dc.description.abstract | Can opposition coalition guarantee the
democratic ouster of
dominant
African
parties
?
Two
decades since the onset of the third wave of democratization, some African ruling parties are
still so dominant, that even repetitive competitive elections have not shaken their foundations.
Consequently
, opposition
coalition
is often suggested as a mo
del for defeating
dominant
African
parties. Empirical support for this model is often drawn from
among others,
the
2002
Kenya elections, where
the
opposition coalition
defeated the incumbent KANU, which had
ruled for 39 years. However, neither the claim that
opposition unity was the
primary
cause of
KANU’s defeat, nor that the Kenyan
experience is
a model for
removing dominant
African
parties
, have been empirically teste
d. The paper examines the
2002
Kenya elections, and
show
that
opposition
coalition
only had partial influence on KANU’s defeat,
and that
, the
simultaneous erosion of the incumbent party’s support
base epitomized
by the
split within
KANU
, as well as
favorab
le
contextual factors
particularly
the
public disaffections
with
prevailing
economic
living conditions
appear to have played an
equally
significant
role | en |