Warren, S.S. 2022. Democratizing candidate selection: Controlled turnover in Botswana’s Bulela Ditswe primaries. Party Politics, 28(2).

Why do political parties implement primary elections? With multi-party elections firmly established, political parties in many young democracies have begun to democratize internally by adopting mass primaries. In this paper, the article theorised that parties also implement mass primaries to open up the political elite while protecting their most senior members.

Lockwood, S.J, Kronke, M. & Mattes, R. 2021. Party structures and organization building in Africa. Party Politics, 28(2).

Political parties are a vital element in the quality of representative democracy, playing a crucial role in mobilization, competition, governance, and accountability. This article seeks to answer questions such as what affects the organizational structure of parties? How do party primaries affect party-building and electoral success? And what effect does the shrinking of open political space have on the ways in which parties organize? 

Lockwood, S.J, Kronke, M. & Mattes, R. 2021. Party footprints in Africa: Measuring local party presence across the continent. Party Politics, 28(2).

The conventional view of Africa’s political parties holds that they are organizationally weak, with little presence at the grass roots. Yet, few studies are based on systematically collected data about more than a handful of parties or countries at any given point. In this paper, we attempt to remedy this situation, by focusing on one crucial aspect of party organization – the local presence that enables political parties to engage with and mobilize voters during and between elections – and developing the first systematic, survey-based measure of the extent of this presence across 35 countries.

Paget, D. 2021. Lone organizers: Opposition party-building in hostile places in Tanzania. Party Politics, 28(2). The article asks where African opposition parties organize. Party-building is communicative; it involves persuading people to become activists. The article concludes that opposition parties can organize in unreceptive areas, but only through the personalized methods of these ‘lone organizers’. Altogether, the articles shows how and through whom opposition parties organize in hostile environments.

Kwayu, A.C. 2021. Determinants of a political party’s social media strategy: A comparative analysis of Tanzania’s opposition political parties’ Twitter practices. Party Politics, 28(2).

The impact of political context on a political party’s organizing and mobilizing strategies has been noted in the literature. Opposition political parties operating in autocratic contexts look for different ways in which they can communicate, organize, and mobilize their members. Advances in digital technology and, in particular social media, have created such spaces in which political parties can communicate and mobilize their members. In Tanzania, the state has imposed repressive political restrictions against opposition parties. 

Sulley, C.R. 2021. Democracy within parties: Electoral consequences of candidate selection methods in Tanzania. Party Politics, 28(2).

A large body of literature exists around the study of elections. What often goes unnoticed, however, is that elections take place between and within parties. While the former has received significant attention, the latter has not. This is true of African elections generally, and Tanzanian elections specifically.

Kronke, M. & Mattes, R. 2020. The consequences of partisanship in Africa. In Research Handbook on Political Partisanship. H. & Holmberg, S. (eds.). London: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.

Based on cutting-edge global data, the Research Handbook of Political Partisanship argues that partisanship is down, but not out, in contemporary democracies. Engaging with key scholarly debates, from the rise of right-wing partisanship to the effects of digitalization on partisanship, contributions highlight the significance of political partisanship not only in the present but in the future of democracies internationally.

Folscher, M, de Jager, N. & Nyenhuis, R. 2021. Populist parties shifting the political discourse? A case study of the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa. Journal of Modern African Studies. 59(4): 535-558. DOI: 10.1017/S0022278X21000276

This article examines the use of populist discourse in South African politics. It investigates speeches of leaders from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). We find that the EFF consistently employs populist appeals, while both the incumbent ANC and official opposition DA largely refrain.

Seabo, B. & Nyenhuis, R. 2021. Botswana’s 2019 General Elections: A Referendum on General Ian Khama. African Studies Review, 64(4): 854-883. doi:10.1017/asr.2021.69

On October 23, 2019, Botswana held its twelfth free and fair election. For the first time in the history of Botswana’s electoral democracy, a former president (Ian Khama) defected from the ruling party and supported the opposition. The opposition coalition, working informally with Khama, mounted a spirited campaign against the well-oiled machine, the incumbent and long-ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). Seabo and Nyenhuis reflect on the 2019 general election, analyze the outcome, and consider the implications for the future of Botswana’s electoral democracy. 

Nyenhuis, R. 2020. The political struggle for ‘the people’: populist discourse in the 2019 South African elections. Commonwealth & Comparative Politics. DOI: 10.1080/14662043.2020.1746040

This article investigates populist rhetoric in the 2019 South African elections. It argues that both Julius Malema and Dr. Pieter Groenewald consistently employed populist appeals.