Explaining Different Outcomes of Party Bans in African Countries

Persistent URL of this record https://hdl.handle.net/1887/30166

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Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)

Duut van Goor, A.S. (2014)

Explaining Different Outcomes of Party Bans in African Countries

Research master thesis | Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)

Since the proliferation of democratizing countries in Africa, ethnic conflict has also increased. One of the explanations for this phenomenon is that ethnicity become politicized when democratic institutions are installed, and ethnic cleavages are widened, creating more conflict. In order to temper conflict and stabilize the democratization process it is sometimes needed to use undemocratic tools, such as party bans. While sometimes banning an ethnic party leads to less conflict, sometimes it also leads to more. This thesis will explain how a party ban will decrease conflict when it is based on old, existing law or regulation and accompanied by other institutional arrangements giving incentives for inter-ethnic cooperation and promote cross-cutting cleavages. Two cases of party bans in Mauritania and two cases in Nigeria are used to explain the mechanism of the causal effect between party ban and conflict level.