The Effects of Political Party Systems on Democratic Development: Findings from Africa and Asia.

Purpose: This paper examines the effects of party system characteristics on democratic development in Africa and Asia. We find that the effective number of legislative parties (ENLP) and legislative volatility are both positively associated with democracy. Theory: Democratic governance and meaningful elections have long been considered unattainable in absence of political parties and party competition. The nature and implications of changing party attachments in the Western advanced industrialized countries have been the subject of a great deal of scholarship in the discipline of political science (e.g., see Dalton and Wattenberg 2000), and political party systems in the “emerging democracies” have also attracted scholarly attention (e.g., see Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Dix 1992; Roberts and Wibbels 1999; Hicken 2000; Taylor-Robinson 2001; Bielasiak 2002). Many agree with Mainwaring and Scully’s (1995) contention that party system institutionalization (PSI) is important for the consolidation of democracy. Nonetheless, the precise nature of the relationship between political party systems and democracy has been difficult to distill. Indeed, scholars have made contradictory claims and reported contradictory findings regarding the effects of the different dimensions of political party systems on the consolidation of democracy. How do different party system characteristics affect democracy? Do higher ENLPs contribute to or detract from democracy? Do high levels of electoral volatility create instability and undermine democracy? We attempt to answer these questions by looking at the relationship between ENLP and electoral volatility and democracy in Asia and Africa. These are important questions to address. Different scholars have pointed to trends of rising electoral volatility rates and ENLPs in the industrialized democracies (see Dalton, McAllister, and Wattenberg 2000), and volatility rates and ENLPs in the emerging democracies are generally high. Methods: We test our theoretical expectations about the relationship between these party system characteristics and democracy with pooled time-series cross-sectional analysis covering the electoral regimes in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, including those that have recently undergone transitions to democracy as well as the long-standing democracies on these continents. Our analysis covers all of the elections that have taken place in a particular country since 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]