ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that the German Stiftungen (political foundations) were the first international institutions to work in the field of political party development, their party assistance has been neglected in political party research for a long time. Remarkably little is known about the approaches, strategies and results of their activities. This contribution explores the role of the Stiftungen and their party assistance approaches in the various stages of the democratization process. It explicitly traces the self-declared ambitions of the German Stiftungen, and it explores the extent to which their party assistance activities take account of the various stages of the democratic transition process and of the level of party institutionalization, or simply follow abstract, generalized and preconceived ideas. The study develops a ‘phase model of party assistance’ in the transition process and examines the party assistance activities in two illustrative cases – the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung (FES) in Kenya and in South Africa – in seven dimensions of party institutionalization: (1) level of organization, (2) internal party democracy, (3) political programme, (4) autonomy, (5) roots in society, (6) coherence, and (7) regional and international integration.
