1. A theory of party system variation; 2. Variations in party system institutionalization in Africa; 3. Competing explanations: from colonial rule to new democratic institutions; 4. Modes of authoritarian power; 5. Authoritarian power and transition control; 6. The emergence and endurance of the multiparty system; 7. Africa and beyond: party systems in new democracies.
This book investigates why seemingly similar African countries developed very different forms of democratic party systems.
Rachel Beatty Riedl is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, Illinois. Riedl is an Executive Committee member of the Program of African Studies; is affiliated with the Program in Comparative-Historical Social Science; serves as a Faculty Associate in Equality, Development, and Globalization Studies at the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies; and is a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Policy Research. She has also served as a visiting postdoctoral fellow in the Program on Democracy at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, Connecticut. Her work has been published in such journals as Comparative Political Studies and the African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review. She has consulted for USAID, the State Department, and the World Bank on governance reforms throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Riedl has been the recipient of fellowships and grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. Her dissertation was awarded an honorable mention for the Juan Linz prize for best dissertation in comparative democratization from the APSA in 2009.
'This well-designed comparative study helps to explain the
structure of political party competition in Africa's new
democracies. The author shows how and why authoritarian precedents
continue to shape institutional outcomes. Future analysts of party
systems and democratic stability will have no choice but to take
Riedl's important and challenging findings into account.' Michael
Bratton, University Distinguished Professor of Political Science
and African Studies, Michigan State University
'The most thorough, wide-ranging and important study of African
political parties to date. If students of democratization and
African politics want to know about African parties and party
systems - and Reidl convincingly argues that they should - this is
the place to start.' Nic Cheeseman, African Studies Centre,
University of Oxford
'In this model work of comparative-historical analysis, Rachel
Beatty Riedl unravels an important puzzle in contemporary African
politics: why party competition is more stable in some African
democracies than others. In so doing, she advances an argument with
truly global resonance: how democracies work in the present depends
on how dictatorships tried to accumulate power and rewire authority
in the authoritarian past. Authoritarian Origins of Democratic
Party Systems in Africa is a major achievement.' Dan Slater,
University of Chicago
'In this first-rate former dissertation, Riedl asserts that the
nature of authoritarian regimes significantly influences the
strength of ensuing democratic governments … An excellent
bibliography and useful tables and figures add to Riedl's book's
utility. Summing up: highly recommended.' C. E. Welch, Choice
'Africa's fledgling democracies feature both stable, strong
political parties, in countries such as Ghana, and fractious, weak,
and unstable parties, in countries such as Benin. In this finely
crafted book, Riedl argues convincingly that the main factor in
determining the strength of parties in any given country in the
region is the extent to which the authoritarian regime that
dominated politics prior to the country's democratic transition was
able to influence the terms of democratization. But the
relationship is somewhat counter-intuitive: the greater the staying
power of the old regime, the more likely it is that the opposition
coalesced into a well-institutionalized, strong party. The book's
best sections smartly observe and carefully compare the electoral
politics of Benin, Ghana, Senegal, and Zambia. Riedl demonstrates
that in contemporary Africa, single-party authoritarian rule might
well have left a positive legacy.' Nicolas van de Walle, Foreign
Affairs
'Rachel Beatty Riedl's Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Party
Systems in Africa represents one of the most important
contributions to the study of African politics in recent memory.
Meticulously researched and theoretically innovative, the book is
essential reading for those seeking to comprehend the character and
dynamics of political life in Africa's democratic societies.' Peter
VonDoepp, Journal of Modern African Studies
'There is much to commend about Riedl's work - recognized in awards
by two sections of the American Political Science Association -
including her careful situation of her research in the broader
literatures on parties and regime change, her close examination of
the nature of authoritarian strategies and transitions in her four
disparate cases, and the logical and convincing unfolding of her
argument.' Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz, African Affairs
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