Minion K. C. Morrison

Exploring Voter Alignments in Africa: Core and Swing Voters in Ghana

This article describes and analyses voter alignments in the new democracy of Ghana in two recent elections, 1996 and 2000. These elections are a part of the Fourth Republic that began with a ‘ founding ’ election in 1992, ushering Ghana into Africa’s new wave of democratisation. First the size of the core voting population is established to be about 82 % of the voting population, refuting the assumption that voting volatility in new and transitional democracies is always extremely high. A second conclusion is that core and swing voters cannot be distinguished by structural factors, whereas thirdly, the factors behind the party alignment of core voters are similar to Western patterns ; primarily level of education, the rural-urban divide, income, and occupation. Finally, swing voters seem to be characterised by a conscious evaluation of government and candidate performance in a sign of relatively ‘ mature ’ democratic voting behaviour.

Ghana's political parties: how ethno/regional variations sustain the national two-party system

This paper analyses Ghanaian electoral geography and its accompanying political party variations over the last decade. After re-democratisation in the early 1990s, the Fourth Republic of Ghana has successfully completed multiple elections and party alternation. Due to its single-member-district-plurality electoral system, the country has functioned virtually as a two-party system, privileging its two major parties – the NDC and the NPP. However, close examination of election results in the last parliamentary and presidential elections reveals that notwithstanding the two-party tendency, there is a dynamic and multilayered aspect of electoral participation in Ghanaian politics. Ethnic-based regional cleavages show much more complex varieties of electoral support for the two major parties, especially in light of fragmentation and concentration. Electoral support in the ten regions varies from strong one-party-like to almost three-party systems. Yet this lower, regional level tendency is not invariable. Regional party strengths have shifted from election to election, and it was just such shifts that made the party alternation possible in 2000. Employing traditional and newly designed indicators, this paper illustrates the patterns of electoral cleavage and regional party organisation, and how these ultimately sustain the party system at the national level in Ghana.

The impact of diamonds on economic growth, adverse regime change, and democratic state-building in Africa

Recent studies point to how resources such as diamonds have funded insurgency movements and how their geographic presence can foment the incidence but not necessarily the onset of civil wars. Such empirical studies are based on global models; however, we believe regional effects may be present. In order to address this, we disaggregate the empirical findings based on Africa as a region. By estimating a panel study of African states, we discover that those that are secondary diamond producers are not only vulnerable to domestic strife, but also prone to lower levels of economic growth, coup d’état episodes, and state failure—conditions that inhibit democratic state-building. We also find that secondary diamond-producing states in Africa are prone to both the onset and incidence of civil wars, a finding that diverges from previous empirical work. In asking how states may obviate this curse, we affirm a claim of state developmentalism: that in order to prevent collapse, states must harness the revenue potential of diffuse resources. The regulation and legitimisation of diamond production is an effective bulwark against the potential opportunity structures that such lootables may provide to warlords, insurgents, and military factions.

Did Secularism Fail? The Rise of Religion in Turkish Politics

Religious movements have long been challenging the modernist and secularist ideas around the world. Within the last decade or so, pro-religious parties made significant electoral advances in various countries, including India, Sudan, Algeria, and the Palestinian territories. In this article, we focus on the rise of the pro-religious Justice and Development Party ( Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi - AKP) to power in the 2002 elections in Turkey. Using the Turkish experience with political Islam, we evaluate the explanatory value of Mark Juergensmeyers rise of religious nationalism theory, with a special emphasis on the “failed secularism” argument. Our analysis indicates that the theoretical approach formulated by Juergensmeyer has a great deal of explanatory power; however, it does not provide a complete explanation for the success of the AKP. The rise of religion in Turkish politics is the result of a complex process over long years of encounter and confrontation between two frameworks of order, starting with the sudden imposition of secularism from above, when the republic was established. Hence, to understand the rise of religion in contemporary Turkish politics, an in-depth understanding of history, politics, and the sources of tension between secularists and Islamists is essential. The findings of this article have important implications for other countries, especially those that are experiencing a resurgence of religion in politics, and are struggling to integrate religious parties into a democratic system.

Intragroup Conflict in African–American Leadership: The Case of Tchula, Mississippi

Black electoral leaders in the post-civil rights South have exhibited broad agreement on the nature of the political task of displacing unresponsive white elites from power and directing attention to the previously excluded black constituency. There are a few cases, however, in which the commonly expected solidarity and consensus among the black elected leaders has not occurred, despite intensified hostility from the white elite. In this analysis these circumstances are explored from one small town in Mississippi where blacks won nearly total administrative control in 1977. However, the apparent leadership consensus, though fragile, quickly evaporated, due to conflicts of ideology, class, idiosyncrasy, and racial invidiousness. This ultimately led to administrative paralysis in the allocation and management of scarce political goods. In this town where there were broad disagreements between three sets of political contenders, each sought to dominate the policy process by staffing various public positions. The scarcity of these positions, the diametrically opposed goals of the contenders, and the precariousness of the control exerted even by the administrative leadership produced a hopeless struggle. Eventually the government crumbled. Analysis reveals that the complex sociopolitical environment and certain aspects of the political structure contributed to this breakdown. The rapid development of a tripartite leadership cleavage was hardly accommodated by political structures designed to serve the ends of a racial caste system. The fragility of the political environment and the absence of structural mechanisms for conflict resolution severely diminished the ability of the new leaders to perform. These circumstances are explored by first elaborating the nature of the conflict, describing the parties, and then analyzing several conflict situations and their consequences. In the process this study reveals some of the complexity in analysis black electoral success usually explained by consensus theory. In the present case one sees that when longstanding interracial antagonism is overlaid with intraracial antagonism, conflict theory may prove much more effective in explaining these situations. The approach taken here defines con-

Preconditions for Afro-American Leadership: Three Mississippi Towns

Black leaders in rural America have not attracted much scholarly attention, probably because in that part of the country not many blacks voted, and hardly any held elective office, until some twenty years ago. In this study of black leaders in three small Mississippi towns, which is one of only a few of its kind, Professor Morrison posits the following preconditions for effective leadership: election to public office, a socio-economic status well above that of the masses, youth and charisma, a civil rights ideology, and a purposive program for political and social action.