Working Paper No.36
Developing Multi-Party Politics: Stability and Change in
Ghana and Mozambique
Giovanni M. Carbone
DESTIN, LSE
November 2003
Through the notion of party system institutionalisation, this paper examines the
historical roots, the social bases, the organisational development and the
electoral performances of political parties to understand how democratic
practices have evolved, since their formal introduction in the early 1990s, in a
country where a single party regime was in place for twenty years (Mozambique),
and in one with a long tradition of military involvement in politics (Ghana). It
concludes that, in both countries, political parties have been instrumental to
the emergence and stabilisation of pluralist politics, and that Ghana's party
system - which is relatively better and more evenly institutionalised than
Mozambique's - also compares positively to African party systems at large and
represents an asset in the fragile process of consolidating the country's
democratic advances.
Other Crisis States papers by Giovanni Carbone:
Working Paper No.23 (March 2003)
Emerging Pluralist Politics in Mozambique: the Frelimo-Renamo Party System
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