Partiti politici e sistemi di partito in Africa. Temi e prospettive di ricerca

In: Italian Political Science Review: Rivista italiana di scienza politica, Band 36, Heft 1, S. 57-86

Abstract

The democratic reforms introduced in many sub-Saharan African countries during the 1990s involved the restoration of multipartism. The re-emergence of party politics spurred a number of analyses of the continent's new parties & party systems, largely based on theories & concepts derived from the study of advanced democracies. The article reviews & critically examines recent works on Africa's parties & party systems by presenting the dominant themes & issues & by investigating the utility of Western-derived models for the analysis of new multiparty regimes. In spite of a quantitative increase & a qualitative improvement in the study of Africa's parties & party systems, the latter still suffers a scarcity of empirical & theoretical investigations. At the same time, the use of political science tools for the study of party politics south of the Sahara is part of a broader positive trend towards a better integration of the analysis of African politics with that of politics in other world areas. Tables, Appendixes, References. Adapted from the source document.