Politcal Parties in Africa and Democracy

Democracy across Africa is in decline (V-Dem 2024), with Africa’s political parties widely blamed as a major source of democratic weakness. Yet, in at least some African countries, parties appear to be playing important roles in defending and expanding democracy, and we currently lack a clear understanding of how, and under what conditions, they engage in this activity. This has critical implications for both our theoretical knowledge, and practical democracy support efforts. We request an ERC Synergy Grant of €9.957 million to discover the key drivers of democratic decline and democratic progress in Africa, by undertaking the largest empirical study of political parties ever carried out anywhere in the world. We ask: (1) What role do political parties play in the process of democratisation in Africa? (2) Under what conditions do they make positive or negative contributions toward defending and expanding democracy? And (3) How can political parties across Africa be supported to help counter the decline of democracy on the continent? To answer these questions, we bring together an accomplished team of senior and early career scholars. We propose to use elite interviews, surveys, participant observation, and large-scale data analysis, to create a groundbreaking dataset covering 80 political party organisations across 25 countries. With this data we will test a range of hypotheses about the characteristics that affect the ability of parties to fulfil key democratic functions, as well as the extent to which these affect democracy. Outputs will include a number of scholarly publications, as well as the groundbreaking, publicly available dataset. The project will also include an extended process of knowledge exchange with political parties, national electoral commissions, national and international democracy advocates, and donor organisations to help translate our findings into actionable change across Africa and beyond.