Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:32:37.298Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Eroding Support from Below: Performance in Local Government and Opposition Party Growth in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2020

Safia Abukar Farole Open the ORCID record for Safia Abukar Farole [Opens in a new window]
Safia Abukar Farole*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and Department of Global and International Studies, Portland State University, Portland, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How does support for opposition parties grow in dominant party systems? Most scholarship on the rise of competitive elections in dominant party regimes focuses on elite defections from the ruling party and coordination by opposition parties as key explanations, but there is less focus on how politics at the local level contributes to opposition victories. This article argues that effective service delivery in local government helps opposition parties grow support in local elections. Examining the case of the Democratic Alliance (DA) in South Africa, this article provides a systematic analysis of local elections and opposition party performance. Using an original data set of electoral, census and spatial data at the lowest electoral unit in South Africa (the ward), this article shows that in the areas where it is the incumbent party, support for the DA grows as the delivery of basic services to non-white households improves, and when DA-run wards outperform the neighbouring ones run by the ruling African National Congress party, support for the DA increases in neighbouring wards. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of how local politics erode dominant party rule.

Keywords

dominant partylocal electionscompetitive authoritarianismDemocratic Alliance PartySouth Africa
Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 525 - 544
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2020. Published by Government and Opposition Limited and Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arriola, LR (2012) Multi-Ethnic Coalitions in Africa: Business Financing of Opposition Election Campaigns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benit-Gbaffou, C (2012) Party Politics, Civil Society and Local Democracy – Reflections from Johannesburg. Geoforum 43(2), 178–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blaydes, L (2010) Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak's Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brownlee, J (2007) Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bunce, VJ and Wolchik, SL (2010) Defeating Dictators: Electoral Change and Stability in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes. World Politics 62(1), 43–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, X and Nordhaus W, D (2010) The Value of Luminosity Data as a Proxy for Economic Statistics. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series 16317, https://www.nber.org/papers/w16317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Kadt, D and Lieberman, ES (2017) Nuanced Accountability: Voter Responses to Service Delivery in Southern Africa. British Journal of Political Science, published early online, December, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000345.Google Scholar
Donno, D (2013) Elections and Democratization in Authoritarian Regimes. American Journal of Political Science 57(3), 703–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferree, KE (2010) Framing the Race in South Africa: The Political Origins of Racial Census Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrido de Sierra, S (2013) The Definitive Reform. How the 1996 Electoral Reform Triggered the Demise of the PRI's Dominant-Party Regime. PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).Google Scholar
Greene, KF (2007) Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico's Democratization in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, KF (2010) The Political Economy of Authoritarian Single-Party Dominance. Comparative Political Studies 43(7), 807–834.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hankla, CR and Manning, C (2016) How Local Elections Can Transform National Politics: Evidence from Mozambique. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 47(1), 49–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, JV, Storeygard, A and Weil, DN (2012) Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space. American Economic Review 102(2), 994–1028.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hiskey, J and Canache, D (2005) The Demise of One-Party Politics in Mexican Municipal Elections. British Journal of Political Science 35(2), 257–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, MM and Roessler, PG (2006) Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes. American Journal of Political Science 50(2), 365–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroth, V (2014) Essays in Political Economy: Elections, Public Finance and Service Delivery in South Africa. PhD dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).Google Scholar
Kroth, V, Larcinese, V and Wehner, J (2016) A Better Life for All? Democratization and Electrification in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Journal of Politics 78(3), 774–791.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langfield, D (2014) Opposition Growth in Dominant Party Systems: Coalitions in South Africa. Government and Opposition: An International Journal of Comparative Politics 49(2), 290–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucardi, A (2016) Building Support from Below? Subnational Elections, Diffusion Effects, and the Growth of the Opposition in Mexico, 1984–2000. Comparative Political Studies 49(14), 1855–1895.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magaloni, B (2006) Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makwetu, K (2016) Consolidated General Report on the Local Government Audit Outcomes. Cape Town: Auditor-General of South Africa. www.agsa.co.za/Portals/0/Reports/MFMA/201617/GR/MFMA2016-17_FullReport.pdf.Google Scholar
News 24 (2017) R10m in Unexplained Spending in Tshwane Speaker's Office. 27 July, www.news24.com/southafrica/news/r10m-in-unexplained-spending-in-tshwane-speakers-office-20170727?mobile=true.Google Scholar
Prevost, G, Kotze, JS and Wright, B (2014) ‘The Battle for the Bay’: The 2011 Local Government Elections in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. Politikon 41(1), 59–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Resnick, D (2012) Opposition Parties and the Urban Poor in African Democracies. Comparative Political Studies 45(11), 1351–1378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reuter, OJ and Turovsky, R (2014) Dominant Party Rule and Legislative Leadership in Authoritarian Regimes. Party Politics 20(5), 663–674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reuter, OJ (2017) The Origins of Dominant Parties: Building Authoritarian Institutions in Post-Soviet Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reuter, OJ and Gandhi, J (2011) Economic Performance and Elite Defection from Hegemonic Parties. British Journal of Political Science 41(1), 83–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, K (2015) Shared Plans or Shared Power? Rule of Law Paths in New Democracies. PhD dissertation, Yale University.Google Scholar
Scheiner, E (2006) Democracy Without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Van de Walle, N (2006) Tipping Games: When Do Opposition Parties Coalesce? In Schedler, A (ed.), Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, pp. 77–92.Google Scholar
Wegner, E (2016) Local-Level Accountability in a Dominant Party System. Government and Opposition: An International Journal of Comparative Politics 53(1), 1–25.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Farole supplementary material

Appendix A

Download Farole supplementary material(File)
File 86 KB