Regulierungen des Parteiwechsels in Afrika

The study deals with formal regulations of party switching in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many countries take a critical stance towards party switching because it is considered to weaken political parties and to endanger political stability and the legitimacy of democracy. The aim of the study is to examine reasons for their implementation by using QCA and to focus on their role as means of institutional engineering by estimating their impact on party system development.
The book also deals with case studies on Botswana, South Africa, Malawi and Lesotho. While Botswana has not adopted a regulation so far, Lesotho has introduced one in the course of a electoral reform in 2002. In South Africa party switching was permitted in a unique manner between 2002 and 2007. After increasing public criticism party switching was subsequently abolished in 2009. In Malawi the regulation has become the subject of controversial debate and political power struggles over the last twenty years.