Alar, Julião
Research Interests:
African Politics and Development Policy
Geographical Area:
Mozambique
Current Project:
Subnational Party Loyalty Management in Mozambique
Subnational party loyalty management (sub-PLM) refers to political parties’ strategies for attracting and maintaining permanent and reliable supporters at the subnational level. There is a long-standing debate on party loyalty broadly. However, how it is managed in general or specifically at the subnational level remains unexplored, particularly in Africa, where political systems are perceived as dominated by predominant party systems, with weak opposition parties, unrooted in society, lacking mobilisation, organisation and financial capacities.
Counterintuitively, a close look from below at party competition in predominant party systems in Africa suggests that despite the opposition being considered weak, it has managed to hold the subnational government. The opposition has ruled important cities such as Beira and Nampula in Mozambique, Windhoek in Namibia, Tshwane (Pretoria) in South Africa, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and Harare in Zimbabwe. In Mozambique, for instance, while in some municipalities, such as Tete, the ruling party governs uninterruptedly, the opposition dominates in others. The opposition has been ruling in Beira and Quelimane since 2003 and 2011, respectively. A local extended stay in power suggests that the opposition may have reliable and loyal supporters beyond the momentary supporters just for a single election. This observation sparked my interest in inquiring how parties manage subnational loyalty.
The research is conducted taking a qualitative approach for both data collection, through ethnographic research based on in-depth observations and semi-structured interviews and data analysis through content analysis methods, in a within-country comparison perspective, using Most Similar Systems Design (MSSD), considering the municipalities of Beira under the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) governance, Quelimane ruled by the National Resistance of Mozambique (Renamo), and Tete controlled by Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), the national ruling party, as subnational unities of analysis.
Even though the starting point for this research is, on the one hand, the perceived weakness of African opposition parties, as argued by some scholars, and the counterintuitive persistence in municipal power of opposition parties in some predominant party systems in Africa, as is the case in Mozambique, the primary purpose is not for a theoretical deductive falsification – test of the opposition weakness. Instead, considering that subnational party agencies in Africa and beyond have been overlooked, this research is the first comprehensive descriptive analysis of sub-PLM and within-country comparisons, aiming to contribute to party understanding in African societies and beyond inductively. Beyond the description, the comparative approach, MSSD, also allows me to systematically compare sub-PLM between contexts where a party is locally incumbent and when it is in opposition. Moreover, it is sensitive to capturing the opposition party loyalty management (PLM) in a context where its counterpart (also an opposition party) is in power, compared to PLM in a context where the national incumbent party is also locally in power. While sub-PLM in Mozambique may not be enough for continental inferences, its understanding generates new perspectives on some academic debates on political parties in African democracies.