Political parties are key to democracy, but almost everywhere they face distrust from citizens. What are the problems and what can be done? IDEA is organizing systematic investigations in various regions around the world about the challenges to political parties. In late 2004, IDEA and its partners, Center for Democratic Governance and EISA, held workshops in Burkina Faso and South Africa to review the studies undertaken to establish facts about parties in selected countries in West Africa and in Southern Africa and make a joint assessment by party representatives and researchers (earlier in 2004, IDEA participated in similar studies for hosted talks in Central America with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Organization of American States). More workshops are scheduled in Africa, South Asia, Central Europe and the Andean Region in early 2005. The activities are part of IDEA’s global investigation into the external regulation and internal functioning of political parties.
Examining political parties in Burkina Faso and West Africa
In Burkina Faso, IDEA and the Center for Democratic Governance carried out the first national dialogue workshop in West Africa. On 30 Nov. 2004, representatives for the ruling party, and all major and many smaller opposition parties came together to discuss research results.
Open and frank discussions characterized the dialogue and participants agreed on a reform agenda that includes quotas for women in politics, fighting corruption, developing more extensive party programmes and making those programmes known in the constituencies, promoting youth participation and building general capacity of political parties. Also present at the workshop were civil society organizations, international actors like the Institute for Multiparty Democracy, the National Democratic Institute and the United Nations Development Programme, and representatives from the donor and diplomatic communities. IDEA’s partners in Senegal and Mali provided regional comparison. Upcoming national dialogue workshops are scheduled for 25 Jan. in Senegal and 16 Feb. in Ghana.
For more information, contact Kenneth Mpyisi, programme officer for West Africa, or Matthias Catón, programme officer.
Examining political parties in the Southern African Development Community
In Pretoria, South Africa, IDEA and EISA co-hosted a dialogue workshop 11-12 Dec. 2004 on political parties and democratic governance in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The workshop included political party representatives from ruling and opposition parties in Lesotho, Malawi, and Mauritius, and members of parliament and banned political parties in Swaziland. For Zimbabwe, participants relied on a detailed report that based its analysis on close contact with parties.
The workshop was the first in a series to examine the findings on the external regulation and internal functioning of political parties. The joint IDEA/EISA research project will assess the state of political parties and their role with respect to democratization and the institutionalization of governance.
Researchers presented the findings of survey research conducted during 2004 in the five countries, which included interviews with political party leaders. The presentation led to a dialogue with political party representatives on key challenges confronting the functioning of the political parties from a regulatory and internal management perspective:
- A number of parties noted the challenge of financing the day-to-day management of political parties between elections. Additionally, party members noted that challenge of the increasing costs of the financing of election campaigns and the unequal access of different parties to the media. Representatives agreed on the need to assess the legal framework regarding financing and functioning of election campaigns.
- In the five countries under discussion, there is no regulatory framework regarding the internal functioning of political parties. Rather, parties are governed by their own constitutions in regard to internal workings, such as leadership succession, primary elections and the selection of candidates to contest elections. This varies dramatically from party to party, and representatives raised the importance of further examining the recruitment of candidates and leadership selection processes.
- None of the countries under discussion have achieved the 30 percent representation of women in parliament pledged in the SADC Declaration on Gender (1997) and the Beijing Platform for Action (1995). Political party representatives pledged their support for these resolutions and highlighted the importance of increasing women’s access to positions of power within the parties and in the parliament.
Further findings will be made available in a report of the proceedings to be produced in early 2005. A second dialogue workshop with political parties from Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia is scheduled to take place in February.
IDEA’s work in this topic stretches back several years: the Web site for “Towards Sustainable Democratic Institutions in Southern Africa”, a conference IDEA held in 2000 with the SADC Parliamentary Forum, the SADC Electoral Commissions Forum and member state Botswana, provides interesting research papers and analysis on political parties, women’s representation, and electoral management.
In Pretoria, South Africa, workshop participants take a break from discussing the Southern African Development Community region’s political parties and democratic governance issues.
Discuss
Tell a friend
