Lessons to Be Learned: Political Party Research and Political Party Assistance

Generally speaking, the effects of international political party assistance are viewed nega-tively, or at least controversially. This study attributes some of the shortcomings of political party aid to the poor relationship between assistance providers and political science party research. They simply operate in different worlds. Party assistance lacks clear-cut concepts and strategies in practice, which makes it difficult to adequately evaluate it. At issue is its “standard method,” with its “transformative” intention to change the party organization of the assistance receivers. At the same time, the scholarship on political parties can provide only limited help to assistance providers due to its own conceptual and methodological re-strictions, such as the Western European bias underlying its major concepts, the predomi-nance of a functionalist approach, and the scant empirical research on political parties out-side of Europe and the US. Taking a cue from recent political party research, we could begin to question the overarching role of political parties in the transition and consolidation proc-ess of new democracies. Other research findings emphasize the coexistence of different types of party organizations, and the possibility of different organizational developments, which might all be consistent with consolidating democracy. All this suggests the necessity of aban-doning the controversial aim of the “transformative impact” of political party aid.democratization, democracy promotion, political party assistance, political party research

The Cleavage Model, Ethnicity and Voter Alignment in Africa: Conceptual and Methodological Problems Revisited

Recent research on political parties and ethnicity has challenged the conventional wisdom about ethnicity as the major factor that explains voter alignment in Africa. The paper maintains that the cleavage model, although modified to include ethnicity, still provides heuristically the best foundation for the explanation of party formation and voting behaviour in Africa. It points out that inconclusive and contradicting research results about the salience of ethnicity can be attributed to a variety of unresolved methodological and conceptual problems linked to the ‘fluidity’ of the concept of ethnicity. To overcome these problems refined research designs and more sophisticated analytical tools are required. Finally, it is safe to assume that the relevance of ethnicity for the formation of party systems and voter alignment is not a uniform pattern across Africa, but will differ from one country to the other.Africa, social cleavages, cleavage model, ethnicity, political parties, party systems

Problems of categorizing and explaining party systems in Africa

Starting from controversial findings about the relationship between party systems and the prospects of democratic consolidation, this article argues that problems can only be properly addressed on the basis of a differentiated typology of party systems. Contradictory research results do not pose an ‘African puzzle’ but can be explained by different and inadequate approaches. We argue that a modified version of Sartori's typology of party systems provides an appropriate method for classifying African party systems. Based on Sartori's framework, a preponderance of predominant and dominant party systems is identified. This can partly be explained by the prevailing authoritarian nature of many multiparty regimes in Africa as well as by the ethnic plurality of African societies. High ethnic fragmentation is not transformed into highly fragmented party systems. This phenomenon can be attributed to the most frequent ‘ethnic congress party’ which is based on an ethnic elite coalition.Die Parteienforschung zu Afrika hat bisher widersprüchliche Befunde zum Zusammenhang von Parteiensystem und zu den Aussichten für eine demokratische Konsolidierung hervorgebracht. Die widersprüchlichen Ergebnisse lassen sich zunächst mit unterschiedlichen und unangemessenen Ansätzen erklären. Zur Lösung des Problems ist jedoch eine differenzierte Parteiensystemtypologie notwendig. Zu einer sinnvollen Klassifizierung afrikanischer Parteiensysteme kann auf die Typologie von Giovanni Sartori zurückgegriffen werden, die allerdings modifiziert werden muss. Auf dieser Grundlage kann dann das Vorherrschen dominanter und prädominanter Parteiensysteme in Afrika identifiziert werden. Diese können im Wesentlichen mit zwei Faktoren erklärt werden: 1. mit dem autoritären Charakter vieler Mehrparteienregime und 2. mit der ethnischen Pluralität afrikanischer Gesellschaften. Entgegen mancher Erwartungen äußert sich die hohe ethnische Fragmentierung nicht in hoch fragmentierten Parteiensystemen. Dieses Phänomen beruht wiederum darauf, dass es sich bei den weitaus meisten Parteien in Afrika um „ethnische Kongressparteien” handelt, die auf einer Koalition verschiedener ethnischer Eliten fußen

Neopatrimonialism revisited : beyond a catch-all concept

The article provides a critical discussion of the literature on “patrimonialism” and "neopatrimonialism” as far as the use in Development Studies in general or African Studies in particular is concerned. To overcome the catch-all use of the concept the authors present their own definition of “neopatrimonialism” based on Max Weber’s concept of patrimonialism and legal-rational bureaucracy. However, in order to make the concept more useful for comparative empirical research, they argue, it needs a thorough operationalisation (qualitatively and quantitatively) and the creation of possible subtypes which, in combination, might contribute to a theory of neopatrimonial action.Der Artikel unterzieht die beiden Konzepte „Patrimonialismus“ und „Neopatrimonialismus“, wie sie in der entwicklungstheoretischen Literatur und in Afrikastudien Verwendung finden, einer kritischen Analyse. Damit dem Konzept des Neopatrimonialismus mehr als nur eine heuristische Bedeutung zukommen kann, präsentieren die Autoren eine eigene Definition des Begriffs, die sich eng an die Weber’schen Konzepte des Patrimonialismus und der legal-rationalen Bürokratie anlehnt. Darüber hinaus ist auf dieser Grundlage (1) eine sorgfältige (qualitative und/oder quantitative) Operationalisierung des Konzeptes und (2) die Bildung von möglichen Subtypen notwendig. Erst dann kann das Konzept sinnvoll für die vergleichende empirische Forschung eingesetzt und möglicherweise etwas wie eine neopatrimoniale Handlungstheorie entwickelt werden

Problems of Categorizing and Explaining Party Systems in Africa

Starting from controversial findings about the relationship between party systems and the prospects of democratic consolidation, this article argues that problems can only be properly addressed on the basis of a differentiated typology of party systems. Contradictory research results do not pose an ‘African puzzle’ but can be explained by different and inadequate approaches. We argue that a modified version of Sartori's typology of party systems provides an appropriate method for classifying African party systems. Based on Sartori's framework, a preponderance of predominant and dominant party systems is identified. This can partly be explained by the prevailing authoritarian nature of many multiparty regimes in Africa as well as by the ethnic plurality of African societies. High ethnic fragmentation is not transformed into highly fragmented party systems. This phenomenon can be attributed to the most frequent ‘ethnic congress party’ which is based on an ethnic elite coalition.Africa, South of Sahara, party systems, conceptual analysis, democratisation,electoral system, social cleavage, ethnicity

Investigation of the Galactic Magnetic Field with Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays

We present a method to correct for deflections of ultra-high energy cosmic rays in the galactic magnetic field. We perform these corrections by simulating the expected arrival directions of protons using a parameterization of the field derived from Faraday rotation and synchrotron emission measurements. To evaluate the method we introduce a simulated astrophysical scenario and two observables designed for testing cosmic ray deflections. We show that protons can be identified by taking advantage of the galactic magnetic field pattern. Consequently, cosmic ray deflection in the galactic field can be verified experimentally. The method also enables searches for directional correlations of cosmic rays with source candidates.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, presented at the Eur. Phys. Soc. Conf. on High Energy Physics, Jul. 2015, Vienna, Austria, and the 34th Intern. Cosmic Ray Conf., Jul. 2015, The Hague, The Netherland

Hestitant bedfellows: the German Stiftungen and party aid in Africa. An attempt at an assessment

Contrary to international perception party assistance of German political foundations is not confined to the ‘partisan approach’, but displays a high variety of approaches; in particular they combine political party with civil society assistance. In fact, only about 20% of their efforts are devoted to party aid. Despite the foundation’s high degree of versatility in party aid they reveal a crucial weakness: none has a strategic concept to address the particular challenges of African political parties. However, this weakness is neither a problem of the German foundations nor is it confined to Africa; it rather seems to be a general one of party promoters and probably found in other continents as well

The Nuclear Window to the Extragalactic Universe

We investigate two recent parameterizations of the galactic magnetic field with respect to their impact on cosmic nuclei traversing the field. We present a comprehensive study of the size of angular deflections, dispersion in the arrival probability distributions, multiplicity in the images of arrival on Earth, variance in field transparency, and influence of the turbulent field components. To remain restricted to ballistic deflections, a cosmic nucleus with energy E and charge Z should have a rigidity above E/Z=6 EV. In view of the differences resulting from the two field parameterizations as a measure of current knowledge in the galactic field, this rigidity threshold may have to be increased. For a point source search with E/Z>60 EV, field uncertainties increase the required signal events for discovery moderately for sources in the northern and southern regions, but substantially for sources near the galactic disk.Comment: 15 pages, 30 figures, few additional sentences and references as in accepted publicatio