Elsewhere, opposition growth may stall until large numbers of
45 Helen Zille. “Thank you for voting for change.” SA Today. Democratic Alliance. 1 May 2009.
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black voters are willing to vote for a party other than the ANC. COPE clearly has some potential to be that party, but has yet to prove it will be.
Another outstanding question is whether parties other than the DA can lead successful opposition coalitions. In some places, there is no significant DA foothold. It remains to be seen whether COPE or the UDM in the Eastern Cape could build and expand opposition challenges to the ANC. The possibility of non-DA-led change in
KwaZulu-Natal is rapidly evaporating as the IFP continues its precipitous decline.
Finally, there is one more serious limit to the expansion of Cape Town-like opposition coalitions. Some smaller parties are skeptical that multiparty coalitions would work outside of local government. The South African Constitution lists the issues for which each level of government is responsible. Smaller parties point out that while they agree on the issues assigned to local government, they have serious differences with the
DA on national and provincial issues. Of particular concern are some zero-sum social issues such as abortion and the death penalty.46 If potential coalitions need the DA, as the largest opposition party, they may struggle to create governing agreements. A fruitful avenue for future research may be to ascertain whether cross-national variation in assignment of particular issues to different levels of government contributes to patterns of coalition formation in multiparty systems.
A likely scenario is the continued consolidation of the Western Cape as an opposition stronghold, with the possibility of similar evolution occurring in certain other subnational areas such as Gauteng. With these alternatives building credibility for
46 Interview. Senior member of Cape Town government. 29 July 2008b; Interview. Senior opposition party leader in Durban. 15 August 2008.
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opposition generally, the South African electorate is likely to further lose patience with the ANC‟s long road to correcting apartheid‟s legacies. Without more extensive organization reforms, the dominant party will not be able to respond to future internal challenges any better than it did in the past decade. It will suffer defections again. Recall that in Chapter 2 the advent of a competitive system was described as likely to resemble a tipping game; that is, the emergence of competitive elections requires something of a perfect storm of conditions and so it may appear to happen quite suddenly when the final, otherwise fairly insignificant piece falls into place. The growth of a viable opposition party or coalition of opposition parties will combine with an organizational weakening of the dominant party to produce party system change. These conditions have begun to emerge, but a competitive party system is probably a few elections away yet.
Regardless of its specific potential to expand outside of the Western Cape, the
Cape Town coalitional government provided the first sustained challenge to ANC dominance since the late 1990s. Rather than succumbing to fragmentation and factionalism, the Cape Town opposition parties created a coalition capable of surviving several external attacks and internal problems. The leading party in the coalition, the
DA, then used its record in the city to win a decisive victory in the subsequent provincial election. The strategy of starting locally, building credibility and viability in order to develop stronger electoral challenges, was successful. Even if the particular combination of opposition parties in the Cape Town coalition does not continue their cooperative relationships elsewhere in South Africa, they have demonstrated an alternative to ANC dominance. Both the model of coalition rule and the use of the governance issue could
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be adapted by other opposition parties to change the country‟s party system(s), focusing first on subnational ones.
6.7 What Now for South Africa?
In the 2000-2009 period, South African local politics impacted national dynamics, among parties and within the ANC. In the ANC, local branches bristled against what they perceived as the center‟s overly heavy-handed control of both personnel decisions and policy development. The more electorally successful ANC subnational organizations, such as the KZN provincial ANC, allied themselves to other elements of the Tripartite Alliance dissatisfied with both the style and substance of the Mbeki government, and successfully voted him out of office. However, the subsequent defection of many Mbeki allies is simply the most important political event in South
Africa since the writing of the new Constitution. COPE creates “the psychological break” with the idea that the ANC alone is the legitimate leader of South Africa (Gevisser
2009: 338), a break that is necessary if a dominant party system is to become competitive.
Meanwhile, opposition parties are learning how to gain competiveness. First they abandoned their efforts to use their limited resources challenging the dominant party at the national level, and instead concentrated on their existing bases. In some cases they have merged or collapsed; either event reduces the fragmentation of the opposition vote and thus contributes to the construction of a more viable opposition. But opposition parties have also learned not to force cooperation where it makes little sense, and
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therefore now cooperate only on the issues on which they do agree and usually only after election results necessitate a governing coalition. The result has created much more credible parties that have been able largely to consolidate their bases locally, and use them as a stable foundation for growth.
An alternative pattern than the one found here is that competition for local offices could reduce the threat to the nationally dominant party. Echoing Bruhn‟s (1999)
„subtractive effect‟ of subnational opposition success, Brownlee (2007: 8) argues that authoritarian elections can serve either as “a safety valve for regulating societal discontent and confining the opposition” or as a “springboard” for opposition gain. In dominant party systems, local elections could serve as a similar safety valve, channeling opposition resources away from national elections and signaling issues on which the ruling party is vulnerable. Those opposed to particular policies of the dominant party can challenge it at the local level but fail to have any effect on national politics. Allowing more local competition could solidify the position of the dominant party.
However, in democratic South Africa, opposition parties were spread too thin and failed electorally when their strategies focused on national growth (Piombo 2005a). They did not gain much nationally and lost their provincial and some municipal strongholds.
Without these, they were unable to become credible alternatives for voters at any level of government. Channeling resources into the national race served to sideline opposition parties further. It was only when they returned to a local and provincial focus that opposition parties gained a measure of power that has the potential to grow.
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The safety valve idea may have some merit in South Africa. Specifically, the electoral rules for municipal elections could create a safety valve for internal party factionalism. The provision that allows individuals to register as independent candidates for municipal ward elections could help resolve local disputes without affecting other places. If a party endorses one candidate, another could still appeal directly to voters as an independent. Thus the legitimate institution of an election would resolve the dispute, with the promise to the loser of a future opportunity to try again. However, thus far ward elections have not served such a safety valve function particularly well as the ANC expels individuals who defy the candidate-selection decisions of its hierarchy, an act that seems to magnify factionalism as often as it calms it. However, the recent removal of the internal party provisions allowing centralized vetting of candidates may change this pattern. The highly fraught question of candidate selection is ongoing.
Having learned that success can come from expanding subnational footholds and arguing that the ruling party is undemocratic and corrupt, we can expect South African opposition parties to continue the two strategies. Their arguments can only be strengthened by the sight of the ANC pushing out those individuals who disagree with whoever holds power at the time, weakening its claims to operating as a broad democratic coalition. Hence subnational inter- and intra-party competitiveness can, under particular conditions, lead to national party system change.
But what are the effects of these strategies and their outcomes on voters‟ perceptions of their government? What is the effect on the quality of South African
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democracy? In the next chapter, I turn to these implications of the evolution of the South
African dominant party system.
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Chapter 7: The Implications for Democracy
In a government where democracy is allowed to work, one of the principles that are normally entrenched is a feedback system, a discussion between those who formulate policy and those who must perceive, accept or reject policy. - Steve Biko1
We don’t need an opposition, we already have a democracy! - Bavarian comedian Gerhard Polt2
7.1 Introduction
I have argued that dominant party systems evolve into competitive party systems most often when opposition parties build upon subnational footholds to gain viability, and win the support of voters who have become dissatisfied with a weakening dominant party. The emergence of a competitive system often resembles a tipping game. It may appear suddenly to the casual observer, as both the opposition and ruling party pieces must converge. In contemporary South Africa, the African National Congress is still securely dominant at the national level. But as I have shown in the last chapters, some opposition parties are gaining viability that allows them to challenge this dominance with limited but increasing success. Meanwhile, the ANC struggles to maintain the broad coalition of interests that is the hallmark of nearly every dominant party, and has suffered defections and a significant electoral split.
I attribute much of these developments to the choices and strategies of the parties themselves. Especially in a new democracy such as South Africa, political parties must
1 Quoted in Mangcu 2005: 77. 2 Economist. 18 August 2007, p. 43.
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learn what strategies will attract voters, which voters to appeal to, and how best to respond to the counter-strategies of other parties. This learning has been apparent, as
South African opposition parties have found that post-election coalitions can overcome many of the disadvantages of their fragmentation. Further, these parties, especially the
DA, use rhetoric challenging the democratic credentials of the dominant ANC to gain electoral share, with apparent success.
In this chapter, I first provide additional data on this „regime cleavage,‟ seeking to link the electorate‟s perceptions of corruption and other undemocratic behavior with their partisan choices. For this I draw upon data from mass surveys conducted in South Africa during the past decade. After analyzing these surveys and discussing their implications, I place this opposition strategy in comparative context. It is not entirely unknown in the cases used to inform this dissertation, but it has not been widely recognized as a strategy that can build opposition success in dominant party systems. I discuss the possible avenues for further exploration of the regime cleavage strategy‟s use in dominant party systems.
I then turn to examining the effects of these strategies. Another major concern for a new democracy is the question of successful consolidation of that democracy – regardless of how the party system evolves. However, opposition strategies that rely heavily on claims that the ruling party is undemocratic or even anti-democratic might be expected to weaken the electorate‟s confidence in the same democratic institutions the opposition argues need saving.
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I am interested specifically in two effects. First, what are the effects of this rhetoric on the public‟s opinions about democracy? The South African public is frequently told that the ruling party behaves undemocratically; it is plausible that this rhetoric undermines the public‟s confidence in the system regardless of whether it gains opposition parties more votes. I examine public opinion data for the decade covered in this study for signs of decreasing faith in the democratic system. I find that the South
Africans‟ support for democracy in the abstract has not wavered, but they are increasingly feeling unsatisfied with their politics and government. This result confirms expected conditions in a dominant party system, but nevertheless is a negative for the quality of democracy provided South African citizens.
The second effect is that of these opposition strategies succeeding, that is, the effects of growing competitiveness in the South African party system. Competitiveness is often understood to be a basic building block of a high quality democracy (Diamond and Morlino 2005: xli). However, as I will argue below, increased competitiveness is not necessarily an unqualified good thing in a young dominant party system. One-party dominance provides stability, a potentially valuable contribution in a new regime. The last part of this chapter will discuss the tension between stability and competitiveness in
South Africa.
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7.2 Democracy as an Election Issue
7.2.1 South Africans’ Perceptions of “Undemocratic” Parties
I begin with further discussion of the „regime cleavage‟ strategy of opposition parties, focusing on the beliefs and behavior of the South African electorate. While social cleavages do play a role in shaping party systems, I have argued throughout this dissertation that party strategies build upon and alter social cleavages in order to serve the goals of party elites. “Political leaders can try to shift groups of like-minded voters into and out of parties to serve partisan or political ends, although these efforts can be difficult” (Chhibber and Kollman 2004: 13; see this for a review of the relevant literature). It is precisely such a shift that opposition parties in a dominant party system seek to achieve, and such a shift out of the dominant party‟s coalition that it must continually guard against if dominance is to be maintained. Thus some direct attention should be paid to potential shifts in voter partisanship and the causes of those shifts.
As shown in the previous chapter, in South Africa an opposition party seeking to make „regime‟ or „democracy‟ a salient political cleavage appears to emphasize the ruling party‟s supposed propensity to engage in corruption or to manipulate democratic institutions that should be neutral in partisan fights. The regime cleavage strategy works when this rhetoric convinces a sufficient number of voters that the dominant party is undemocratic and thus that they should vote for another party. Therefore, this analysis of survey data begins by looking at respondents‟ perceptions of corruption and at whether respondents believe the system they live in is a democracy.
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It should be noted that corruption is a notoriously slippery concept and is even more difficult to measure (for reviews of the numerous outstanding issues and questions in this area of the literature, see Treisman 2007 and Heywood 2009). Although interest in the subject has risen significantly in the past two decades, scholars have yet to settle on a definition of it, let alone found a reliable measurement tool. Most measures ask people about their experiences of corruption, that is, they measure perceptions of corruption.
However, we are increasingly understanding that such perceptions are influenced by any number of other factors; most importantly for this analysis, an individual‟s perception of corrupt practices by the party in power can be colored by that individual‟s partisanship.
That is, an individual will view a party as corrupt if she does not support it, and will perceive it as not corrupt if it is a party she supports. Further, many survey questions regarding corruption are rather unspecific with regards to what kind of corruption they mean (e.g., high-level elites „selling‟ particular policies to the highest bidder, low-level officials demanding relatively small bribes from individual citizens, etc.) and thus may conflate different phenomena. Therefore the data presented here provide another dimension to my argument linking an opposition party‟s regime cleavage strategy to its increasing electoral success, but should be interpreted carefully.
Public opinion research in South Africa has reached sophisticated levels. In addition to private polling firms working for media outlets and political parties, two of the largest academic opinion research projects, the World Values Survey and the
Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP), include South Africa in their global samples. Further, the Afrobarometer project asks many of the same questions and
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conducts surveys on a regular basis in South Africa. This dissertation uses data primarily from CNEP and the Afrobarometer, to look at the development of South African attitudes over time.3
The Afrobarometer survey was conducted in South Africa in 2000, 2002, 2006, and 2008, providing excellent coverage of the decade examined in this disseration. It asked two questions in each of the surveys that shed light on the possible development of a regime cleavage in South Africa. In one, respondents were asked how well they thought the government was handling the problem of corruption in government. In the other, they were asked about the extent of democracy in the country, what Bratton,
Mattes, and Gyimah-Boadi (2005) call the “supply” of democracy. Table 7.1 shows the disturbing results: between about 25 percent and 40 percent of South Africans surveyed think that their democratic regime has major problems or is not a democracy at all, and usually more than 60 percent think the government is doing a bad job of handling corruption in the government.
3 For details of the Afrobarometer survey‟s sampling methods, see Bratton, Mattes, and Gyimah-Boadi 2005 and www.afrobarometer.org. The margin of error for the South African surveys is +/- 2 percent at a confidence level of 95 percent (Afrobarometer 2009).
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Table 7.1: Negative Perceptions of Corruption and Extent of Democracy, Percents 2000 2002 2006 2008 government’s handling 66.0 63.4 51.7 66.2 of corruption A democracy, with 24.0 36.5 23.9 32.4 major problems Not a democracy 8.3 7.2 4.1 5.6 The questions asked how well or badly “the current government is handling fighting corruption in government” and “In your opinion how much of a democracy is South Africa today?” Percentages for the first are those saying it is handling it “very badly” or “fairly badly.” Source: Afrobarometer.
However, to support my assertion that a regime cleavage developed and became politically salient in South Africa over the past decade, to coincide with or precede increased electoral competitiveness, we should see worsening opinions of both the government‟s handling of corruption and the extent to which democracy exists. Table
7.1 shows that such a trend does not clearly exist, with South Africans feeling better about their system in 2006 than in other years, but otherwise perceptions of corruption and the extent of democracy have held relatively steady or have fluctuated without a clear direction.
My argument is that opposition parties using a campaign strategy emphasizing a potential regime cleavage gain ground electorally. We should therefore be able to see an increase in the provinces where opposition parties have increased their electoral support.
A regime cleavage may be seen emerging only in particular provinces or among certain voters. Table 7.2 shows views of the government‟s handling of corruption in each province in the decade in question. Again, clear patterns over time do not appear.
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Instead, there is wide variation across provinces in each survey round and within provinces across years.
Table 7.2: Negative Perceptions of Government’s Handling of Corruption, Percent by Province 2000 2002 2006 2008 79.9 68.6 35.0 49.0 Eastern Cape (258/323) (214/312) (108/309) (72/147) 52.2 57.1 37.0 56.9 Free State (72/139) (84/147) (57/154) (41/72) 69.0 71.1 64.4 65.1 Gauteng (338/490) (344/484) (230/357) (181/278) 75.7 64.1 56.8 81.7 KZN (318/420) (289/451) (220/387) (187/229) 46.4 73.3 49.4 74.5 Limpopo (97/209) (159/217) (197/339) (82/110) 66.9 58.9 68.7 58.5 Mpumalanga (89/133) (86/146) (138/201) (48/82) 62.1 74.9 45.7 63.1 North West (90/145) (134/179) (111/243) (53/84) 83.9 65.0 80.4 44.0 Northern Cape (26/31) (26/40) (86/107) (11/25) 72.6 80.8 60.4 86.2 Western Cape (164/226) (185/229) (93/154) (119/138) 68.7 68.9 53.7 68.2 Total (1453/2116) (1521/2207) (1241/2312) (794/1165) Totals are different from the earlier table due to missing cases. Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding. The question asked how well or badly “the current government is handling fighting corruption in government.” Percentages are those saying it is handling it “very badly” or “fairly badly.” Data in parentheses are number of respondents answering badly followed by number of respondents in that province and year. Source: Afrobarometer.
Comparing results in particular provinces, however, produces some interesting notes. First, in the Western Cape, we can speculate that increases in “bad” judgements on the part of survey respondents, in 2002 and 2008, were due to two of the major events in
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party system evolution described in earlier chapters. The 2002 result may be the result of the deeply factionalized new DA and the corruption scandals it was embroiled in before the NNP leadership defected to the ANC in 2004. The later result could be a result of the deeply factionalized ANC provinical government still limping along in 2008.
Second, the worst rating in KZN came in 2008, when the ANC was consolidating its newly-established electoral dominance and KZN-based Jacob Zuma had recently won the presidency of the ANC. The previous year had seen Pietermartizburg, the provincial capital of KZN, serve as the site of Zuma‟s corruption trial. Events surrounding this trial may have increased the sense that the government is not able to handle corruption well: those who believed Zuma to be guilty witnessed the charges against him dismissed on a technicality and those who believed him to be innocent witnessed the court system criticize itself for a lack of political neutrality.
Both of these hypotheses suggest that an comparison of views of corruption between the supporters of different political parties is warranted. Table 7.3 presents a comparison of ANC and opposition supporters, nationwide and in the two provinces compared in this dissertation, in 2002 and 2008. As expected, more opposition supporters consistently think badly of the government‟s handling of corruption in government compared to ANC supporters.
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Table 7.3: Negative Perception of Government’s Handling of Corruption, Percent by Province and Partisanship
Nationwide 2002 2008 ANC 60.9 (889) 62.6 (519) Opposition 70.1 (361) 71.5 (193) Total 63.5 (1250) 65.0 (712) Western Cape 2002 2008 ANC 72.3 (65) 75.0 (16) Opposition 77.1 (35) 87.2 (47) Total 74.0 (100) 84.1 (63) KwaZulu-Natal 2002 2008 ANC 52.9 (87) 80.6 (103) Opposition 56.7 (97) 81.5 (27) Total 55.0 (184) 80.8 (130) Totals are different than from the earlier table because of different missing cases. Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding. The question asked how well or badly “the current government is handling fighting corruption in government.” Percentages are those saying it is handling it “very badly” or “fairly badly.” Data in parentheses are number of respondents. Source: Afrobarometer.
The gap between ANC and opposition supporters nationwide remained remarkably consistent between 2002 and 2008, with about 10 percent more opposition supporters saying the government was doing badly with regards to corruption. In KZN, while negative perceptions rose from 55 percent to 80 percent, the already-small gap between the two groups in 2002 shrunk to statistical insignificance in 2008. This is consistent with the hypothesis that KZN partisans of all stripes would have found reason to think corruption in government was rampant in 2008.
Perhaps the most interesting result in Table 7.3 is the shift seen in the Western
Cape. Whereas the gaps in opinion between supporters of the ANC and opposition
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parties in each of the two years presented are relatively consistent in the other comparisons, in the Western Cape the gap widens. Specifically, while in 2002 about five percent more opposition supporters than ANC supporters had a negative perception of the handling of corruption, in 2008 that gap had widened to 12 percent. What is more, the
87.2 percent of opposition supporters with a negative perception is the highest proportion of any group examined in this analysis. This supports the idea that voters in the Western
Cape increasingly saw the government failing to deal with corruption in its midst, and defected from the dominant party in hopes of seeing a different government do better.
We need to be cautious about drawing conclusions from these results, given the small sample sizes. Indeed, ANC supporters constitute only 25 percent of respondents in the Western Cape in the 2008 survey. This proportion is even smaller than 31.2 percent of votes cast for the ANC in the province during the following year‟s election.
Nevertheless, what this analysis of perceptions of the government‟s handling of corruption indicates is that there may be a correlation between increasingly negative views of government corruption and electoral support for opposition parties. Where we know opposition campaigned by pointing to the dominant party‟s corruption and to the opposition‟s own visible track record of governance in the province‟s major city, we can also observe growing negative views of the government‟s handling of corruption and a subsequent opposition electoral victory.
However, the direction of causality has not been determined here: it may be that the opposition party tapped into already-present dissatisfaction, or it may be that the opposition party‟s rhetoric made this dissatisfaction politically salient. We also do not
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know if voters decided to support the opposition party and therefore perceive corruption to be worse, or if a negative perception of corruption led voters to support the opposition party.
For example, as described in Chapter 6, the Democratic Alliance (DA) adopted the strategy of criticizing ANC governance and commitment to democracy after the 2004 election. Two years later, Lodge noted that “the most important motive causing people to join the DA was anger over corruption” (2006: 162). There are not sufficiently detailed data to unravel the causal direction here; it is possible the DA, with its sophisticated polling research, identified corruption as an issue on which it could capitalize.
Alternatively, the DA strategy of emphasizing good governance could be mobilizing new members. Regardless, the strategy does seem to gain it new members and, presumably, new voters.
Similarly, COPE‟s strategy is based on a critique of the ANC, or at least of the
ANC-as-it-operates-now. In 2009, its platform emphasized procedural policy,
“constitutionalism, the rule of law, and electoral systems” (Booysen 2009: 87, 97).
Estimates of COPE‟s 2009 electoral support concluded that about 70 percent of its votes came from those who had supported the ANC in prior elections (107). However, it is unclear if the growing cohort of independent voters in South Africa is inclined to support the Zuma faction of the ANC, because of the critiques of Mbeki-era centralization, or if they lean towards the Mbekites and therefore perhaps COPE, because of their disillusionment with the ANC more generally. In short, COPE‟s odd critique of the ANC
– in which COPE‟s leaders disparage the policies of a party of which they themselves
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were recently leaders – confuses the picture with regards to how exactly its anti-ANC policies message may work to re-engage disaffected citizens. These potential causal links deserve further study, particularly with more detailed subnational data, in the future.
7.2.2 Regime Cleavages in Democratic Systems
I now place the regime cleavage strategy in comparative context in order to flesh out the reasons for its success and further develop this piece of my theory of dominant party system evolution.
This „regime cleavage‟ opposition strategy has not been formally documented in other democratic regimes with dominant party systems, but it has been identified by scholars of competitive authoritarian regimes. In such regimes, “formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority. Incumbents violate those rules so often and to such as extent, however, that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy” (Levitsky and Way
2002: 52). The Mexican PRI was one such party for 70 years, holding elections for the legitimacy they conveyed on the regime, before losing the presidency in 2000. Greene
(2002) and Magaloni (2006), both writing about the PRI‟s collapse, assert that opposition was able to defeat the PRI by challenging its democratic credentials.
Creating a regime cleavage was critical to breaking the hegemonic party‟s coalition and uniting the opposition. The two largest Mexican opposition parties in the
1990s, the PRD and the PAN, were divided on economic ideology, with the PRD to the
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left of the centrist PRI and the PAN to the right. Thus the opposition was divided along an economic dimension and prevented from uniting against the PRI.
The PRI lost the presidency in 2000, to the PAN‟s Vicente Fox. In that election, rather than supporting a candidate on the basis of economic policy alone, voters prioritized what Magaloni calls the “political dimension”: whether they supported the status quo of the PRI regime or supported democratization and decentralization (191).
Emphasizing the regime issue gave opposition parties an issue on which they could appeal to a wider section of the electorate than their economic positions alone would allow. This shift meant they could capture more of the political center. By emphasizing an issue on which even some of the PRI‟s traditional supporters disagreed with the ruling party, the opposition could gain voters from the ruling coalition. The centrist appeal created by the regime issue also helped the opposition gain the support of independents, who constituted 34 percent of the electorate (Greene 215). With the opposition parties priming or increasing the salience of the regime issue (see Riker 1983), democracy became a more important issue in vote choice than economic issues. While not sufficient alone to explain Mexican democratization, electoral change accelerated only when voters no longer based their vote choice on the economic dimension and therefore would consider one of the opposition parties. Electoral change also meant regime change: in
2000, the hegemonic party faced a choice between allowing itself to be defeated through the polls or becoming clearly and unequivocally authoritarian by annulling the election results and probably using force to impose the decision. Mexican voters supported the
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PAN because of its stance supporting further democratic reforms, and the PRI accepted the electorate‟s choice. Mexico democratized.
The regime cleavage strategy uses voters‟ doubts about the democratic credentials of the ruling party to carve into its vote share. The advantage of this strategy is that it is difficult for a hegemonic party to co-opt the issue. Recall from Chapter 2 that the co- optation of particular policy issues is a major contributor to dominant and hegemonic parties‟ success. In Japan, for example, when opposition parties began to gain votes based on environment issues, the LDP shifted its environmental policies and removed the issue from political debate. The opposition parties lost an issue on which voters disagreed with the LDP. But the „regime issue‟ does not lend itself as easily to small shifts in policy to absorb a particular interest group into the ruling coalition. The dominant party could embark on reforms, but that serves to validate opposition complaints. The dominant party can continue the status quo, exercising the power the electorate has awarded it, but the exclusion from power of other voices is part of the complaint. A party cannot co-opt an argument that it itself should not be in power because it does not follow the rules of the democratic game. The strategy is remarkably difficult to respond to with success.
Greene (2007) argues that the regime dimension in competitive authoritarian regimes explains how opposition elites can coordinate against a hegemonic party. In developing his argument, he builds upon Riker‟s (1976) identification of elite coordination failure in one-dimensional competition as the reason for one-party dominance in India. He “supplies Riker‟s missing mechanism” for this failure, that the
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dominant party occupied the center of this single dimension and therefore consistently captured the median voter (7-8). For Greene, the development of a second dimension, the regime cleavage in authoritarian regimes, provides a way for opposition to no longer languish on the extremes of public opinion. But what remains unclear in these accounts is how opposition parties in dominant party democracies are to overcome their coordination problem. Greene explains events in two dominant party democratic cases,
Japan and Italy, by relying on a resource argument only. That is, the LDP and DC remained in power through the shrewd use of clientelism, and the DC lost only after the patronage system broke down in the 1980s (277-295). Although Greene begins his argument with the recognition that voters need a reason to coordinate in support of a party (or parties) other than the ruling party, the final statement of his theory only explains why voters no longer support the ruling party: they no longer receive the patronage spending to which they had become accustomed. Once again, we are left with a theory of dominant party system change that explains only one half of a story involving both ruling party weakness and opposition party growth.
My application of the regime cleavage strategy to dominant party democracies corrects this oversight. As shown in the last chapter, South African opposition parties using similar „regime‟ arguments gain ground. Since dominant parties, like the hegemonic PRI, often occupy the center of the political spectrum, they can easily co-opt most issues that appeal to the median voter. But just as it is difficult for a hegemonic regime to co-opt opposition that challenges the continued tenure of the regime, so is it difficult for a dominant party to co-opt opposition that questions its fundamental
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commitment to democratic principles and fairness. From a purely electoral perspective, it does not matter if such allegations are true. An opposition party can employ the strategy if there is sufficient evidence to make them merely plausible. The strategy damages the legitimacy a dominant party may have as a former democratization or liberation movement, rather than challenging it on a „normal‟ policy issue on which it can claim to represent the nation. Such rhetoric also is likely to serve to mobilize an opposition party‟s base, motivated by the prospect of taking a stand against a supposed slide into authoritarianism. Finally, the regime issue can unite an otherwise fragmented set of opposition parties, as nothing will be seen as important as preventing the dominant party‟s further supposed unfair and unprincipled actions. In sum, “opposition parties can compensate for their weaknesses with rhetoric” (Rakner and van de Walle 2009: 118).
Thus I conclude that this regime issue can be used successfully in dominant party democracies too, to divide the dominant party‟s coalition and build a larger, more united opposition coalition.
Future research should explore whether and when this strategy is used in other dominant party democracies, but it appears to have some face validity. Greene himself hints at its use in Italy. He describes how the breakdown of the patronage system in Italy led to the DC losing significant vote share, and how this led to the DC weakening to the point that the judiciary felt empowered to investigate corruption and other criminal activities by the political class. The result was the “virtual disintegration of the „first republic‟” in 1992 as “a web of shady deals that involved political favors, kickbacks, and episodes of shocking violence” came to light (292). My argument does not contradict
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this account; opposition does need some basis on which to argue the dominant party is undemocratic and Greene‟s resource theory of dominance identifies the basis in Italy.
My contribution here is to point out that appeals to voters designed to create a „regime cleavage‟ can be used by opposition to bring about a competitive party system even when a democratic regime already exists.
Further support for this argument can be found in the Indian case. As described in earlier chapters, defections from the Indian Congress Party began in the 1960s, but the increase in corruption and, later, the suspension of democracy under Indira Gandhi can be seen as a major catalyst for the more widespread and organized defections that led to
Congress‟s loss of power (Frankel 1989: 507-8; Kohli 1990: 10). In the 1977 election,
Emergency Rule had “reduced the political issues down to one, namely whether the candidate opposed or supported Gandhi‟s policies.” Voters aggregated their preferences much more than they ever had and Congress lost its majority. Its removal from office proved short-lived, as the Janata coalition was unable to survive once in power (Chhibber and Kollman 2004: 204-5). So while a Cape Town-style multiparty governing coalition proved difficult in 1977, the electoral strategy of uniting on the democracy issue was successful. The „regime‟ issue continued to be a successful strategy for building electoral support in India, when the BJP was founded in 1980 and accused Congress “of subverting Indian democracy through both an anti-democratic leadership and political corruption” (Seshia 1998: 1039). Obviously, this strategy did produce success, first subnationally in northern states and then nationally.
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In contrast, there is no evidence that the Japanese or Botswana oppositions have ever adopted a sustained strategy to create a regime cleavage and therefore failed to aggregate different interests. It is possible this absence – this failure of opposition strategies – contributed to the long tenure of these dominant parties despite, in the
Japanese case, terrible approval ratings. To become competitive, opposition needs an issue that motivates voters to take the risks of voting the dominant party out of office. It is not enough for voters to be dissatisfied with the dominant party‟s performance in office.
In light of the regime change prompted by the use of strategies capitalizing on a regime cleavage in at least one electoral authoritarian regime, Mexico, it is fair to ask what the effects of similar strategies are in a democratic regime. If regime change can be caused in part by this opposition strategy in authoritarian elections, it might follow that the same strategy would destabilize any regime. Therefore, I now turn my focus to the effects of the regime cleavage strategy on the South African electorate. When these strategies are used, and appear to have an effect on election results, what other effects do they have on voters? These strategies create more competitive party systems, but how do they affect the democratic regimes in which they occur?
7.3 Effects of the Democratic Credentials Challenge
The South African electorate is subject to diametrically opposed political rhetoric, with the opposition parties arguing the ANC is corrupt and authoritarian while the ANC
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suggests the opposition parties are anti-liberation and racialist.4 During the first 15 years of South African democracy, when such rhetoric became increasingly common, what were South Africans‟ views of democracy? Drawing upon mass survey research, I find that as South Africans gained experience with one-party dominant democracy, they grew increasingly dissatisfied with their regime and reduced their participation, while largely remaining committed to democracy. I show that there is nevertheless some reason for concern given the depth and extent of that commitment, especially with regards to potential sources of antisystem forces.
7.3.1 Mass Attitudes about Democracy
When a country democratizes, the emphasis is often, rightly, on creating institutions capable of managing political conflict peacefully. However, once democratic institutions are established, “mass-level attitudes supporting democracy are often regarded as the bedrock of democratic stability and an important ingredient for the functioning of a healthy democracy” (Gunther, Montero, and Torcal 2007: 30). Thus, to complete this examination of the evolutionary path being followed by the dominant party system in South Africa, we must turn to the public‟s view of this system and the democracy it provides them.
Extant research has found that attitudes about democracy consist of three core concepts. First, the level of democratic support is the public‟s support for democracy in the abstract and for the regime itself, regardless of who is elected or what policy choices
4 The terms „racialist‟ or „racialism‟ are used in South Africa to refer to the continued use and manipulation of racial categories and „group thinking,‟ as opposed to „racism,‟ which is used to refer to active discrimination against those of another race.
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they make. It is measured with questions asking respondents whether democracy is the best form of government. Second, political discontent is the public‟s support, or lack thereof, for the specific individuals and parties in power. Discontent is measured with questions asking if respondents approve of the way democracy is working. Finally, political disaffection exists when the public is alienated, believing themselves to have little influence on decision-makers or understanding of political issues (Gunther,
Montero, and Torcal 2007: 30-36).
This chapter examines only the first two concepts, as we lack the data for a proper examination of the last one. However, I will discuss trends in electoral turnout, one concrete result of the public‟s sense of efficacy. For many scholars, higher quality is more likely in a democracy in which there are “high levels of participation and competition and therefore vigorous vertical accountability and at least some degree of system responsiveness” (Diamond and Morlino 2005: xxxvii). In dominant party systems, in which voters may see electoral outcomes as foregone conclusions, we can predict low turnout as citizens do not believe they can affect outcomes. Dominant party systems are therefore likely to be of lower quality on this dimension than more competitive systems.
Variation in each of these attitudes and behaviors has different implications for the functioning of a democratic regime. Only the first, support for democracy, is fundamental to democratic consolidation. With consolidation, no significant political actors are working to end democracy and the vast majority of the public believe change should be pursued only through democratic institutions and practices. Democracy
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becomes “the only game in town” for deciding political issues, rather than the use of violence or the rejection of the outcomes of fair and free elections (Linz and Stepan 1996:
5).
However, if a significant proportion of the public does not believe that democracy is the best system of government and instead holds authoritarian attitudes, then they will not necessarily work through democratic channels in pursuit of their political goals. They may be more likely to support anti-system parties and politicians, and even see violence as a legitimate way to address conflict. In a dominant party system, such people fall into two main categories. First, they could be citizens who feel the democratic system offers them no benefits, because the dominant party makes decisions against their interests and they see no prospect of defeating the dominant party electorally. Even those who consistently support opposition parties may still support the system if they feel it protects basic minority – i.e., their own – rights. When even this benefit is perceived as absent, these citizens could lose support for the system itself.
The second category of those who do not support democracy are dominant party supporters who would behave undemocratically if the party were to lose an election.
These citizens support the democratic system as long as it produces election winners they like. If it were to stop producing those outcomes, that is, if the party system became competitive and the dominant party lost, they would react in anti-regime, potentially destabilizing, or even violent ways. Thus my analysis of South African attitudes about democracy looks both at the public in the aggregate and at ANC and opposition
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supporters specifically. The results provide more clues to the evolutionary path the dominant party system is following and to how that evolution is likely to proceed.
Conversely, political discontent is not understood as fundamental to achieving democratic consolidation. It can vary in response to citizens‟ evaluation of office- holders‟ performance, the state of the economy, and the like, without necessarily impacting support for the regime. Widespread political discontent can lead indirectly to the breakdown of a democratic regime if, for example, the military takes power in a bid to institute better governance. Similarly, a populist but anti-democratic leader could capitalize on public dissatisfaction with policy outcomes to argue that fundamental change is needed to address these problems. But in and of itself discontent does not damage the workings of democratic institutions nor does it shift norms of political behavior away from democratic values. More commonly, it results in the defeat of incumbents in an election. Hence discontent can be an indicator of the dominant party losing support. Remember, however, that the emergence of a competitive party system requires the growth of a viable opposition party along with this weakening of the ruling party.
7.3.2 South Africans’ Opinions regarding Democracy
The CNEP dataset is particularly useful for exploring attitudes about democracy because research by Gunther, Montero, and Puhle (2007) uses factor analysis of responses to CNEP‟s survey questions to find valid composite measures across countries for our two main attitudes of interest: support for democracy and democratic discontent.
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When possible, I use the questions identified by these authors to measure South Africans‟ democratic attitudes. Where this is not possible, I provide results from other surveys that ask broadly similar questions.
Very few surveys of South African voters include enough data – either in sample size or in providing respondent data on place of residence in more detail than the province – to address questions directly with regard to Cape Town and Durban. When information exists to trace subnational patterns, it will be included. However, we can assume that the rhetoric used by politicians in major cities is heard fairly widely. Recall that in 2001 Cape Town and Durban constituted over 60 and 30 percent of the populations of their provinces, respectively, and that these percentages will have increased over the past ten years due to migration to South Africa‟s cities (Statistics SA
2001, 2009). Hence we can use the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces as very rough proxies for the two cities compared in the earlier chapters.
Discontent: Political discontent captures whether the public is satisfied with the current government and its policies. Three survey questions are known to be good measures of political discontent. Respondents are asked if they are satisfied with “the way democracy is working,” “the political situation of the country,” and “the economic situation of the country.” Discontent is usually higher among those supporting opposition parties than among supporters of the ruling party (Gunther, Montero, and
Puhle 2007: 33).
It is clear that the much of the South African public is dissatisfied with government policies and outcomes. In the first round of Afrobarometer surveys,
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conducted in South Africa in 2000, only 52 percent of South Africans were satisfied with the way democracy was working in their country. As shown in Table 7.4, this measure then fluctuated, reaching a high of nearly 70 percent satisfied in 2004 and falling again to nearly 51 percent in 2008.
Table 7.4: Levels of discontent among South Africans: percent satisfied 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 …with the way democracy is 52.1 - 69.7 63.2 50.8 working in South Africa …with the economic condition of 14.6 29.9 39.0 50.3 25.0 the country Sources: Afrobarometer (2000, 2002, 2006, 2008) and Comparative National Elections Project (2004). Percentages are those fairly satisfied and very satisfied.
Residents of different provinces are satisfied with the way democracy is working to very different extents. Table 7.5 shows that satisfaction was particularly low in 2008 in the Western Cape and Limpopo, and comparatively high in the Free State and
Mpumalanga. The low rates of satisfaction “with the way democracy is working” in the
Western Cape have a clear explanation; in 2008, because of the ANC‟s intraparty factionalism, the Western Cape barely had a functioning provincial government. Further, since answers to this question are known to correlate with partisanship patterns, it is not surprising that the population supporting opposition parties was less satisfied with the government and policies of the nationally dominant party, and therefore less satisfied with “the way democracy is working.”
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Limpopo‟s low satisfaction rate also has a straightforward explanation, although very different from the explanation for the Western Cape results. As shown in Table 7.5,
Limpopo had the highest poverty rate in the country as shown by the last census, with
87.7 percent of its working-age residents falling in the lowest income group (van Aardt and Coetzee 2009). So Limpopo‟s residents have good reason to be dissatisfied with the results of South African democracy.
Table 7.5: 2008 Percent Satisfied with Democracy compared with 2001 Poverty Rate, by Province Satisfied (n) Poverty rate 57.5 Eastern Cape (146) 72 (84) 62.5 Free State (72) 68 (45) 49.1 Gauteng (279) 42 (137) 56.5 KZN (232) 61 (131) 38.0 Limpopo (108) 77 (41) 65.1 Mpumalanga (83) 57 (54) 48.2 North West (83) 52 (40) 60.9 Northern Cape (23) 61 (14) 32.6 Western Cape (132) 32 (43) 50.8 Total (1158) 57 (589) Percentage satisfied are those fairly satisfied and very satisfied, and may not sum to 100 due to rounding. Sources: Afrobarometer; Schwabe 2004.
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However, unlike in the Western Cape, low rates of satisfaction in Limpopo do not translate into support for opposition parties. The ANC won the support of nearly 85 percent of the province‟s voters in the 2009 election. Limpopo voters‟ support for the
ANC despite the failure of its policies is part of a larger pattern in which electoral results do not reflect the population‟s opinion of policies. In the time period covered in this dissertation, discontent – especially among the poor – appeared to manifest most often in local delivery protests, described in Chapter 4, rather than in ways that challenged the
ANC‟s national dominance. Drawing on Afrobarometer data, Bratton and Sibanyoni
(2006: 10) write
Politically, dissent about local government performance was disproportionately concentrated in areas – such as Limpopo and the Eastern Cape – where the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has long been the dominant political party. It seems the limits of partisan loyalty have been reached in these areas: people now feel free to raise issues of service delivery and to question the ANC‟s performance on this score.
For the most part, the ANC lost support subnationally in the court of public opinion and on the streets, but not in the voting booth. We will see below that this resulted in lower turnout in elections rather than a shift in power. Electorally, the Western Cape became the most competitive of the nine provinces, while most of the other places whose residents are most dissatisfied with government performance support the ANC. Indeed,
“just because people vote for the ANC doesn‟t stop them from being angry with the party, nor does it stop them from demonstrating this.” As seen in Table 7.6, more ANC voters are satisfied (58.1 percent) with South African democracy than opposition voters
(45.7 percent satisfied). But nearly 40 percent of those who say they will vote for the
ANC are not satisfied with how democracy works in the country.
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Table 7.6: 2008 Satisfaction with Democracy by Voting Preference, percents Not Don’t Total Satisfied Satisfied Know ANC (527) 63.0 58.1 38.8 2.8 Opposition (196) 23.5 45.7 52.3 1.5 Would not vote (113) 13.5 31.0 61.1 8.0 Total (N=836) 51.7 45.1 3.2 Source: Afrobarometer 2008. Totals are different than from the earlier table because of different missing cases. Question asked which of the three statements “is closest to your opinion.” Totals may not sum to 100 due to rounding.
Thus far, in most provinces voters have preferred to vote for the ANC
“reluctantly” rather than for an opposition party, or they would prefer not to vote at all.5
It was not until the 2009 election campaign and the emergence of the COPE that we see widespread voter defections from the ANC in poorer provinces where opposition parties had not already made inroads.
Turnout: This dissatisfaction with the way democracy is working appears to lead to much of the population dropping out of the electorate. Low voter turnout is seen by many as a negative trend for the quality of democracy, as fewer citizens enjoy formal representation of their interests. Turnout is a crude measure of participation – there are many other ways to participate in a democracy, such as lobbying and protest – but it is a sign of the extent of interest in and perceived influence over the formal structures of power.
We should see turnout decreasing the longer the ANC is in power. By the height of the ANC‟s dominance around 2004, when it had a supermajority in the National
5 Steven Friedman, quoted in Vicki Robinson and Rapule Tabane. “It‟s the ANC or no vote at all.” Mail & Guardian. 9 March 2006, p. 2.
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Assembly and at least a share of power in every province and metro city, there was little apparent prospect of citizen action changing the national electoral map. Further, the
ANC was understood to be fairly closed to lobbying from the average voter. Indeed, as my description of the ANC‟s increasingly tense intraparty conditions in 2006-2009 showed in the last chapter, even many ANC activists felt excluded from influencing their elected leaders. Nor were channels for public consultation effective or even consistently established (Staniland 2008). As pithily summarized by Murray and Pillay (2005: 202),
“The public is told of vigorous debate within the ANC but is not privy to it.” All of these conditions would logically lead to a populace that feels disconnected from their representatives and the powerful, and therefore less inclined to participate in a process that appears to be foreordained.
Specific questions about the quality of representation further make this point. In the 2006 Afrobarometer survey, respondents were asked whether much of the time
Members of Parliament and Local Government Councilors “try their best to listen to what people like you have to say.” The results indicate South Africans feel they are poorly represented, with 59.9 percent saying MPs “never” or “only sometimes” listen and 68.6 percent saying the same of local councilors. Clearly, South Africans do not think they have the ability to hold officials accountable nor to transmit their policy preferences to them.6 With Zuma telling ANC MPs that they were “accountable to the ANC, not the
6 The lack of accountability of elected officials has led to widespread calls among activists and experts for South Africa to switch from a PR electoral system to one using districts, in order to facilitate constituency ties. However, these calls have not addressed the failure of the mixed electoral system used in municipal elections to create accountability and ties between ward councilors and their constituents. Some see the problem as the result of all accountability mechanisms leading back to strong parties, not to voters. If an
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Constitution” in 2001, it seems likely ANC office-holders themselves agreed (Gumede
2009: 43). The closed-list system for assigning legislative seats will reinforce this belief despite the ANC‟s 2009 reform of its candidate-selection procedures.
Research across several cases shows that competition and participation vary together (Diamond and Morlino 2005: xxxv). In South Africa, this basic form of political participation has decreased over time, although in 2009 it increased very slightly from its low point in 2004 (see Table 7.7).
Table 7.7: Turnout in South African National Elections 1994 1999 2004 2009 Percent of no 89.3 76.7 77.3 registered voters registration Percent of voting 86.0 71.8 57.8 59.8 age population Source: Schultz-Herzenberg 2009: 25.
Further, as seen in Table 7.8, the ANC‟s share of the voting age population has steadily declined in each of the four democratic elections . Examination of survey data shows that the proportion of those identifying as independents has settled at about 26 percent since 2002.7 More notably, these non-partisans represent all racial groups.
Combined, these figures suggest that the ANC‟s dominance is less secure than at first it may appear (Schulz-Herzenberg 2009: 27-32). Much of its electoral support comes from voters who do not consider themselves ANC partisans, and thus both are active politically
electoral system change loosened parties‟ power over their candidates, it may create more accountability and help to develop a greater sense of political empowerment among the electorate. 7 Afrobarometer respondents were asked what, if any, party they felt close to. Those answering „no party‟ were 27.7, 25.2, and 27.8 percent of the sample in 2002, 2006, and 2008, respectively.
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and at least in the abstract are willing to consider supporting another party. Observers increasingly identify a steady increase in „de-alignment‟ among voters, with the rate of strong partisans decreasing and the proportion of independents increasing.
Table 7.8: Vote Choice of South African Voting Age Population (VAP), percents 1994 1999 2004 2009 ANC voters 53.8 46.9 39.6 38.8 Opposition voters 32.1 23.7 17.2 20.1 No Vote 14.0 28.2 42.2 40.2 Source: Schultz-Herzenberg 2009: 25.
We should also note the proportion of the voting age population who are opposition supporters has also decreased, with a third less of the population supporting an opposition party in 2009 than did in 1994. The slight improvement for opposition parties from 2004 to 2009 may be an irrelevant fluctuation, or it may be the sign of opposition parties beginning to achieve some realignment in the loyalties of the electorate. For now however, we can only confidently conclude that de-alignment, not realignment, has occurred among the South African electorate.
South African‟s lack of political participation and lower turnout in elections further limits the accountability of political parties to the citizenry. Not only does the ruling party feel little need to be responsible to the electorate, the electorate is increasingly not trying to hold the ruling party accountable. It is fair to conclude that the quality of the much-lauded South African democracy is suffering.
However, it is also fair to ask whether this level of quality is any better or worse than in comparative cases. There is evidence from Italy and Japan that low levels of
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political confidence appear where there has been no alternation of parties in power for a long time (for example, see Norris 1999 and Segatti 2006). Norris (2002) calculated the mean turnout in elections at different levels of party system competitiveness. Her results show that the lowest turnouts occur in elections in which the first place party wins more than 60 percent of votes in parliamentary elections. In these elections, the mean turnout among Norris‟s cases is 55.8 percent. She writes, “in such situations, the marginal value of each vote appears lowest [to potential voters], owing to the predictable outcome, and parties may make less effort to mobilize supporters. …In practice, these [electoral] options are fairly meaningless” (70-1). Greene (2007: 46) argues that the dominant party cannot even do very much about “abstention due to indifference . . . since voters expect the incumbent to win re-election.”
Predictably, then, after the euphoria of the democratic transition, South African turnout fell. At its lowest point in 2004, with 57.8 percent of the voting age population casting a vote, it was “almost exactly the cross-national average turnout in one-party dominant systems” (Bratton, Mattes, and Gyimah-Boadi 2005: 250). South Africa‟s citizens are not less engaged that those in the average dominant party system; in many elections more of them vote than the average electorate with similar expectations of no turnover in office. Dominant party systems may indeed suffer from low levels of political participation and therefore have a low degree of accountability of their elected officials, but South African democracy does not appear worse on this measure than comparable regimes. Its voter turnout is on par with other dominant party systems.
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I have found some evidence for dealignment and decreasing turnout, that is, twin trends of decreasing partisan loyalty and decreasing participation in politics. These trends suggest that voters are increasingly willing to defect from the ANC but have not yet found a new political home. In my theory of dominant party system evolution, this is half of the necessary conditions for the emergence of competitiveness. Along with the organizational problems detailed in earlier chapters, here I have shown a dominant party weakening among the electorate. But while opposition parties have begun to overcome their viability problems and certainly are trying to win over the increasing number of independents and disaffected citizens, voters are not yet widely embracing any one party.
Reluctant supporters or voters dropping out of the electorate can easily lead to an unpopular ruling party remaining in office. Scheiner (2006: 55) writes about Japan‟s
LDP, “The decline of a dominant party for internal organizational reasons cannot topple the ruling regime if opposition parties do not mobilize the disenchanted.” Bruhn (1997:
16) goes further, arguing that existing opposition parties struggle to capture disaffected voters because their credibility as viable competitors is all but irrevocably damaged. In short, existing opposition parties are seen as losers. Citizens inclined to reject the ruling party are more likely to stay home from the polls rather than give their support to opposition parties, hence the need of opposition to gain viability. In South Africa, declining turnout combined with increasing poll percentages for the ruling party indicates that former ANC supporters are not voting, and that opposition parties have not created widespread enthusiasm for these people to re-engage in politics. This appears to be a typical stage of dominant party system evolution.
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Support for Democracy: The final measure of attitudes towards democracy is support for democracy itself, regardless of how well a particular system is perceived to function. There are two important pieces in support for democracy: elites and masses.
Chapter 4 reviewed the evidence for elites‟ commitment to South Africa‟s democratic regime, finding that despite some undemocratic rhetoric and the occasional unsuccessful attempt at curtailing opposition power, elites would accept the constitutional order as interpreted by the judicial branch.
In the tumult leading up to the 2009 election, some public statements called this conclusion into question. Most famously, the firebrand ANC Youth League President
Julius Malema made several controversial statements, such as saying that he and his alies would “kill for Zuma.” Since the election, Malema has been censured by the ANC and by the Human Rights Commission. Much of the more concerning rhetoric was directed not at opposition parties but at those within the ANC who opposed the Zuma faction.
The formation of COPE prompted more ire. The ANC “denounced the leaders as traitors and turncoats. Party radicals reverted to more chilling rhetoric. Jason Mkhwane, the chairperson of the ANC Youth League branch in the township of Sedibeng, was quoted as saying that its leaders were seeking to destroy the history of the ANC and behaving
„like cockroaches and … must be destroyed.‟” This rhetoric and the potential for COPE-
ANC conflict was “a reminder of the country‟s history of political intolerance between rival parties feuding for black support, and of the dangers inherent in the opening up of politics” (Russell 2009: 273). What studies we have on elite opinions indicate that the intolerant streak in the ANC is not widespread. Kotzé and Steencamp (2009) conducted
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surveys of South African elites and compared them to the results of the 2006 World
Values Survey of the South African public.8 The World Values Survey found even more of the South African public expressing support for democracy than did the other surveys reviewed here, with 85.7 percent saying that having a democratic system is good; 98.4 percent of elites agreed. When asked if having strong opposition parties was good or bad, Kotzé and Steencamp found that 74.7 percent of the public said it was good.
However, this proportion paled in comparison to the 98.7 percent of elites who agreed
(66). Within the elite survey, all of the DA supporters believed democracy to be a good form of government, as did 98 percent of ANC supporters. Elites supporting both parties unanimously agreed it is good to have strong opposition parties, although the strength of this belief was weaker among ANC supporters (68). In conclusion, to the extent we have data on the subject, we can conclude that as a group South African elites hold democratic views, at greater rates than the public at large does.
The second piece of support for democracy is mass attitudes. Here the key question is, how might South Africa‟s population react if democracy faltered? The closest we can come to answering this question – and therefore gain more perspective on the likelihood of South Africa remaining democratic – is to examine survey results examining the public‟s support for democracy. In CNEP, two survey questions are used to measure such support. Respondents are asked if they agree with the statements
8 In the study by Kotzé and Steencamp, “elites” are those persons who “hold authoritative positions in powerful public and private organizations and influential movements and who would therefore be able to affect strategic decisions more regularly within such a political system” (67). They are not just politicians.
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“Democracy is the best form of government for a country like ours” and “Democracy is preferable to any other form of government” (Gunther, Montero, and Puhle 2007: 34-35).
Table 7.9 shows how South Africans‟ commitment to democracy has developed over time. The good news for advocates of democracy is that the proportion of the population that supports democracy has grown in the past decade. The bad news is that the proportion in the latest survey is only 67 percent of the population. Further questioning reveals that on average only about 65 percent of the population disapproves of the suggestion that “only one political party is allowed to stand for election and hold office” (Afrobarometer 2009: 3). After 15 years of democracy, 30 to 35 percent of South
Africans may not object if the dominant party were to end free and fair elections,
“perhaps because [a one-party regime] comes close to what they already have” (Bratton,
Mattes, and Gyimah-Boadi 2005: 79).
Table 7.9: Commitment to Democracy among South African Voters, percents 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 Democracy is preferable 63.9 62.6 63 74.6 68.6 Disapproves of “only one party 56 67 61 66 63.8 is allowed to stand for election.” Prefer to choose leaders through - - - 48.4 34.6 elections, not other methods Source: Afrobarometer 2009.
Who constitutes this 30 percent of the South African population who do not support democracy in the abstract? Geographically, there appears to be little systematic explanation for varying levels of support (see Table 7.10). Specific numbers may be attributable to specific events, such as the struggle of Coloured voters in the Western
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Cape to find a post-apartheid political home reaching its most discouraging point during the collapse of the DP-NNP merger in 2002. But overall trends appear elusive.
Table 7.10: Percent Agreeing Democracy is Preferable, by Province 2000 2002 2006 2008 51.5 62.3 80.3 67.1 Eastern Cape (168/326) (198/318) (304/321) (100/149) 80.6 72.8 85.1 83.1 Free State (108/134) (107/147) (148/157) (59/71) 62.3 63.6 73.5 70.8 Gauteng (292/469) (290/456) (340/366) (196/277) 62.0 54.2 77.7 76.9 KZN (246/397) (239/441) (358/407) (180/234) 71.8 76.2 72.6 48.6 Limpopo (153/213) (160/210) (383/414) (53/109) 63.1 66.0 56.5 69.1 Mpumalanga (77/122) (99/150) (191/205) (56/81) 73.7 72.4 49.1 63.1 North West (115/156) (131/181) (234/250) (53/84) 64.7 50.0 58.1 70.8 Northern Cape (22/34) (21/42) (74/115) (17/24) 64.7 51.1 75.2 62.0 Western Cape (141/218) (117/229) (149/165) (85/137) 63.9 62.6 71.2 68.6 Total (1322/2068) (1362/2176) (2183/2400) (800/1166) Totals are different from the earlier table due to missing cases. Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding. Data in parentheses are number of respondents favoring democracy followed by number of respondents in that province and year. Source: Afrobarometer.
Of greatest concern for advocates of democracy would be if those not supporting democracy were organized in some way, because then a particular event might spark an anti-democratic revolt. As I argued in Chapter 4, all significant political actors have accepted the rules of the game as they now stand. Therefore, the greatest threat to democracy is if the status quo were to change. Senior ANC office-holders do appear
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largely committed to the rule of law and to not changing the Constitution, and thus the institutional status quo seems unlikely to change. As this dissertation has shown, the most likely change to the status quo is the emergence of a competitive party system.
Logically then, the greatest threat to democracy would be if those who would lose in such a scenario did not accept the loss: ANC supporters and the intolerant populist figures like
Julius Malema who might lead them.
When asked if they support democracy, ANC supporters do so in numbers greater than non-ANC supporters. While in 2008 69.3 percent of all respondents expressing a voting preference say democracy is always preferable,9 74.1 percent of ANC supporters prefer democracy (see Table 7.11). This result is quite encouraging for those concerned about the future of South African democracy if the ANC were to lose its dominance.10
9 The difference between this percentage and that presented in the table above is a result of respondents refusing to answer one of the questions regarding their opinion of democracy and which party they support. 10 None of the conclusions here that use respondents‟ voting preferences are changed by the removal of COPE supporters from the opposition totals.
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Table 7.11: 2006 and 2008 Support for Democracy by Voting Preference, percents Sometimes non- 2006 Democracy democratic is is It doesn’t Total preferable preferable matter ANC 82.1 71.1 7.9 13.1 Opposition 16.0 61.3 17.0 21.8 Would not vote 1.9 48.3 24.1 27.5 Total N=1553 74.1 10.2 15.7 Sometimes non- 2008 Democracy democratic is is It doesn’t Total preferable preferable matter ANC 62.9 74.1 14.9 10.9 Opposition 22.9 65.8 20.0 14.2 Would not vote 14.2 53.4 28.8 17.8 Total N=830 69.3 18.1 12.7 Source: Afrobarometer 2006 and 2008. Totals are different than from the earlier table because of different missing cases. Question asked which of the three statements “is closest to your opinion.” Totals may not sum to 100 due to rounding.
Additional analysis of the survey data, however, does raise some concerns. The
Afrobarometer asks a set of questions meant to test the “depth” of democratic commitments (Bratton, Mattes, and Gyimah-Boadi 2005: 91). The most relevant question to the scenario of concern here asks if respondents would disapprove or approve of only one political party being allowed to stand for election and hold office, as this is the closest to capturing potential approval for a competitive authoritarian system in which the ruling party holds elections but is at no risk of losing power.
The pattern of South Africans‟ answers to this question is very different from that seen in their commitment to democracy in the abstract. As shown in Table 7.12, again between 60 and 70 percent of South Africans reject the undemocratic option. But when
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we compare these answers to respondents‟ voting preferences, only 60 percent of ANC supporters reject one-party rule, in comparison to nearly 75 percent of those who support an opposition party. Put another way, of the 24 percent of the population that approves of one-party rule, 72.6 percent are ANC supporters. There is, then, a group of not insignificant size who may not accept the ANC losing power.
Table 7.12: 2008 Opinion of One-Party Rule by Voting Preference, percents
One-Party Rule Total Disapprove Neither Approve ANC 62.6 60.0 12.3 27.8 Opposition 23.4 74.5 10.9 14.6 Would not vote 14.0 63.5 13.9 22.6 Total (N=821) 63.8 12.2 24.0 One-Man Rule Total Disapprove Neither Approve ANC 62.0 64.8 16.5 18.7 Opposition 23.7 73.2 16.3 7.4 Would not vote 14.2 61.4 16.7 22.8 Total (N=801) 66.3 16.5 16.6 Military Total Disapprove Neither Approve Dictatorship ANC 62.5 64.0 14.6 17.0 Opposition 23.3 71.4 10.6 13.1 Would not vote 14.2 62.0 9.1 24.8 Total (N=854) 65.3 12.9 17.2 The question asked “There are many ways to govern a country. Would you disapprove or approve of the following alternatives? (1) Only one political party is allowed to stand for election and hold office. (2) Elections and the National Assembly are abolished so that the president can decide everything. (3) The army comes in to govern the country.” “Disapprove” is the sum of those saying they “strongly disapprove” or “disapprove”; “Approve” is “strongly approve” plus “approve.” Rows may not add to 100 due to rounding and missing data. Source: Afrobarometer.
It is difficult to know how seriously to worry about such a threat to the democratic regime. The influence of political elites on their followers could temper any anti-
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democratic reaction, but so too could other elites seize an opportunity to capitalize on populist fervor to further their own ambitions. The bottom line is that a fairly large proportion of the South African public may not have accepted democracy as the only rules of the game.
7.4 The Dangers of Dominance and Increasing Competitiveness
South Africa has not confronted the kind of crisis that has severely tested many other democratic regimes.11 It has not faced the most basic of democratic tests, the ruling party losing an election and accepting their loss of power. This “turnover test” is used by some authors (e.g., Przeworski et al: 2000) to operationalize consolidation or even the presence of democracy itself, on the logic that a ruling party has not proved itself to accept the democratic rules of the game unless and until it respects the results of an election it loses. However, this operationalization is problematic for the classification errors it will produce for dominant party systems (Przewroski et al: 2000: 23-28;
Schedler 2001: 73). So while we can accept, with in depth case knowledge, that South
Africa is democratic, we should also consider the implications of it not yet passing one basic test of the security of the democratic regime. If democracy is “a system in which
[all] parties lose elections” (Przeworski 1991: 10), South Africa is a democracy where all parties lose subnational elections, but all but one party lose national elections. We know that less competitive democracies are less likely to survive, as Lai and Melkonian-Hoover
(2005), employing event history models, find that that higher degrees of competitiveness
11 The worldwide economic crisis that began in 2008 combined with the ANC succession crisis probably came closest, given the severe price increases it caused during such a tense political moment.
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among parties increases the survival of democracies. Therefore, we might conclude that
South African democracy could only be strengthened by the end of one-party dominance.
However, what might happen if the dominant party were to lose power nationally? Schrire (2001) writes, “A viable democracy is based upon the view that those who disagree are rivals and not enemies. South African voters and leaders still have a long way to go in this respect” (147). Indeed, in 2002 and 2008, respectively, 34.8 and
30.3 percent of Afrobarometer respondents agreed with the statement that “political parties are divisive” while disagreeing with the idea that many parties are needed. In
2004, 27 percent of South Africans thought “only one political party should be allowed to stand” for election (CNEP). Similarly, in 2008, a full 59 percent of South African respondents agreed with the idea that “opposition parties should cooperate with government” while only 36% agreed with the statement “opposition parties should regularly examine and criticize government” (Afrobarometer). These results suggest that opposition parties who criticize the ANC to the point of accusing it of being anti- democratic will gain the disapproval of most of the electorate, even while mobilizing the support of many. There are risks to a regime cleavage strategy, and no guarantees.
Schrire (2001) sounded a pessimistic note about the development of opposition in
South Africa, arguing that a “fragile democracy would paradoxically be weakened by a stronger opposition.” He maintained that a stronger opposition could come about only through the reintroduction of ethnic and racial strategies, such as if the National Party had abandoned the “1994 Government of National Unity on the grounds of the total failure of the ANC to govern effectively and adopted a policy of robust opposition” or if the
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Inkatha Freedom Party had not participated in the national coalition with the ANC, and thus ethnic conflicts “would be an inevitable consequence” (143-4). He may be correct in this dire prediction for the period immediately following the democratic transition, but the NP did withdraw from the GNU in 1996 and the IFP-ANC relationship broke down around 2004. Neither development was accompanied by an increase in ethnic strategies or political violence.
Nevertheless, Schrire was right in his argument that an “inclusive administration” can provide stability and tolerance, even if – or especially if – it fails to provide democratic accountability. After all, stable policies benefitting pluralist interests may not be what the infamous tyrannical majority demands; if that majority could hold representatives accountable effectively, it would probably not reelect them.
Paradoxically, deeply polarized societies may benefit from dominant party rule. A broad ruling coalition can bridge deep divisions while maintaining stability. This is especially possible if the dominant party strikes a balance between internal party democracy, so that diverse interests are satisfied they have a fair hearing, and party discipline, so that diverse interests accept compromises. Sani and Segatti (2001: 166) argue that the high level of patronage spending in Italy was understood to be a necessary evil, a way to gain consensus on basic issues of governance until “the ideological temperature began to cool down.” The centrist positions taken by dominant parties “can mitigate social conflict and remain flexible in distributing benefits to one or another sector of society” (Greene 2007:
46). A successful dominant party achieves stability and “its very persistence over time permits the recreation of the political regime. Long-term rule by a single party allows the
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party and its core elements to shape a nation‟s politics through public policy choices”
(Pempel 1990: 352). Thus under a dominant party system, democratic habits and institutions can become established and routine.
Southall (2009: 7) remarks that ANC dominance does not receive credit for what it has achieved. He writes,
In a country previously racked by racial division, political conflict and low-level civil war, the ANC‟s cocktail of unity in diversity, national reconciliation, non-racialism and black advancement, together with an emphasis upon equality and democracy, has offered a foundation for a common society.
Neither Southall nor I deny the many problems with ANC dominance. It would of course be good to have all three democratic ideals, of stability, tolerance, and accountability.
But if a robust opposition is needed to provide accountability and robust opposition causes civil unrest, then there is a good argument for sacrificing accountability in favor of stability.
Danger to the democratic regime can come from two directions. First, as I have explored extensively already, the dominant party itself can violate the democratic habits we might hope it would instill. Second, the emergence of a competitive party system in a highly polarized society could produce all the pathologies associated with polarized party systems, such as the political instability and the breakdown of democratic regimes seen in
Latin American history (Greene 2007: 287). Dominant parties can help their societies avoid these problems until polarization subsides.
Therefore, “although South Africa may not have the democracy it deserves, it may well have the democracy it can sustain” (Schrire 2001: 148). It may be that high quality democracy requires a competitive party system, as argued by so many scholars
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defining „quality of democracy.‟ However, in dominant party systems, the process of acquiring such a party system is one that may put democracy at some risk, if supporters of the dominant party do not accept the electoral losses implied by competitiveness.
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Chapter 8: Conclusions and Further Research
In this chapter, I summarize my argument and evidence of the causes of dominant party evolution, revisit some alternative arguments, and discuss directions for further research suggested by this dissertation.
8.1 Dominant Party Systems and the Advent of Competitiveness
8.1.1 Goals of Parties
Like individual candidates, the first goal of parties is to hold office. In dominant party systems, holding office requires very different tasks on the part of the dominant party and on the part of opposition parties. The dominant party‟s first goal is to stay in office, preferably enjoying supermajorities in the legislature in order to continue accruing the benefits of one-party dominance. It therefore must maintain a broad coalition of interests and factions. I identified the major aspects involved in doing so: prevent defections, formally or informally co-opt potential challengers, and balance tolerance for debate and dissent while minimizing challenges to party decisions.
Opposition parties in dominant party systems seek to gain office, which will require defeating the dominant incumbent. They face greater hurdles to gaining power than do oppositions in competitive party systems. These include the lack of a track record of governing decisions, the lack of access to resources for both campaigns and patronage, marginalization and fragmentation, and any rules and institutions the dominant
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party has put in place that favors itself to the detriment of opposition parties. For opposition parties to gain competitiveness, these hurdles must be overcome.
8.1.2 Subnational Roots of Party System Change
The research design employed in this dissertation asserted that subnational politics could impact national politics in ways that are not widely recognized. Despite calls to use the “subnational comparative method” (Snyder 2001), it is not a widely recognized approach outside of studies that utilize the existence of 50 U.S. states to gain comparative leverage. Even within the field of American politics, Trounstine (2009) calls for the greater use of American cities as comparative cases as they can provide
“methodological advantages that come from variation to address general questions in political science.” I make a similar claim regarding cities elsewhere, to gain advantages on questions within the field of comparative politics generally and on my questions regarding the causes of dominant party system evolution specifically.
Omitting subnational dynamics has led to incomplete theories of dominant party system evolution. Deductively, we might expect that a dominant party could fracture among its national elites, leading to breakaway nationalized parties and the emergence of a dominant party system at the national level. Empirically, however, a closer examination of such elite splits reveals two complications to the idea. First, a party directly descended from a national-level elite defection has never emerged as the party to end one-party dominance. Defections weaken the dominant party but it is always a different party, with experience in subnational governance, which wins power away from
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the dominant party. Second, most narratives of elite defections reveal subnational politics are actually quite important in identifying their origins, because the dominant party‟s factions represent competing regions or because the factionalism results from center-periphery disputes. Hence to understand the emergence of a competitive party system beyond its most proximate cause, we must look beyond national politics to understand the subnational context. Otherwise our theories will remain incomplete.
My argument overcomes the shortcomings of earlier work by explicitly incorporating both necessary pieces: opposition growth and dominant party fracture.
Opposition growth appears to be particularly difficult in highly centralized systems like
Japan‟s, precisely because the limited resources of opposition parties can be used most effectively when they are concentrated in a particular area. Hence, if an opposition party gains viability in a dominant party system, chances are it did so through subnational gains and thus we must study subnational politics to complete our understanding.
With the South African cases of the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, I also have demonstrated that factional conflict within the dominant party can be understood most clearly by observing interactions in subnational party structures. More importantly, subnational party organization can – depending on the particular party‟s rules and regulations – provide competing factions with varying levels of resources. Therefore the outcome of intraparty factionalism can be also be driven by subnational variation.
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8.1.3 Establishing Competitiveness
At the end of Chapter 3, I lay out several expectations of how and why a competitive party system might emerge, drawn from cases of dominant and hegemonic party systems. My analysis of South Africa confirmed several of these expectations.
First, opposition parties need a way to gain a foothold of power. They often do so on the basis of socioeconomic demographic patterns, winning elections where there are blocs of voters not included in the dominant party‟s coalition. However, for further expansion and growth, the specific subnational elections the opposition parties win matter. The most effective footholds will be the subnational governments of important, visible cities, as by definition their electorates are larger and so it captures the support of a large number of voters. Such places also garner more attention in the regional and national media, which means that voters outside of the city are more likely to hear about the opposition‟s governing record. Hence the further growth of the DA only after it captured Cape Town‟s government in 2006; its governance of smaller municipalities elsewhere in the Western Cape did not prompt such notable expansion.
The contrast between the DA‟s governance of Cape Town following the 2000 municipal election and its governance after 2006 demonstrates that what an opposition party does in office matters. This rather obvious statement is theoretically important: opposition parties need footholds so that they can demonstrate their governing skills. If, like in Cape Town in 2000, they govern poorly and become enmeshed in scandals, the electorate will appropriately punish them at the polls and opposition growth will not expand. Conversely, if opposition governs well, this success will make it more credible
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to voters, reduce its resource disadvantages, and motivate unity rather than fragmentation.
Voters will be more likely to consider opposition as a viable alternative for future offices and for offices elsewhere. Thus the successful 2006 Cape Town coalition led to the DA capturing the Western Cape provincial government in 2009.
The opposition‟s strategies and actions, as I have said, are not the whole story.
For opposition to make inroads on the dominant party‟s power, the dominant party needs to shed some of that power. I argue that it does so by failing to maintain the support of both voters and its intraparty coalition. Factionalism and defections can occur because of regionally-based or center-periphery disputes, as it did within the ANC when party activists objected to the concentration of authority in the president‟s office.
Factionalism in and of itself will not lead to the dismemberment of a dominant party and the end of one-party dominance. After all, both the Italian DC and the Japanese
LDP famously managed their intraparty factions for decades; doing so was one of the factors contributing to their long tenures. The problem for the dominant party comes when it lacks transparent, legitimate, and institutionalized methods for managing factionalism and resolving disputes within the party. If a dominant party resorts to sweeping problems under the rug, to finding ad hoc solutions implemented on the basis of particular personalities‟ mediation skills, or to unilateral decisions that are perceived as unfair, it risks particular factions concluding they will not receive a fair shake within the party. As we saw with the eventual leaders of COPE, when the ascendant faction appears to be systematically excluding any member of another faction from power, the excluded members may conclude that intraparty politics have become a zero-sum game in which
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they are the losers. This conclusion will lead to defections and therefore a weakening of the dominant party. If the defectors stay in politics, either joining an opposition party or creating one of their own, the dominant party additionally faces a new challenger with some governing experience.
The emergence of a competitive party system needs both the expansion of opposition party electoral success and governance record, and the weakening of the dominant party. Voters must be convinced to adopt the risks attendant with defecting to an opposition party. I argue here that a possible strategy, which has been used with some apparent success in Mexico, India, Italy, and South Africa, is for the opposition to argue that the dominant party is undemocratic and corrupt. By doing so, opposition can unite otherwise disparate interests behind a platform of good governance, further overcoming party fragmentation. They can also potentially win the support of erstwhile dominant party supporters, and bring back into the electorate citizens who had grown disillusioned with the system and had stopped participating in politics. The regime cleavage strategy accomplishes several tasks necessary for an opposition party to become competitive, thus its usefulness and success.
8.2 Alternative Arguments
What if an opposition party‟s subnational efforts merely distract it from challenging the dominant party elsewhere, creating a safety valve for discontent with the ruling party‟s policies? Devoting resources to a few specific places could “subtract”
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from national-level electoral efforts. This scenario is possible; indeed, it is often part of a story of how dominant parties succeed. But it is not guaranteed or even likely to occur.
My argument is that under certain conditions – including a degree of decentralization of the state, the electoral capture of large and visible subnational offices, and a platform and history that can appeal to centrist voters – opposition parties can use subnational footholds to gain credibility and become viable challengers in other places and nationally. Further, it is the most common way opposition parties gain competitiveness in dominant party systems. The only exception I found among my cases was Japan. I attribute its exceptionalism to its high degree of centralization.
In further discrediting of the safety valve or subtractive explanation, the South
African case is particularly useful. It provides variation on the national or subnational focus of opposition party campaigns over time. For the 1999 election, larger parties like the DA and the IFP designed nationwide campaigns with the aim of capturing more seats in the National Assembly. In hindsight, this national effort spread opposition resources too thin and the parties lost significant ground, both nationally and in their subnational strongholds. In subsequent elections, these parties have focused their efforts, both in their strongholds where they need to mobilize their bases and in targeted areas where the
ANC is weaker and the opposition thinks they can gain ground. This subnational focus means they can concentrate resources, win subnational offices, and build a governing record they use in future campaigns to expand further. Nationwide campaigns led to losses, while the focus on gaining subnational offices led to gains.
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8.3 Further Research
8.3.1 The Evolution of Dominant Party Systems
Over the course of writing this dissertation, additional patterns across cases of dominant party systems emerged as possibly important factors in such systems‟ evolution. Further development of my theory to explain such evolution of should address these factors. There are four that seem particularly promising for further pursuit.
Obviously, as detailed in the previous chapter and above, my research in South
Africa suggests that the “regime cleavage” capitalized upon by the Mexican opposition to build a new winning coalition in 2000 is a useful strategy for oppositions in democratic dominant party systems. Additional investigation, especially of survey data with larger sample sizes able to allow investigation of opinions in particular subnational areas, is needed to provide further confirmation of this idea. Alternatively, future research could potentially use the long history of survey research in Italy to see if a regime cleavage emerged just prior to the end of the dominant party system there.1 It is also on this question that subnational dominant party systems, such as the pre-civil rights era
American South, American city machines, or particular Argentine states, could be utilized as comparative cases to explore the regime cleavage strategy for successful opposition growth. Such cases would need to be carefully selected with regards to their
1 Survey research in India is notoriously difficult and rare, because of the number of respondents that would be needed to create a sample representative of the high degree of diversity.
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democratic nature,2 but nonetheless could provide further support for this portion of my theory.
Second, the extant literature provides several contradictory conclusions regarding the role of economic crises in dominant party system change. Economic crises are frequently a primary cause of incumbent defeat. More specifically for the end of one- party dominance, economic crises often bring down the dominant party, as a party that keeps its broad coalition united through the generous use of patronage will struggle to do so when state resources are comparatively more restricted. Perhaps the clearest and most famous example is the Italian Christian Democrats‟ collapse in the 1980s, after international pressure for macroeconomic reforms forced the government to reduce spending (Greene 2007: 285-295). With a much smaller pie to share, some interests will decide the costs needed to coordinate and compromise with other factions within the dominant party are too high given the potential return. They will defect from the ruling coalition. Thus an economic crisis, by reducing resources available for patronage, can lead to the emergence of a competitive party system.
However, clientelist practices and state resources can strengthen the hand of those who control them when a country is faced with worsening economic conditions. In an economic downturn, patronage and state spending can become a larger and even more important part of the economy. In such a situation, a dominant party would garner more loyalty from its various constituencies as the need for access to state resources increased.
2 Gibson and Suarez-Cao (2008) describe the subnational party systems of Argentina as varying significantly with regards to the degree of democracy that exists in each. Similarly, the undemocratic nature of several parts of the early- to mid-twentieth century South and of northern cities dominated by machine politics is well known (Key 1949; Schefter 1994; Simpson 2001; Ware 2006).
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The ruling coalition would be strengthened, as people look to the state for help. Thus in this scenario an economic crisis, by reducing resources across society and making patronage even more important to its recipients, can lead to the emergence of a competitive party system.
Briefly, I would suggest that the wealth of a country may determine the effect of an economic crisis on a dominant party system. In a poorer country, where an economic crisis poses more of a survival threat, interest groups and voters will look to the government to alleviate the economic pain. In countries where more of the population is well-off and have sources of income separate from the government, defection is a more realistic option. This hypothesis linking the level of economic development (and possibly also degree of inequality) to dominant party system evolution should be explored further.
The third factor that deserves further examination is related to this idea. At several points in this dissertation I have highlighted an apparent link between modernization and the emergence of a competitive party system. This observation comes from the pattern of several dominant parties being defeated by economically liberal (i.e., center-right) parties that gained voters from a growing middle class. In India, the BJP moderated its ethnic nationalism in order to appeal to the urban middle class and unseat
Congress from power; in Mexico, the right-leaning PAN gained the support of the middle class whose interests lay with not nationalizing industries and with international trade. In
South Africa in the 2009 election, the two most successful parties in terms of growth
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were the DA and COPE: both parties have right-of-center – or, more accurately, right-of- the-South-African-center – platforms and electoral bases among the middle class.
Thus several cases indicate that modernization and economic development are associated with increased competitiveness of the party system. The first task is to systematically show this to be true across more cases. Then, future research should attempt to determine the exact causal mechanism that may be at work here. It may be, as suggested above, that a growing middle class is more likely to risk the loss of patronage that may be the consequence of defecting from the ruling coalition. It may be a political cleavage on a regime or good governance dimension will be most effective amongst middle class voters who see more of the costs and fewer of the benefits of clientelism and corruption, and demand change.
Alternatively, dominant party system evolution may not be driven by the growth of a middle class, but instead by the increased urbanization that frequently accompanies the growth of the middle class. Scheiner (2006) argues that the LDP‟s rural powerbase existed in part because in urban environments it is more difficult to target state resources to particular voters. For example, a new road in a city is likely to benefit a broad section of electorate, including people who do not even live in the electoral district. So as a country urbanizes, it becomes more difficult to use patronage as a coalition building tool and the dominant party falters. In this scenario, unlike the hypotheses focusing on the middle class, the specific ideology of the newly competitive opposition party is irrelevant. Finally, another classic element of modernization theory, such as media exposure or even literacy, could drive the growth of competitive elections, much as it can
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drive demands for democratization itself (Lipset 1960). Modernization causes more demands from more citizens, which often can be satisfied through the repeated game of competitive elections amongst different interests.
Finally, there is insight to be gained from applying the literatures on the nationalization of party systems to dominant party system change. The nationalization of a party system is when “the major parties‟ respective vote shares do not differ much from one province to the next. In a weakly nationalized party system, the major parties‟ vote shares vary widely across provinces” (Jones and Mainwaring 2003: 140). Given opposition growth from subnational strongholds, we may be able to better identify the tipping point where national competitiveness emerges if we can identify how nationalized dominant party systems were at different points in their evolutions. There may be a threshold of the breadth of geographic support for an opposition party that predicts it becoming more important in the national party system.
Additionally, Chhibber and Kollman (2004) argue that the nationalization of a party system is a consequence of changes to the degree of centralized power in a country.
Given the clear indications that the emergence of a competitive party system is less likely in centralized states, there is the question of the relationship between competitiveness and nationalization of the party system. If more centralized systems cause more nationalized and less competitive party systems, why would dominant parties decentralize state authority, as occurred in India?
These questions and hypotheses should be studied and tested in order to further develop my theory of dominant party system evolution.
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8.3.2 The Party System(s) of South Africa
In addition to these additional factors to potentially incorporate into a generalized theory of dominant party system change, this research has raised further questions about the direction of the South African party system and the causes of that direction. These can be grouped in two broad categories: centralization and nationalization, and the opinions and actions of political party activists.
Along with more general questions reviewed above regarding the relationships among the centralization of the state, the nationalization of the party system, and the evolution of a dominant party system, there are questions on these topics with specific regards to South Africa. Characteristics of national party systems have been linked to patterns in economic policy, to the capability of governments to respond to crises or to undertake major reforms, to the development of national rather than local identities, and to the state‟s ability to remain autonomous from rich elites who would form an oligarchy if given half a chance (see Caramani 2004: 1-2 and Chhibber and Kollman 2004: 9-10 for reviews of this literature). The last consequence here, the emergence of a controlling cohort of elites, is the danger of cronyism and corruption about which South African opposition parties are sounding alarm bells. So examination of the nationalization of the
South African party system could further enrich the empirical story told here.
Further, such an examination could be employed to shed light on many other questions about the development of South African parties and policies and contribute a comparative case to the growing literature on the nationalization of party systems in Latin
America. South Africa specifically provides an empirical quirk that prompts several
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questions. The argument put forward by Chhibber and Kollman (2004) is that more centralization causes party aggregation across geographic divisions and therefore increased nationalization of the party system. Dickovick (2006) correctly describes
South Africa under Mbeki moving authority away from the provinces to the center and to municipalities. It is unclear if Chhibber and Kollman‟s theory would predict increased party nationalization under such circumstances or not. Thus far, no scholar has taken up any of these research topics with regards to South Africa.
The second broad set of questions representing a potential agenda for future research on South Africa specifically are united by an interest in the opinions and career paths of mid- and upper-level party activists. To my knowledge, we have mass opinion data from the South African public, and Kotzé and Steenekamp‟s (2009) survey of elite attitudes that includes 100 members of the National Assembly in the sample. These data leave a wide middle ground of party activists and leadership under-studied. How united ideologically are various a particular party‟s activists and what latent cleavages exist within parties? Do party platforms – part of the party strategies I argued are key to party system evolution – reflect the median opinions of their mid-level activists, or do are some opposition parties‟ leaders shifting their positions in order, say, to appeal to more voters as Vicente Fox did in the 2000 Mexican presidential campaign by defying PAN‟s traditional base? Relatedly, what motivates activists to join each party, instrumental reasons such as holding office or expressive reasons such as pursuing programmatic goals? If it is expressive reasons, how do these activists react when their party leadership shifts platforms to expand the party‟s support?
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The answers to these questions will help to better identify the sources intraparty factionalism along with the individual motivations that aggregate into a party‟s strategy.
Such original research about South Africa would provide insight into the country‟s political parties as organizations, a piece of party-voter linkages largely missing from the existing literature.3 In addition, a survey project such as this would replicate and expand upon work done elsewhere, providing comparative data with other dominant and hegemonic party regimes (see, for example, Greene‟s (2007) surveys of Mexican party elites during the era of PRI hegemony).
Finally, Kotzé and Steenekamp‟s (2009) comparison of elite opinions with the opinions expressed in mass survey research deserves extension and expansion. Most pressingly for the issues raised in this dissertation is the indications presented in Chapter
7 that ANC elites may be more committed to democracy than a large portion of ANC supporters. Surveys of mid- and top-level ANC activists would allow us to understand how far up the party hierarchy anti-democratic attitudes exist in greater proportions.
They would shed light on how the party as a whole and its constituent pieces – elites, activists, rank-and-file, and perhaps-reluctant voters – might react to increased competitiveness in the party system and to electoral defeats of the ANC.
The policy implications of such data would be quite important for promoters of democracy and for investors. The emergence of a competitive party system from a dominant party one requires, above all else, that the dominant party and its supporters to accept its loss when it comes. Otherwise the descent from democracy will be sudden and
3 The only studies to date have been quite localized and small with fewer than 50 respondents (see Lodge 2006).
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unpleasant for all concerned. Having data to indicate the odds of this would allow us to address its causes and lessen its likelihood.
Conversely, the successful, smooth emergence of competitive electoral competitions, while not quite matching the South African miracle of 1994, would create higher quality, consolidated democracy for the post-apartheid generations. The increasing success of opposition parties, especially the DA, at subnational levels indicates that such competiveness may not be far off. As opposition-held offices increase in number, visibility, and strength, they become harbingers of increasingly likely change at the national level.
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