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⁶ Kuenzi, Michelle and Lambright, Gina, ‘Party Institutionalization in 30 African Countries’, Party Politics, 7: 4 (2001), pp. 438–68;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Michelle Kuenzi and Gina Lambright, ‘Party Systems and Democratic Consolidation in Africa’s Electoral Regimes’, Party Politics, 11: 4 (2005), pp. 423–46.

⁷ On the self-reinforcing power of elections, see Lindberg, Staffan I., ‘The Democratic Quality of Multiparty Elections: Participation, Competition and Legitimacy in Africa’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Studies, 42: 1 (2004), pp. 61–104;Google Scholar on the effects on gender representation, see Staffan I. Lindberg, ‘Democratization and Women's Empowerment: The Effects of Electoral Systems, Participation and Repetition in Africa’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 39: 1 (2004), pp. 28–53; on the adaptation and learning of opposition parties, see Staffan I. Lindberg, ‘Tragic Protest: Why Do Opposition Parties Boycott Elections?’, in Andreas Schedler (ed.), Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 2006, pp. 209–30; and on democratization and the enhancing of civil liberties, see Staffan I. Lindberg, Democracy and Elections in Africa, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, and Staffan I. Lindberg, ‘The Surprising Significance of African Elections’, Journal of Democracy, 17: 1 (2006), pp. 139–51.

⁸ On social cleavages, see Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction’, in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross National Perspectives, New York, The Free Press, 1967; on the inability of existing parties to be responsive, see Charles Hauss and David Rayside, ‘The Development of New Parties in Western Democracies Since 1945’, in Louis Maisel and Joseph Cooper (eds), Political Parties: Development and Decay, Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, 1978; and Elmer E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America, Hinsdale, Dryden Press, 1960; on the strategic interaction of organized groups, see Maurice Duverger, Les Partis Politiques, Paris, Colin, 1954; and on configuration of voters’ preferences, see Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, New York, Harper & Row, 1957.Google Scholar

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¹⁰ Sartori, Parties and Party Systems.Google Scholar

¹¹ Manning, ‘Assessing African Party Systems’.Google Scholar

¹² Goran Hyden, ‘Barriers to Party Systems in Africa: The Movement Legacy’, paper presented at the African Studies Association 48th Annual Conference, Washington, DC, 17–20 November 2005.Google Scholar

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¹⁵ Bogaards, Matthjis, ‘Dominant Party Systems and Electoral Volatility in Africa: A Comment on Mozaffar and Scarritt’, Party Politics, 13: 6 (2007).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Mozaffar and Scarritt, ‘The Puzzle of African Party Systems’, p. 403.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Bogaards, ‘Counting Parties and Identifying Dominant Party Systems’.Google Scholar

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¹⁹ Kuenzi and Lambright, ‘Party Institutionalization in 30 African Countries’; and Kuenzi and Lambright, ‘Party Systems and Democratic Consolidation’.Google Scholar

²⁰ Mainwaring and Scully, ‘Party Systems in Latin America’; Mainwaring, Rethinking Party; and Mainwaring and Torcal, ‘Party System Institutionalization and Party System Theory’.Google Scholar

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²⁵ In a slight deviation from Mainwaring and Torcal I treat splinter parties, when a party splits into two or more parties from one election to the next, as new parties because they presumably present new choices to voters. Similarly, when two or more parties merged and created a new organization but they had competed in the previous election as separate parties, I treat the new merger or alliance as a new party because it also presents voters with a new choice. When a party changed its name but had an obvious continuity with a previous party, I count it as being the same organization. I also treat independents as a category because of a shortage of the data needed for comparing individuals' results from one election to the next. Cf. Mainwaring and Torcal, ‘Party System’.Google Scholar

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²⁸ See Mogens N. Pedersen, ‘Changing Patterns of Electoral Volatility in European Party Systems: Exploration in Explanation’, in Hans Daalder and Peter Mair (eds), Western European Party Systems: Continuity and Change, Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, 1983.Google Scholar

²⁹ Mainwaring and Torcal, ‘Party System Institutionalization and Party System Theory’, p. 207.Google Scholar

³⁰ It is not within the scope of this article to go into this issue in depth, but for a good discussion of the notion of how the ‘people’ can be conceived, see Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1989, ch. 9.Google Scholar

³¹ Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited, Chatham, Chatham House, 1987, p. 30.Google Scholar

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³³ Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 2nd edn, New York, Harper, 1947, p. 269; William H. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1986, p. 25; Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1991, p. 29.Google Scholar

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³⁵ Michael Bratton and Nicholas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in a Comparative Perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997; Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz and Seymour M. Lipset, Comparing Experiences with Democracy: Democracy in Developing Countries, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 1989; and Benjamin Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001.Google Scholar

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³⁷ The data-set is primary drawn from Lindberg, Democracy and Elections in Africa, but has been extended using data from Dieter Nohlen, Michael Krennerich and Bernhard Thibaut (eds), Elections in Africa: A Data Handbook, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, and International Parliamentary Union's series of Chronicle of Parliamentary Elections, Geneva, International Parliamentary Union, vols 29–37, 1995 to 2004. The data-set can be downloaded from the author's website: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/lindberg/ Google Scholar

³⁸ See for example, Van De Walle, Nicholas, ‘Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa's Emerging Party Systems’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 41: 2 (2003), pp. 297–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁹ In the Senegalese case, the number of parties in the legislature increased over a few elections but it was only by the latest election in 2001 that things changed dramatically.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Hyden, ‘Barriers to Party Systems in Africa’; Bogaards, ‘Counting Parties and Identifying Dominant Party Systems’; Kuenzi and Lambright, ‘Party Institutionalization in 30 African Countries’; and Kuenzi and Lambright, ‘Party Systems and Democratic Consolidation’.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Mozaffar and Scarritt, ‘The Puzzle of African Party Systems’.Google Scholar

⁴² Lindberg, Democracy and Elections in Africa.Google Scholar

⁴³ Lipset and Rokkan ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments’.Google Scholar