Power-Sharing in Südafrika. Ist der ANC eine Konkordanzpartei?

Matthijs Bogaards

Africa Spectrum, 2003, vol. 38, issue 1, 49-70

Abstract: Although there is much debate about the extent to which South Africa after Apartheid was a consociational democracy, there is little doubt that the interim constitution contained power-sharing arrangements. However, the permanent constitution and the departure of the National Party from the Government of National Unity in 1996 have weakened political accommodation in this plural society. With the ANC emerging as the dominant party some observers now put their hope in the ANC becoming more inclusive and participatory. This development can be conceptualized as the transformation of a standard form of consociationalism between (segmental) parties to consociationalism within a single (consociational) party. This paper examines the prospects of the ANC becoming a consociational party. It focuses on party organization, internal representation, and internal accommodation of social cleavages within the context of the dominant position of the ANC in the wider political system. The analysis draws on the comparative experience of such parties as the Congress Party in India, the Alliance and National Front in Malaysia, and KANU in Kenya. The conclusion is that the ANC appears even more negative towards internal consociationalism than it has been towards inter-party consociationalism, pointing to the possibility of a long-lasting political marginalization of cultural minority interests.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gig:afjour:v:38:y:2003:i:1:p:49-70

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.giga-hamburg.de/afrika-spectrum

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Africa Spectrum from Institute of African Affairs, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andreas Mehler ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).