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Papua New Guinea is often seen as a curious exception in the literature on political parties. This paper investigates the operation of the PNG party system, using insights from Scott Mainwaring's research on weak party systems in developing democracies. It highlights (i) absence of labour movement linkages, (ii) rapid shift to self-government in the 1970s, (iii) the role of the ‘wantok’ system, (iv) lack of well-defined issue-based politics at the national level and (v) local splintering encouraged by electoral institutions as the factors responsible for the weak institutionalisation of PNG's party system. The paper also reviews the progress of contemporary reforms aimed at strengthening political parties in PNG and emphasises the importance of special sets of theoretical tools for analysing the politics of third wave democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the role of opposition parties in Africa's democratic transition by focusing on the Social Democratic Front (SDF) in Cameroon, one of the largest and most popular opposition parties in Africa. Several explanations are offered as to why the SDF has failed to seize power and effect social-democratic change in the country and why the party displays a lack of consensus on the so-called 'Anglophone problem'. The regime's repressive and divisive tactics, western donors' ambivalent and inconsistent attitudes towards democratic governance in the country, and the party leadership's deep divisions about future lines of action and strategy and its growing involvement in prebendal politics are all discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Commonwealth in 1995 established a Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) to monitor adherence to the values in its Harare Declaration, but only in the context of the political principles and not in response to the many economic and social commitments made in that same Declaration. The Group has met 21 times over the past eight years but its achievements, even with a limited mandate, are extremely modest. While the creation of the Group represented a notable development, its work in practice does not justify much optimism that the Commonwealth can become a values-based organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public Accounts Committees (PACs) are ubiquitous features of the legislative landscape in the Commonwealth. Based on a broad comparative overview and specific examples, this article looks at the role of PACs in financial scrutiny. It unpacks the concept of financial scrutiny, identifies key principles and procedural features that these committees share, and surveys some of the challenges they frequently encounter. The article concludes that PACs have an important and well-established role to play in ensuring sound public spending. However, they need to find innovative responses to several key challenges in order to safeguard and maximise their contribution to financial scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]