Publication

In this paper, the authors first explore the extent to which African political parties are in fact ideologically distinguishable, by utilizing Afrobarometer survey data on the median attitudes of parties' bases. They find that, in more than half of the paired comparisons that they observe, major parties are not distinguishable from one another in terms of their adherents' attitudes towards the proper role of the state in the economy; the same is true in terms of support for democratic norms. This suggests a relative lack of elite-generated ideological discourse. Following this, they attempt to measure the extent to which Africans structure their attitudes on political issues according to identifiably coherent structures in these areas of state involvement in the economy and democratic institutions.