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The web activities presented here are not exhaustive on the topics. They are meant to help you become more information literate and accustom you to reading scholarship and reports. Please ask your professor for assistance if you don’t understand. Learning is a process. We don’t expect you to become an expert in just one semester. Do always cite your sources when completing these activities.
Chapter 11: Political Parties, Party Systems, and Interest Groups
Look at the party systems map of Africa at the beginning of Chapter 11. Go to the Parline Database: http://archive.ipu.org/parline/parlinesearch.asp. Choose one country that has a dominant-party system and another country that has a two-party or multiparty system. Look them up in Parline and investigate the characteristics of the upper and lower chambers, electoral system, etc. Click on the webpages for those chambers (you may have to use a translator).
a) Find a resource to answer: What accounts for the emergence of the party system in each country? What do your findings suggest as implications for general theories of what causes party systems to take shape as they do?
b) What accounts for the dominance of one or more parties in each country?