Political Parties and Party Systems

This chapter seeks to clarify the concepts "political party" and "party system" and to provide an empirica! basis for a discussion of the relationship between parties/party systems and democracy. In East Africa, as elsewhere, the meanings assigned to "political parties" and "party systems," and the related categorization of existing groups and sets of groups have been contentious. Multi-party systems have been in existence in Kenya from 1991 to the present and in Tanzania from 1992 to the present, while Uganda has had a no-party system from 1990 to 2003. Internal opposition to the single-party state in Tanzania never reached the levels found in Kenya, though the transitions to multi-party systems were relatively simultaneous. The shift from a single-party to a multi-party state in Tanzania brought significant organizational changes to CCM. The party disbanded its official branches in public offices and withdrew from its involvement with the army.