Contextual Determinants of Electoral System Choice - Ã bo Akademi

systematically favor or disfavor certain ethnic, religious and national groups. Forinstance, the plurality system is often held responsible for the political chaos andthe lack of democracy in many plural African countries. When the major part ofAfrica was becoming independent, W. Arthur Lewis asserted that “the surest wayto kill the idea of democracy in a plural society is to adopt the Anglo-Americansystem of first-past-the-post” (1965: 71). Reynolds and Sisk write that severalAfrican wars during the post-colonial era have roots in the winner-take-allapproach to politics. The continuing domination of one ethnic group or coalition ofgroups and exclusion of other groups from government has been the primarysource of ethnic tensions and violence (1998: 29).Democratic competition between political parties in divided societies is inherentlydifficult because of the strong tendency towards politicization of ethnic interests,which in turn tend to produce zero-sum, winner-take-all politics. Campaigningalong ethnic lines rather than ideological lines provides often a more effectivemeans of mobilizing voter support (Reilly 2001: 4). Donald L. Horowitz, one ofthe first who dealt with the problem of democratic competition in divided societies,points out that the tendency of establishing ethnic parties is cumulative, as othergroups tend to follow. The tendency to organize parties along ethnic lines, hemaintains, is particularly strong in those divided societies where a few major ethnicgroups compete for political power (1985: 306). The most conflict prone partysystems are those with only two ethnic parties (1985: 360). There is no reason forethnic parties to defuse the ethnic conflict, because the more members of a party’sethnic base that vote the greater the electoral success for that party (1985: 332).Support of parties in ethnically based party systems is very ascriptive: “The partiesact as the organizational expression of the ethnic groups they represent. As thegroups advance mutually exclusive claims to power, so, too, do the parties. Theultimate issue in every elections is, starkly put, ethnic inclusion or exclusion”(1985: 348). The main features of the ethnic party system are, as a consequence,stable parties and unstable politics. 15There are several structural techniques to reduce ethnic conflict in dividedsocieties. Federalism and regional autonomy are two institutional means ofmitigating tensions in countries with deep ethnic cleavages (Horowitz 1985: 601-15 For instance, the Sudan, Sri Lanka, Chad, Benin, Kenya, Nigeria, Congo (Brazzaville) and Guyana are countriesthat have, or have had party systems clearly based on ethnic parties (Horowitz 1985: 302).77