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1. The missing piece: Political parties are critical to democracy in Africa

Author:
Santiago Stocker, Patrick Quirk, and Dan Scaduto
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
In 2024, as many as seventeen countries across Africa, with a total population of nearly 300 million people, will hold national elections. These electoral processes are consequential because whether they are free, fair, and transparent will help determine if the troubling trend in several countries across the continent of democratic regression, military coups, or political instability worsens—or ebbs and begins to reverse, as was recently demonstrated in Senegal. The stakes are clearly high in these contests, which will occur in the so-called year of elections wherein more than four billion people globally are eligible to cast ballots. While the elections are important to Africa’s democratic trajectory, they are not single-handedly determinative of it. Strong and institutionalized political parties are also key to the future of democracy on the continent; however, policymakers have not afforded this key institution much attention or associated resources. For example, the US’s national security strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa does not reference strengthening political parties despite the document’s emphasis on democracy promotion. Further, the Biden administration’s Summits for Democracy—the third of which took place in March 2024—have not included commitments from participating governments (the United States included) to strengthen political parties. Robust political parties inform whether a political system delivers for citizens, provide a key link between citizens and their government, and foster measurable resilience against democratic erosion. For these and other reasons, therefore, political parties as a core institution of democracy will help chart the continent’s future, both in terms of freedom and prosperity. This piece analyzes the state of political parties in sub-Saharan Africa and uses Atlantic Council Freedom and Prosperity Indexes data and other sources to show why parties are essential to democratic progress. It examines this argument through four case studies and concludes with a path forward for re-centering democracy assistance work in Africa to shore up this critical component.
Topic:
Elections, Political Parties, and Democratic Transitions
Political Geography:
Africa and East Africa

2. Unloved but indispensable: Political parties in Europe

Author:
Paul McCarthy, Thibault Muzergues, and Patrick Quirk
Publication Date:
08-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The rise of political parties in their modern form in Europe has historically been associated with the coming of age of mass politics, and the subsequent need for representation of sectional interests (in other words, the interests of specific social classes). Following the end of World War II in Western Europe, and the end of the Cold War in Central and Eastern Europe, political parties became a central component of European democracies. Scholars often describe the 1960s and 1970s as the golden age of (Western) European democratic parties. However, the honeymoon did not last beyond this period. A long decline has made political parties much less relevant to modern politics, as they were often replaced by personalized politics and the politicization of one-issue social movements throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Political parties today are generally unpopular and distrusted by the wider public. Yet what is remarkable is that despite their decline and a crisis that many had described as terminal, European parties have remained at the center of the game in most countries’ political systems. Perhaps even more importantly, they have proved indispensable for the functioning of democracy in Europe: in the Netherlands, despite an extremely atomized party system and a global rejection of parties, no agreement on a coalition government can be passed without negotiations among them. In Italy, the Five Star Movement soon understood that it needed to convert into a much more classical political party to implement its political program: it built more traditional structures and adopted a clear positioning on the very left-right divide that it had claimed to supersede a few years before. The experience of the past decade has shown that despite their unpopularity, political parties remain indispensable for the functioning of democracies in Europe—when they are present, plural, and organized, democracy is doing well. When they are not, or when the party system is unbalanced, democracies suffer and even backslide. To prove this assertion, this paper will look at four telling examples in recent European history, taking from the experiences of Romania, Spain, France, and Hungary.
Topic:
Politics, Reform, Elections, Political Parties, and Democratic Transitions
Political Geography:
Europe

3. Even in authoritarian countries, democracy advocates are worth investing in

Author:
Fernanda Buril, Nate Grubman, and Patrick Quirk
Publication Date:
12-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Freedom and democracy are in decline globally, according to the Atlantic Council’s Freedom Index. Political freedom in particular has slumped sharply since 2019, bringing the world to a twenty-four-year low. The biggest backsliders—the places with the sharpest declines in political freedom—span every major geographic region and many are particularly relevant to US national security. There are several fundamental reasons for the United States to support strategies that aim to halt such backsliding and foster democratization, including ones that go beyond the moral obligation to support humanitarian values. For instance, research shows that democracies are less prone to enable and export transnational crime or terrorism, and democracies are better at adapting to adverse economic events and avoiding large-scale disasters, and are more reliable trading partners, offering better business opportunities by upholding the rule of law and protecting investments from the arbitrary predation of political elites. Most notably, the vast majority of people around the world continue to prefer to be governed democratically. Democracy support also strengthens the US position more broadly in the strategic contest against the autocratic rivals of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Robust democratic institutions—transparent judiciaries, capable legislatures, responsive political parties, an active civil society, and a free press—make it harder for the rulers in the autocratic bloc to co-opt elites in other countries and advance their malign agendas. But with the world experiencing a global democratic recession, questions arise as to whether supporting democracy is a losing battle. Despite the bleak recent data on global democratic progress, democracy assistance is still crucial, not only in countries undergoing political openings and democratic consolidation but also—and perhaps even more so—in countries that are backsliding. Case studies in the Middle East, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa suggest that using foreign assistance (in addition to and in concert with diplomacy and investment) to support democracy champions wherever they are is an effective strategy, even if the payoff is not immediately apparent at the level of a country’s political system.
Topic:
Authoritarianism, Elections, Democracy, Investment, and Democratic Transitions
Political Geography:
Caucasus, Latin America, Lebanon, and Sahel