African coalition politics: experiences and lessons for Nigeria

The coalition politics experiences reviewed in this Note are contained in a recent study, The Politics of Party Coalitions in Africa (2006) edited by Denis Kadima, Executive Director of the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA). Five countries are used as case studies: Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique and South Africa.

The country with the most extensive experience in coalition politics is Mauritius that has maintained a succession of coalition governments, including alternations in power, since its independence in 1968. Eight credible general elections have been held and coalitions have involved either two of the three main parties or all three main parties: two-party coalitions seven times and three-party coalitions once. The two party coalitions were all pre-election coalitions, while the three-party coalition was post-election. Mauritius qualifies to be described as an African example of mature coalition politics.

Of the four other countries covered in the book, South Africa comes close to an example of advanced coalition politics with coalition governments at national, provincial and local levels, involving the main parties both in the government and in the opposition. The longest surviving coalition to date involves the dominant African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), both at the national level and at the provincial level in Kwazulu Natal (KZN) since the first post-apartheid elections in 1994. Opposition coalitions have evolved through varying permutations since a five-year constitutionally mandated National Unity Government ended prematurely in 1996 with the Democratic Alliance as the surviving opposition coalition. In Mozambique, it is a case of a resilient opposition coalition - RENAMO and its allies - that has survived since multi-party elections in 1994.

Apparently, the parties allied to RENAMO value the parliamentary seats they win through the alliance as well as the public funding available to the opposition alliance that the smaller parties would not have qualified to access as stand-alone parties. (In each of the three elections held to date, the opposition coalition won between 36 and 47 percent of parliamentary seats). Finally, there are two examples of formative coalition politics in Kenya and Malawi. In the former, a coalition government emerged in 2002, while the latter has had a succession of coalition governments since 1994. Both the governing coalitions and the opposition coalitions in the two countries have been unstable.

Factors for success or failure of coalitions and some lessons for Nigeria

From the comparisons of the experiences of the five southern and eastern African countries examined in The Politics of Party Coalitions in Africa, some of the explanatory factors for the formation, survival, effectiveness and collapse of coalitions are of some relevance to the Nigerian milieu. They are: regime type, types of electoral system, the goals of coalitions, and leadership.

Regime type: Of the five countries in the study, only Mauritius functions fully as a parliamentary system, while the four others combine aspects of parliamentary and presidential systems of government. The mature coalition politics label for Mauritius is due, in part, to its parliamentary system that requires a majority in parliament for the prime minister to govern in contrast to the presidents in Kenya and Malawi who, because they enjoy direct popular mandate, can ignore coalition agreements they needed to win presidential elections in the first instance. South Africa is an exception in this regard because the president is appointed by the majority in parliament. Advocates of a parliamentary system for Nigeria can point out that the number of parties would be significantly reduced if the country were to revert to that governmental system.

Types of electoral system:

While both first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system and party list proportional representation (PR) electoral system do not significantly affect the prospect for strong or weak traditions of coalition politics, the combination of the two systems in South Africa and the requirement of a minimum threshold of five percent of the national vote for parties to gain representation in National Assembly in Mozambique encourage coalition politics. Small parties seek to benefit from the PR system by entering into pre-election coalitions with bigger parties- both on the government side and on the side of the opposition. The idea of a minimum threshold in elections could be adapted in Nigeria and applied to parties’ qualification for a share of public funding. It will almost certainly lead to the emergence of pre-election coalitions at all levels. I would suggest a threshold of five or ten percent of national votes.

Goals of coalitions: Four main goals of coalitions are highlighted in the study: national unity (South Africa), ethnic/racial arithmetic (Kenya, Mauritius and South Africa), conflict management (South Africa) and quest for office (all five countries, in varying degrees). The first post-apartheid government in South Africa was a five-year mandated coalition government of all parties to foster national unity (including consideration of accommodating ethnic and racial divisions). It collapsed after only two years as one of the main parties voluntarily pulled out to operate as an opposition party - evidence that the goal of national unity in and of itself might not sustain a coalition government. The core of the rump coalition that survived was underpinned by the goal of conflict management in Kwazulu Natal where the coalition partners - IFP and ANC - were in violent conflict for over two decades pre-1994. The coalition has been maintained at national and provincial levels since 1994.

Quest for office has proved necessary for the emergence of coalitions in all countries, except Mozambique where there is only an opposition coalition. However, it has not proved a sufficient factor for the survival of coalitions, except in Kenya where the two alliances of parties that formed the pre-election coalition that won power in 2002 almost immediately began to operate as separate entities with only the sharing of offices holding them together in the coalition. The obvious lesson here is that it takes a combination of goals to achieve the survival and effectiveness of coalitions: ethnic/racial accommodation and quest for office in Mauritius and conflict management and quest for office in South Africa.

Leadership: There appears to be a crucial distinction between leaders who are coalition-minded and those who are not. For example, former president Mandela was coalition-minded and he laid the foundation for the ANC-IFP coalition in the province of Kwazulu Natal that has survived to the present. The long-serving prime minister of Mauritius, Sir Anerood Jugnauth (thirteen continuous years followed by another 5-year stint), would also qualify to be described as coalition-minded politician. In contrast, the presidents that have ruled Malawi since 1994 and Kenya’s president since 2002 appear not to be coalition-minded politicians. Compared to this group of presidents, South Africa’s incumbent President, Mbeki, would qualify as a coalition-minded politician.

The phenomenon of ideological convergence on economic neo-liberalism (centre-left or centre-right) in all the countries appears to have increased the salience of the leaders’ role in the success or failure of coalitions. In the Nigerian case, the military mind-set of the former president is obviously not compatible with coalition-mindedness. In contrast, incumbent president, Yar’Adua appears to be coalition-minded. However, his interest in the so-called government of national unity could also be a politically opportunistic response to the reality of contested legitimacy, pending the decision of the courts on the challenges to his electoral victory.