Ghana's 2008 elections have been hailed by national and international observers as a model for Africa. This perception has prevailed despite persistent concerns about "ethnic block voting" and electoral fraud. Electoral malpractice and vote rigging along ethnic lines in Ghana's virtual two-party...

Factionalism can affect the stability and institutionalization of parties and party systems and it can impact on the efficiency and legitimacy of political parties and political systems as a whole. Nevertheless, factionalism has only received scant attention in the comparative literature on...

This research examines the process and pattern of party system development and stabilization in Poland from 1991 to 2007. The goal is to establish which, if any, aspects of the party system were effectively consolidated during this period, which were not, and what aspects of the broader...

More so than many other political institutions, political parties are held in considerable disrepute. This is due in large part to widespread perceptions that both party politicians and parties as organizations are corrupt. This is especially the case in the newer democracies of postcommunist...

Recent research on political parties and ethnicity has challenged the conventional wisdom about ethnicity as the major factor that explains voter alignment in Africa. The paper maintains that the cleavage model, although modified to include ethnicity, still provides heuristically the best...