Shaheen Mozaffar

The Comparative Study of Electoral Governance—Introduction

Electoral governance is a crucial variable in securing the credibility of elections in emerging democracies, but remains largely ignored in the comparative study of democratization. This article develops some basic analytical tools to advance comparative analysis and understanding of this neglected topic. It conceptualizes electoral governance as a set of related activities that involves rule making, rule application, and rule adjudication. It identifies the provision of procedural certainty to secure the substantive uncertainty of democratic elections as the principal task of electoral governance. It argues that electoral governance, while socially and institutionally embedded, matters most during the indeterminate conditions that typically attend democratization. Finally, it outlines a research agenda that covers the comparative study of the structures as well as the processes of electoral governance.

The Puzzle of African Party Systems

Two puzzling features characterize African party systems: low fragmentation and high volatility. We present systematic data describing these features and provide a theoretically grounded explanation of them. The explanation emphasizes the role of strategic choice structured by the institutional legacies of authoritarian regimes in the formation and development of political parties. Political restrictions under authoritarian regimes produced severe information deficit concerning electoral mobilization, strategic coordination and the collective action problems that typically attend party formation and coalition-building. Under these constraints, political actors in Africa’s emerging democracies established political parties to preserve their fragmented power bases and relied on presidential elections and ethno-political cleavages as alternative sources of strategic coordination over votes and seats and electoral coalition-building. The result is the entry of large numbers of short-lived political parties, producing high volatility, and the electoral and legislative dominance of a small number of large parties producing low party system fragmentation.

The specification of ethnic cleavages and ethnopolitical groups for the analysis of democratic competition in contemporary Africa

Ethnicity remains an important (but not the only) cost‐effective strategic resource for organizing collective political action in Africas emerging democracies. To advance systematic analysis of the impact of ethnicity on current patterns of democratic politics and the potential for democratic consolidation, this article describes and presents a comprehensive data set on ethnopolitical groups in all 48 African countries. It explicates the theoretical orientation that informs the data set and the methodology used in defining, identifying and coding ethnopolitical groups.

Patterns of electoral governance in Africa's emerging democracies

This article describes and explains patterns of electoral governance in Africas emerging democracies through a systematic examination of election management bodies (embs), the formal units principally responsible for the organization and conduct of elections. The effectiveness of embs as institutional linchpins of electoral governance depends largely, but not exclusively, on their autonomy from the government. The article measures the degree of autonomy of embs as an indicator of the varying patterns of electoral governance in Africas emerging democracies and employs an ordered probit model to account for them. The model confirms the expected combined effects of the institutional legacies of colonial governance and postcolonial neopatrimonial regimes, ethnopolitical fragmentation and political negotiations over new democratic institutions on the relative autonomy of embs. Predicted probabilities calculated from the probit coefficients accurately predict the separate impact of each independent variable on the likelihood of African countries choosing non-autonomous, semi-autonomous or autonomous embs.

A ‘whole system’ approach to the choice of electoral rules in democratizing countries:: Senegal in comparative perspective

Abstract Authoritarian incumbents in democratizing countries choose electoral rules to retain power while accommodating opposition demands for increased participation and representation. We clarify the political logic of this institutional choice and its consequences in Senegal by employing a ‘whole system’ approach that emphasizes the intricate but often hidden relationships between elections and the rules governing them at multiple levels — presidential, legislative and local. Success at one level depends on performance at all levels. In the short run, multiple-level electoral reforms preserve the ruling party in power while expanding opportunities for, but also fragmenting, the opposition. In the long run, they encourage splits within the ruling party and help the opposition develop increased ability to coalesce around a single opposition candidate, resulting in the defeat of the authoritarian incumbent and a democratic transfer of power through competitive elections.

Electoral systems and their political effects in Africa: A preliminary analysis

Shaheen Mozaffar sets out some preliminary findings regarding the impacts of different electoral systems on political representation and party systems in Africa.

Parliaments and the Enhancement of Democracy on the African Continent: An Analysis of Institutional Capacity and Public Perceptions

While modern parliaments in Africa receive little attention in the scholarly literature, they are drawing considerable attention from the international donor community. Since the early 1990s, when many African countries resumed multi-party elections and democratic practices, legislative strengthening programmes have become an important part of international democracy assistance. Despite these programmes, our knowledge about Africas current parliaments remains limited. They seem to be widely regarded as potential agents for democratic change but whether national legislatures are in fact enhancing the quality of democracy on the African continent is far from clear. This study discusses two important issues that lie at the heart of the democracy-enhancing potential of Africas current parliaments: their institutional capacity and the way they are perceived by the citizens they represent. After a brief review of the existing literature on legislatures in Africa, the essay first considers whether they have the institutional capacity to fulfil a meaningful role and provides a detailed description of the autonomy of parliaments in 16 selected countries. It then turns to the way Africans perceive and evaluate their parliaments. Do citizens see their legislatures as valuable institutions? Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the prospects of African parliaments becoming agents of democratic change.

The Interaction Between Democracy and Ethnopolitical Protest and Rebellion in Africa

This article reconciles theoretical and methodological differences between the Minorities at Risk (MAR) project and Bratton and van de Walles 1997 analysis of democratic transitions occurring between 1990 and 1994. Analyses based on MAR have shown that protest in the 1980s was more likely to occur in more democratic African countries, whereas violent rebellion was more likely to occur in more autocratic countries. Bratton and van de Walle have shown that urban protests also occurred more frequently in more democratic countries. This article replicates earlier findings that prior democracy is an important variable for explaining ethnopolitical protest and rebellion. The authors analyze the relationship between such ethnopolitical action and democratic transitions and levels of democracy in 1994 and show that democracy and worker-student protest are mutually reinforcing, whereas democracy and rebellion are mutually incompatible. The authors further demonstrate that ethnopolitical protest is neutral in its consequences for democratization.

Negotiating independence in Mauritius

The democratic institutions, especially the electoral institutions for converting votes into seats that were chosen during independence negotiations, have been the key to democratic stability in Mauritius. These institutions emerged out of strategic bargaining structured around a combination of contextual and contingent variables. Conflicting political interests reflecting a combination of class, sectarian and communal interests influenced the institutional preferences of Mauritian elites involved in independence negotiations, leading them to converge on institutional designs that they expected would protect and promote those interests in the new democratic polity. Once in place, the new institutions represented equilibrium outcomes, creating incentives for all actors, engendering a learning curve in peaceful accommodation of inter-group conflicts, and establishing the political basis for social stability, democratic consolidation, and economic development.

Between Science and Engineering: Reflections on the APSA Presidential Task Force on Political Science, Electoral Rules, and Democratic Governance

Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers. Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider institutional innovations that could promote political equality. Finally, we describe the diverse ways that political scientists produce an impact on the world by sharing and applying their knowledge of the consequences of electoral rules and global trends in reform.