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CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

Party Proliferation and


Political Contestation
in Africa
Senegal in Comparative
Perspective

Catherine Lena Kelly


Contemporary African Political Economy

Series Editor
Eunice N. Sahle
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Series Editor Eunice N. Sahle is Associate Professor with a joint appointment
in the Department of African, African American and Diaspora Studies and
the Curriculum in Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, USA.
Advisory Board: Bertha O. Koda, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania;
Brij Maharaj, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; Thandika
Mkandawire, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK;
Cassandra Veney, United States International University-Africa, Kenya;
John Pickles, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA; and
Wisdom J. Tettey, University of British Columbia, Canada. Contemporary
African Political Economy (CAPE) publishes social science research that
examines the intersection of political, social, and economic processes in
contemporary Africa. The series is distinguished especially by its focus on
the spatial, gendered, and cultural dimensions of these processes, as well as
its emphasis on promoting empirically situated research. As consultancy-­
driven work has emerged in the last two decades as the dominant model of
knowledge production about African politics and economy, CAPE offers
an alternate intellectual space for scholarship that challenges theoretical and
empirical orthodoxies and locates political and economic processes within
their structural, historical, global, and local contexts. As an interdisciplinary
series, CAPE broadens the field of traditional political economy by
welcoming contributions from the fields of Anthropology, Development
Studies, Geography, Health, Law, Political Science, Sociology and Women’s
and Gender Studies. The Series Editor and Advisory Board particularly
invite submissions focusing on the following thematic areas: urban
processes; democracy and citizenship; agrarian structures, food security,
and global commodity chains; health, education, and development;
environment and climate change; social movements; immigration and
African diaspora formations; natural resources, extractive industries, and
global economy; media and socio-political processes; development and
globalization; and conflict, displacement, and refugees.

More information about this series at


http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14915
Catherine Lena Kelly

Party Proliferation
and Political
Contestation in Africa
Senegal in Comparative Perspective
Catherine Lena Kelly
American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative
Washington, DC, USA

Contemporary African Political Economy


ISBN 978-3-030-19616-5    ISBN 978-3-030-19617-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19617-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © J. Ruscello / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my families in Dakar and Lawrence, with special thanks to Baaba
Diallo and my mother Mary Byrd Kelly.
Foreword

What are the roles and functions of political parties in the complex democ-
racies of Africa? For those immersed in the political practices of Western
democracies, the temptation may be to apply Western models and assump-
tions to answer the question. Granted, to a limited degree this approach
would be correct: in Africa as elsewhere the political party serves as the
basic building block of civic engagement and political activity. So, too, the
active presence of several parties is one of the identifying characteristics of
a functioning democracy (so much so that the term “multi-party democ-
racy” is, when examined, somewhat a redundancy). But to assume that
political party behavior in Africa models that of parties in the West would
be a profound mistake. As Catherine Kelly demonstrates in Party
Proliferation and Political Contestation in Africa: Senegal in Comparative
Perspective, the reality is much more complex.
Dr. Kelly’s successful effort to unpack that complexity begins by tracing
the phenomenon of political party proliferation in Senegal. After indepen-
dence in 1960, Senegal was a single-party authoritarian state ruled by the
Socialist Party. In the mid-1970s, the president permitted the first “party
of contribution” to the ruling Socialist Party (1974) and allowed for the
establishment of three ideologically distinct parties (1976). When unlim-
ited party formation became legal in 1981, 14 parties registered to com-
pete in the newfound political space. Today, party formation has accelerated
and there are nearly 300 registered parties in Senegal.
As these elevated numbers suggest, the research challenge confronting
the effort to understand Senegalese party dynamics was inherently daunt-
ing. The challenge was nonetheless met: Party Proliferation is the deeply

vii
viii FOREWORD

and meticulously researched product of 18 months of intensive fieldwork


in Senegal and almost 175 interviews of political elites (party leaders, min-
isters, Members of Parliament, human rights activists, journalists, trade
union members, and local elected officials) along with various forms of
archival research and data-gathering. Among those interviewed were 46
individuals who had registered new political parties in Senegal from 1998
to 2003, critical primary sources who were difficult to identify and locate.
The important core findings of Party Proliferation are key to an under-
standing of Senegalese politics and help illuminate party politics elsewhere
in Africa. Dr. Kelly writes that “while the logics of party creation are mul-
tiple and various opposition parties in Senegal are created to contest elec-
tions, many other party leaders run organizations that function primarily
to obtain patronage that does not depend on regularized vote-seeking.”
And, she further notes: “Political parties formed primarily for negotiating
patronage rarely become the consistent opposition organizations that are
purported to bolster democracy and accountability.”
These findings have clear implications for the rule of law. The extreme
proliferation of political parties weakens the party system. As is the case in
Senegal, the proliferation of patronage-seeking political parties has con-
tributed in many cases to the prolongation of the rule of all-too-powerful
presidents by reducing and diffusing the ability of the political party sys-
tem to mount an effective opposition to such rule. This imbalance and
unchecked power has led to numerous setbacks in the rule of law and, at
times, the promotion of human rights.
Party Proliferation is a well-written and interesting book that advances
the understanding of the role of political parties beyond those that have
successfully placed candidates in elected office. While focused on Senegal,
the book has direct relevance to political and rule of law development in
many other countries. With this publication, Dr. Kelly has performed a
public service and notched a significant achievement.

American Bar Association


Alberto Mora
Chicago, IL, USA
Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
Harvard Kennedy School
Cambridge, MA, USA
Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the support of several
organizations and many people from Lawrence, Kansas, to the Cité Cap
Verdienne in Dakar. Parts of the book began as my doctoral dissertation
project in the Harvard University Department of Government, where I
had the pleasure to learn from many friends, advisors, and colleagues. I
was so lucky to have Steve Levitsky as my dissertation committee chair and
intellectual mentor during my years on campus and in the field. Steve saw
potential and merit in the project from its early stages, challenged me to
think about it cleverly and creatively, and made my time at Harvard the
most rigorous and worthwhile learning experience that it could be. I truly
could not have done it without him! Nahomi Ichino, Jorge Dominguez,
and Leonardo Villalón offered very valuable insights and critiques as
members of my dissertation committee, as well as some formative oppor-
tunities to conduct research and contribute to workshops in West Africa.
Many colleagues deserve thanks for enriching conversations and advice
along the way: Leonardo Arriola, Kojo Asante, Zachary Barter, Mindie
Bernard, Jaimie Bleck, Jeff Borns, Colin Brown, Edouard Bustin, Carlos
Costa, El Hadji Samba Amadou Diallo, Claire Duguid, Katie Levine
Einstein, Gerald Early, Dan Eizenga, Alex Fattal, Sheena Chestnut
Greitens, Shelby Grossman, Omar Guèye, Andy Harris, Mai Hassan,
Martha Johnson, Shashank Joshi, Eddy Lazzarin, Adrienne LeBas, Jamie
Loxton, Jordan Long, Timothy Meyer, Lisa Muller, Fallou Ngom, George
Ofosu, Chika Ogawa, Jeffrey Paller, Matthew Page, Tim Parsons, Amanda
Pinkston, Rachel Riedl, Viri Rios, Andy Sobel, Alex Thurston, Rebecca
Vernon, Jason Warner, Martha Wilfahrt, Susanna Wing, and Fadzilah

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Yahaya. Two very special people, Itai Sened and the late Victor LeVine,
got me started on political science and African studies in the first place. I
also appreciate the collegiality extended to me by academics and practitio-
ners in Dakar and Saint Louis, especially Mamadou Ciss, El Hadji Omar
Diop, Ismaïla Madior Fall, Babaly Sall, El Hadj Mbodj, Issa Sall, and
Abdoulaye Thiam.
I am grateful for financial support from Harvard University’s
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the US Department of
Education’s Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship,
which together facilitated 15 months of field research in Senegal. Thanks
are also due to the Harvard Committee on General Scholarships, which
facilitated a subsequent research year at Sciences-Po in Paris, France; to
Professor Robert Mattes, who recruited me onto the Senegal research
team for the African Legislatures Project during my fieldwork; and to the
American Political Science Association Africa Workshop on religion and
politics, which provided a venue to explore portions of the arguments in
this book with American and African mentors and peers in Ouagadougou,
Burkina Faso, in summer 2013. A research grant from the West Africa
Research Association in summer 2015 provided the much-needed oppor-
tunity to return to Senegal for three additional months to collect data on
the Senegalese Democratic Party and political developments under Macky
Sall. Led by Professor Ousmane Sène, the Center was an enriching institu-
tion of affiliation both during this fellowship and on earlier legs of
the research.
Wolof language training from the Baobab Center, the Dakar Language
Center, and the Harvard University African Languages Program, from my
beloved instructors Lamine Diallo, Mbouillé Diallo, Assane Diallo, and
Ismaila Massaly, were instrumental in improving the quality of my work
and making my time in Senegal enjoyable. The Diallos, along with
Ibrahima Fall and Mbouillé, became my second family while I lived and
worked in Dakar over the years. Baaba’s tremendous generosity to wel-
come me into the family home every day, including for many a plate of
thiebu jen “Penda Mbaye,” showed me what Senegalese teranga really is.
Profound logistical and substantive pointers from Oumar and Fall, sisterly
guidance from Tabara, and years of Wolof training from Lamine were
transformative, too. I am also grateful for my friendships with others in the
community, including the Ndieguène family, Abdou Karim, and my many
friendly and generous neighbors (among them, Abdoulaye, Mor,
Ousmane, Paa Sy, René, and the Wades), and the mechanics near the
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

National Assembly who became cherished unforeseen friends and Wolof


conversation partners.
My family and friends from the United States have also contributed in
immeasurable ways to my pursuit of a research career and the book writing
process. My parents, Mary Byrd Kelly and Van Kelly, have provided too
many kinds of inspiration and support to enumerate here. My sister, Laura,
gave encouragement and insights that were indispensable at a few critical
moments. And what would I have done without many delightful friends
along the way, especially those who knew me long before we’d have ever
guessed I’d write this.
In the pages that follow, portions of Chaps. 1 and 5 draw from my
article, “Senegal: What Will Turnover Bring?” which appeared in the July
2012 issue of the Journal of Democracy. Parts of Chap. 4, as well as small
elements of Chaps. 1, 2, and 3, were originally published in “Party
Proliferation and Trajectories of Opposition: Comparative Evidence from
Senegal” in the January 2018 issue of Comparative Politics and are
reprinted with the journal’s permission.
Last but certainly not least, I am extremely thankful to the Senegalese
politicians, civil society leaders, journalists, and academics who were will-
ing to be interviewed and consulted for the project. The translations of
French-language quotes into English are my own. All remaining errors in
the manuscript are my own.
Furthermore, the statements and analysis expressed are solely mine in
my individual capacity, not those of any institutions with which I am affili-
ated. They have not been approved by the House of Delegates or the
Board of Governors of the American Bar Association and do not represent
the position or policy of the American Bar Association.
Praise for Party Proliferation and Political
Contestation in Africa

“Having twice experienced a turnover in power following the defeat of incum-


bents in presidential elections, Senegal has been widely hailed as a model of
democracy in Africa. Yet the country continues to intrigue and puzzle analysts for
its unexpected political dynamics. Prime among these are the striking proliferation
of parties that do not conform to expected logics of party politics, and the failure
to institutionalize the party system. In the consequent debate on the nature of
Senegalese democracy, Kelly offers an explanation for this phenomenon within the
theoretical framework of ‘competitive authoritarianism.’ Building on a wealth of
data gathered from interviews over a year and a half of fieldwork, she offers a fine-­
grained and nuanced empirical examination of the logic of party creation and the
dynamics of party trajectories over a quarter century of democratic experimenta-
tion. This book will be of high interest not only for those attempting to make
sense of the intriguing Senegalese case, but more broadly for those interested in
the surprising patterns of party politics in African democratization.”
—Leonardo A. Villalón, Professor and Dean, University of Florida, USA

“An analytical treasure trove, this book takes our understanding of Senegal’s idio-
syncratic democracy to a whole new level. In it, Kelly skillfully explains the intrica-
cies and inner workings of Senegal’s ever-evolving democratic system, sharing her
expert knowledge with us, the readers. A must-read for political scientists and
Africanists alike, this book shows us why Senegal stands out as an especially useful
and salient case study of political party formation and proliferation.”
—Matthew T. Page, Associate Fellow, Africa Programme, Chatham House, UK

“This important book tells us why and how party proliferation occurs, as politi-
cians create new parties, rather than remaining loyal or collaborating with existing
options. Kelly makes the case that this is costly for democracy and accountability.
When parties function primarily as vehicles for negotiating patronage rather than
long-term electoral mobilization, there are adverse consequences for oppositional
strategies, candidate selection, and elite defection. A critical book for scholarship
and policy on political parties, democracy, and governance in the region.”
—Rachel Beatty Riedl, Director of Program on African Studies and Associate
Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University, USA

xiii
xiv PRAISE FOR PARTY PROLIFERATION AND POLITICAL CONTESTATION IN AFRICA

“In this deeply researched and highly accessible book, Kelly takes up a vital ques-
tion in the study of contemporary Africa – why are there so many political parties?
In the course of her masterful examination of Senegal, a prominent African democ-
racy, Kelly challenges conventional assumptions about how political parties work
and what they want. By showing the patterns underlying Senegal’s hundreds of
parties and its long history of defections and realignments, she sheds crucial light
on broader issues related to how democratic experiments unfold. This excellent
study will have wide relevance for researchers, students, and policymakers working
on Africa – as well as for anyone interested in understanding emerging democra-
cies around the world.”
—Alexander Thurston, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science and
Comparative Religion, Miami University of Ohio, USA
Contents

1 Introduction: Party Proliferation and Its Consequences in


Senegal and Beyond  1

2 Theories of Party-Building: Africa, Competitive


Authoritarianism, and Democracy 29

3 Party Formation and Proliferation on Senegal’s Uneven


Playing Field 59

4 Negotiators or Adversaries? Tracing the Sources of Party


Trajectories 97

5 Defeating Presidents from Within: Regime Insiders and


Turnover in Senegal137

6 Party Loyalty and Defection from the Ruling Party Under


Proliferation173

7 Conclusion and Notes on Comparative and Policy


Perspectives on Party Proliferation in Africa211

Index231

xv
Abbreviations

AFP Alliance of Forces for Progress / Alliance des Forces du


Progrès
AJ/PADS And-Jëf/African Party for Democracy and Socialism /
And-Jëf/Parti Africain pour la Démocratie et
Socialisme
AND National Alliance for Democracy / Alliance Nationale
pour la Démocratie
ANOCI National Agency for the Organization of the Islamic
Conference / Agence Nationale de l’Organisation de
la Conférence Islamique
APL/Dog bumu gacce Patriotic Action for Liberation / Action Patriotique
pour la Libération
APR Alliance for the Republic / Alliance pour la
République
ASECNA Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and
Madagascar / Agence pour la Sécurité de la Navigation
Aérienne en Afrique et à Madagascar
BBY United in Hope / Bennoo Bokk Yakaar
BCEAO Central Bank of the West African States / Banque
Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest
BCG Centrist Bloc Lions / Bloc Centristes Gaïndé
BDS Senegalese Democratic Bloc / Bloc Démocratique
Sénégalais
BGG Common Vision / Bokk Gis Gis
BP Political Bureau / Bureau Politique
BPS Senegalese Popular Bloc / Bloc Populaire Sénégalais

xvii
xviii ABBREVIATIONS

Cap 21 Coalition Around the President for the 21st Century /


Coalition autour du président pour la 21ème siècle
CD Directing Committee / Comité Directeur
CD-BGG Democratic Convergence/Common Vision /
Convergence Démocratique-Bokk Gis Gis
CDP/Garab gi Convention of Democrats and Patriots/The Remedy /
Convention des Démocrates et Patriotes
CDS Social and Democratic Convention / Convention
Démocratique et Sociale
CEJECAS Circle of Young Socialist Professionals / Cercle des
Jeunes Cadres Socialistes
CNCAS National Agricultural Credit Accounts of Senegal /
Caisse Nationale de Crédit Agricole du Sénégal
CRAES Council for Economic and Social Affairs / Conseil de
la République pour les Affaires Economiques et Sociales
CREI Court of the Repression of Illicit Enrichment / Cour
de la Répression d’Enrichissement Illicite
CSM Senegalese Council of Magistrates / Conseil Supérieur
de la Magistrature
DC Citizens’ Democracy / Démocratie Citoyenne
DIC Division of Criminal Investigation / Division des
Investigations Criminelles
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
ENA National Administration School / Ecole Nationale
d’Administration
ENP Effective Number of Parties
FAL Front for Change / Front pour l’Alternance
FDP Front for Democracy and Progress / Front pour la
Démocratie et le Progrès
FP Popular Front / Front Populaire
FSD/BJ Democratic and Social Front / Front Démocratique et
Sociale/Benno Jubel
FSR/Laabal Social Front for Restoration / Front Social pour la
Restauration/Laabal
GC Generation of the Concrete / Génération du Concret
GP The Great Party / Le Grand Parti
HCCT High Council of Local Authorities / Haut Conseil de
Collectivités Territoriales
JPA Youth for Turnover / Jeunesse pour l’Alternance
LD/MPT Democratic League-Movement for the Workers’ Party /
Ligue Démocratique/ Mouvement pour le Parti du
Travail
ABBREVIATIONS xix

LDR Republican Liberal Democrats / Libéraux Démocrates


Républicains/Yessal
M23 June 23 Movement / Mouvement du 23 juin
MCR Movement for Citizenship and the Republic /
Mouvement pour la Citoyenneté et la République
MDS/NJ Movement for Democracy and Socialism / Mouvement
pour la Démocratie et le Socialisme/Naxx Jarinu
MLPS Liberal Movement for the Senegalese People /
Mouvement Libéral du Peuple Sénégalais
MMD Movement for Multiparty Democracy
MNSM Movement of Servants of the Masses / Mouvement
National de Serviteurs des Masses
MPD/Liggey Movement for Democracy and Work / Mouvement
pour la Démocratie/Liggeey
MPS People’s Movement for Socialism / Mouvement
Populaire Socialiste
MRDS Movement for Social and Democratic Reform /
Mouvement pour la Réforme Démocratique et Sociale
MRS Senegalese Republican Movement / Mouvement
Républicain Sénégalais
MSU Movement for Socialism and Unity / Mouvement pour
le Socialisme et l’Unité
OIF International Organization of Francophonie /
Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie
PAI African Independence Party / Parti Africain de
l’Indépendance
Parena African Renaissance Party / Parti de la Rénaissance
Africaine
PCA Chairman of the Board / Président du Conseil
d’Administration
PCRs Presidents of rural communities / Présidents des
Communuautés Rurales
PDS Senegalese Democratic Party / Parti Démocratique
Sénégalais
PDS/R Senegalese Democratic Party/Renewal / Parti
Démocratique Sénégalais/Rénovation
PEP Party for Hope and Progress / Parti de l’Espoir et du
Progrès
PETROSEN Senegalese Petroleum Company / Société des Pétroles
du Sénégal
PF Patriotic Front
PH Humanist Party / Parti Humaniste
xx ABBREVIATIONS

PIT Party of Independence and Workers / Parti de


l’Indépendance et du Travail
PLP Party of People’s Liberation / Parti pour la Libération
du Peuple
PLS Senegalese Liberal Party / Parti Libéral Sénégalais
PPC Party for Progress and Citizenship / Parti pour le
Progrès et la Citoyenneté
PPS Senegalese Popular Party / Parti Populaire Sénégalais
PR Reform Party / Parti de la Réforme
PRC Party of Renaissance and Citizenship / Parti de la
Renaissance et de la Citoyenneté
PS Socialist Party / Parti Socialiste
PSD/Jant bi Social Democratic Party / Parti Social Démocrate/
Jant bi
PSP Senegalese Party of Progress / Parti Sénégalais du
Progrès
RADDHO African Assembly of Human Rights / Rencontre
Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme
RDS Assembly of Senegalese Democrats / Rassemblement
Démocratique Sénégalais
RES-Les Verts Senegalese Ecological Assembly- The Greens /
Rassemblement Ecologique du Sénégal-Les Verts
RND National Democratic Assembly / Rassemblement
Nationale Démocratique
RPM Rally for Mali / Rassemblement pour le Mali
RPS/Jammi Rewmi Senegalese Patriotic Assembly / Union Patriotique
Sénégalais/Jammi Rewmi
RTA/S Assembly of African Workers – Senegal /
Rassemblement des Travailleurs Africains – Sénégal
RUP Assembly for Unity and Peace / Rassemblement pour
l’Unité et la Paix
SDE Senegalese Water Company / Sénégalaise des Eaux
SOMICOA Maritime Industrial Society of the West Coast of Africa /
Société Maritime et Industrielle de la Côte Occidentale de
l’Afrique
SUTELEC Single Union of Electrical Workers / Syndicat Unique
des Travailleurs de l’Electricité
UDF/Mboolo mi Union for Democracy and Federalism / Union pour la
Démocratie et le Fédéralisme/Mboolo mi
UDFPP Democratic Union of Progressive and Patriotic Forces /
Union Démocratique des Forces Progressistes Patriotiques
Abbreviations  xxi

UFPE Union of Emerging Patriotic Forces / Union des


Forces Patriotiques Emergentes
UJT Union of Young Laborers / Union des Jeunesses
Travaillistes
UNDP National Union for Democracy and Progress
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization
UNP National Union for the People/Success / Union
Nationale pour le Peuple/Tekki
UPC United People’s Congress
UPR Union for the Republic / Union pour la République
UPS Senegalese Progressive Union / Union Progressiste
Sénégalais
URD Union for Democratic Renewal / Union pour le
Rénouveau Démocratique
URD/FAL Union for Democratic Renewal/Front for Turnover /
Union pour le Rénouveau Démocratique /Front de
l’Alternance
YAW Path of the People / Yoonu Askan wi
List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Patterns of party proliferation by country 2


Fig. 4.1 Factors shaping party trajectories over time 102
Fig. 5.1 Economic conditions at successful and failed alternations 152
Fig. 6.1 Party label changes over time 187

xxiii
List of Tables

Table 3.1 Parties running on their label in national races, by degree of


contestation65
Table 3.2 Presidential co-optation of new parties, 1998–2003 74
Table 4.1 Frequencies of party trajectories by endowment combinations 114
Table 4.2 Frequencies of trajectories of parties with vote-mobilizing
potential117
Table 4.3 List of parties by levels of each endowment 118
Table 4.4 Case studies 119
Table 5.1 Insiders and outsiders with over 5% of the vote, 1993–2012 142
Table 5.2 Features of incumbent re-election and turnover in Senegal 154
Table 6.1 Trajectories of former PDS ministers in mid-2015 184

xxv
CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Party Proliferation and Its


Consequences in Senegal and Beyond

Political parties are critical for making democracy work. When parties
aggregate and represent citizens’ broad-based interests, while also groom-
ing capable and appropriate candidates for elected office, they empower
citizens to make clear political choices and hold public officials account-
able for the governance that they provide. Although multiparty politics is
essential for citizens to express preferences about who governs them, too
many political parties can dilute the power of the opposition, render vote
choices opaque, and erode popular confidence in parties as vehicles of
interest articulation and accountability. It is for these reasons that the
recent proliferation of registered political parties—both in Senegal and
elsewhere in Africa—is important for scholars, policymakers, and practitio-
ners to understand.
This book examines the origins and consequences of the proliferation of
political parties, a trend that took hold in sub-Saharan Africa after many
countries transitioned to multiparty politics in the 1990s. When the Berlin
Wall fell, the political and economic support of Western and Soviet powers
declined across the continent, leaving many African leaders more vulnera-
ble to domestic popular pressures for regime change. In protests from

The statements and analysis expressed are solely those of the author and have not
been approved by the House of Delegates or the Board of Governors of the
American Bar Association and do not represent the position or policy of the
American Bar Association.

© The Author(s) 2020 1


C. L. Kelly, Party Proliferation and Political Contestation in Africa,
Contemporary African Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19617-2_1
2 C. L. KELLY

Benin and Mali to Zambia and Gabon, citizens expressed the demand for
more freedoms, liberties, and opportunities than they had enjoyed under
the military, personalist, and single-party authoritarian regimes that had
predominated after independence in the 1960s. In 1989, all but five African
regimes were authoritarian, but by 1995, 38 countries had reformed their
constitutions to allow for multiparty politics and competitive elections
(Bratton and Van de Walle 1997: 7). Since the start of these “democratic
experiments,” the number of registered political parties has multiplied—
and in some cases, drastically accelerated—in a diverse set of countries with
different legacies of conflict, sources of wealth, histories of military and
civilian rule, and salience of identity-based political cleavages. By 2010,
after 20 or more years of multiparty competition, Cameroon had over 250
parties, Madagascar and Senegal over 150, Burkina Faso, Benin, and Mali
over 100, and Mozambique, Malawi, and Kenya approximately 50. By
mid-2018, these numbers had climbed even higher, especially in the fran-
cophone African cases (Fig. 1.1).1

Fig. 1.1 Patterns of party proliferation by country


1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 3

Party proliferation has persisted long after the founding presidential


and legislative elections of each country’s multiparty transition. It is
around these transitional elections that democracy and governance experts
would expect to see a temporary spike in party formation in response to
newfound political opportunities. They would also expect party leaders
with unsuccessful electoral performance in the founding elections to learn
from their mistakes. In other words, although proliferation is expected
during transitions to multipartism, the parties performing poorly are then
expected to disappear or fuse with other, more successful parties in subse-
quent rounds of political contestation.
Senegal is a least-likely crucial case of party proliferation because its transi-
tion from post-independence authoritarianism to multiparty politics occurred
earlier than in most other African countries.2 While most of these countries
were authoritarian regimes from independence in the 1960s to the end of the
Cold War, Senegal held its first post-independence multiparty presidential
elections in 1978, over a decade earlier than its counterparts that transitioned
in the early 1990s. Until 1974, President Leopold Sédar Senghor oversaw
a de facto single-party authoritarian regime and headed the ruling Socialist
Party (PS). However, in that year, Abdoulaye Wade—an aspiring politician
who was then a lawyer and university p ­rofessor—convinced Senghor to
allow him to create the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS). Subsequently,
in 1976, Senghor oversaw the establishment of three ideologically differen-
tiated parties: the PS, which was declared the country’s social democratic
party; the PDS, labeled as Senegal’s liberal democratic party; and the African
Independence Party (PAI), designated as Marxist. His successor, Abdou
Diouf, initiated legislative changes to allow for an unlimited number of par-
ties in 1981. Based on current theories of party behavior after multiparty
transitions, Senegal’s longer experience with multiparty politics makes it the
place where one might least expect party proliferation to persist and most
expect the party system to have consolidated. Yet, by mid-2011, Senegal had
174 registered political parties, a number that had tripled between 2000 and
2010 alone; by mid-­2018, there were nearly 300.
In Senegal and many other African countries, conventionally cited
­factors like ideological preferences, formal electoral rules, and social cleav-
ages are not highly correlated with the number of registered parties.
Consequently, they cannot fully account for the dynamics of party prolif-
eration (LeBas 2011; Manning 2005; Van de Walle and Butler 1999).
Why, then, do so many politicians continue to found parties in Senegal,
and why do others choose not to create them? What are the implications
of proliferation for party trajectories, presidential turnover, and party
­loyalty, which each shapes the nature and quality of political contestation?
4 C. L. KELLY

More specifically, why do so many politicians create parties in Senegal?


What are the determinants of a consistent opposition party trajectory, as
opposed to one of collaboration with incumbents? What explains why ex-­
regime insiders, rather than regime outsiders, induced presidential turn-
overs in 2000 and 2012? And how do politicians conceptualize and
evaluate their choices to defect or remain loyal to particular parties? This
book seeks to answer these core questions in the chapters that follow.
These questions are important not only because of their implications
for democratization and governance but also because of Senegalese and
other African citizens’ interest in answering them. Generally, political sci-
ence research in the West neglects issues focused on a country’s total num-
ber of registered parties. It focuses almost exclusively on the study of
parties that run candidates for office or control parliamentary seats. Yet
when analysts restrict their view to such parties in countries like Senegal,
they ignore other types of parties that provide further insight into the
social and political dynamics that shape governance and contestation; this
creates an incomplete, if not misleading picture of how patronage distri-
bution, political bargaining, and engagement with the state actually work.
Quite contrastingly, the proliferation of registered parties has not escaped
the attention of African academics, statespeople, and journalists. They
observe with worry and disillusionment that proliferation is accompanied
by chronic party switching, social fragmentation, fragile opposition parties
and coalitions, and low public trust in political parties and their leaders.
As early as 2001, legislators from African countries in the International
Organization of Francophonie (Organisation Internationale de la
Francophonie, OIF) expressed concern about the consequences of party
proliferation for political development, given the parochial nature of many
parties that are formed (Abdrahman 2001). Burkinabè analysts have con-
cluded that “the efflorescence of political parties gives voters and citizens
the impression that [party] leaders are motivated by lowly material inter-
ests, which reduces the collective credibility of the opposition” (CGD-­
IGD 2009: 17). Cameroonian experts lament the “mushrooming of
non-viable political parties” and the “proliferation of ghost parties” that
subvert democratization and dilute the “real opposition” (Tandé 2009:
127; Nyamnjoh 2005: 121–122). Some Malian observers note the corre-
lation between proliferation and the prevalence of ephemeral, oversized
political coalitions united only by the desire for government posts (Camara
2012: 49), while others claim that the “uncontrolled” creation of parties
with low mobilizing capacity reduces the popular legitimacy of political
parties as a whole (Sidibé 2015).
1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 5

Similarly, within Senegal, the historian Sémou Pathé Guèye (2003)


contends that the proliferation of “parties that have nothing but a name”
contributes to the “degradation of pluralist democracy in the eyes of peo-
ple who don’t feel [parties to be] useful in their everyday life” (181–182).
Moustapha Niasse, the current President of Senegal’s National Assembly,
remarks that “the Senegalese have created the concept of the ‘telephone
booth party,’ a party composed of the wife, the husband, the two children,
the cook, and the chauffeur.”3 These are not the “real political parties”
needed for coalitions to have “stability, permanence, and political clout”
(Sud Quotidien 2015). The political scientist, El Hadji Omar Diop (2011),
documents such patterns and their erosion of the “Senegalese democratic
myth.” There is also vibrant press coverage of proliferation, with some
pieces defending each citizen’s legal prerogative to form a party, but others
accusing the parties that result from proliferation of pursuing opportunis-
tic self-promotion or of blurring the political landscape and obscuring the
ease with which citizens can assess their voting and policymaking choices.
Taking these apprehensions seriously, the book examines party prolif-
eration, party trajectories, presidential turnovers, and patterns of party
loyalty and defection in contemporary Senegal, which has long been con-
sidered a bastion of peaceful, multiparty electoral competition in sub-­
Saharan Africa. The book first seeks to describe the proliferation of
registered parties and understand its sources. Building on these insights, it
then analyzes three notable developments in Senegalese politics in the
context of party proliferation: the paucity of parties that consistently
oppose any given incumbent; the tendency for ex-regime insiders instead
of regime outsiders to function as the president’s foremost electoral com-
petitors; and the linkage between party creation and elite defection from
existing parties. The results are relevant for scholars, policymakers, and
practitioners who are engaged with democracy, rule of law, and gover-
nance issues, particularly those that demand a deep understanding of the
meanings of party formation, the functions that parties actually serve, and
the implications of those realities for the nature of opposition and political
contestation.
In short, the research concludes that many Senegalese parties are
formed for negotiating access to the state rather than for contesting and
winning elections. Because a significant subset of parties is formed
­primarily for negotiating patronage, parties rarely become the consistent,
long-­term opposition organizations purported to bolster democracy and
accountability. These realities contrast to some extent with canonical
accounts of political parties, which depict them as teams of ambitious
6 C. L. KELLY

­ oliticians who pool resources and coordinate competition for elected


p
office and who remain outside of government to critique it if they do not
win (Aldrich 1995; Downs 1957; Duverger 1963). In research on consoli-
dated democracies, parties are critical components of good governance
because they aggregate and represent citizens’ broad-based interests and
thereby empower citizens to hold public officials accountable (Key 1964;
Lipset 2000; Schattschneider 1942). However, parties are often created
for different, non-electoral reasons in competitive authoritarian regimes
and thus do not always oppose incumbents in the ways that classic theo-
ries predict.
As in Senegal, most places with party proliferation began experiencing
it under competitive authoritarian regimes, in which presidents and politi-
cians made decisions about party-building that reflected neither fully dem-
ocratic nor fully authoritarian constraints on their political behavior. This
regime type emerged after the Cold War ended, when “the disappearance
of competing Western security interests…brought a sharp increase in
external democratizing pressure” and made African leaders more vulner-
able to popular protests for political reform (Levitsky and Way 2010b:
236).4 On the uneven playing field, a hallmark of competitive authoritari-
anism, presidents enjoy a degree of incumbency advantage that surpasses
what is typical in democracies. With systematic and deep advantages rela-
tive to the opposition in “access to state institutions, resources, and the
media,” presidents can weaken their political competition by depriving
opponents of state resources, controlling the media to hinder opposition
coverage and access, and overseeing the politicized application of the law
(Levitsky and Way 2010a, b: 9–12). This not only empowers the president
to create incentives for proliferation if he so chooses; it also renders sur-
vival in the opposition so financially difficult that many politicians are
constrained—or even motivated—to form parties that are primarily
­
patronage-oriented rather than primarily election-oriented. Party creation
thereby becomes no longer just a tool for the few, lucky politicians with
the capacity to attract the financial and human capital necessary to win
elections; it also serves as an outlet for less prosperous politicians who lack
these resources to lobby for access to the state.
The purposes of political parties in turn shape various aspects of politi-
cal contestation, including party trajectories into the ruling coalition or
the opposition, presidential turnover, and politicians’ decisions about
party loyalty. When parties are formed for negotiating access to the state
rather than for winning elections, they rarely become the consistent,
1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 7

long-­term opposition parties that bolster democracy. Party leaders are


reliant on personal resources for party-building on the uneven playing
field; few have the resources to become serious enough competitors with
the president to judge it worthwhile to bear the costs of regularly running
against him in the hope of someday defeating him. Given the paucity of
opposition parties that consistently remain outside of government under
any given president, ex-regime insiders—defined as politicians who have
accessed state resources through ministerial appointments—have ampli-
fied advantages as opposition candidates for the presidency, especially if
they have used their prior access to the state to build the clout and capital
needed to compete seriously on the uneven playing field. The ease with
which certain ex-insiders have formed their own organizations and won
elected posts reinforces temptations for elites to defect from existing par-
ties and break out on their own.
The remainder of the introduction presents the book’s contributions to
knowledge about party-building and democratization in greater depth
(Sect. 1.1), situates Senegal as a case of competitive authoritarian party-­
building (Sect. 1.2), and provides an overview of the study’s methodology
(Sect. 1.3) and research design (Sect. 1.4).

1.1   What the Book Argues


Focused on the end of the Abdou Diouf presidency (1992–2000) and the
Abdoulaye Wade presidency (2000–2012), the book argues that the pro-
liferation of primarily patronage-oriented parties and the paucity of consis-
tent opposition parties are patterns that Diouf and Wade used the uneven
playing field to sustain, if not amplify, during competitive authoritarian
rule. Under Macky Sall, party proliferation and inconsistent opposition
have endured, first under several years of democratizing reforms and now
during a period of relative retrenchment.5 The book’s analysis covers poli-
ticians and parties from all three presidencies, but concentrates on the
Wade era, when competitive authoritarianism was arguably at its height.
Beyond its usefulness for understanding political dynamics within
Senegal, the influence of competitive authoritarianism on party-building is
worth analyzing due to the sheer number of African countries that have
fallen into that regime category since the start of post-Cold War “demo-
cratic experiments.” Of the 47 countries in Bratton & Van de Walle’s
study, 37 were not full-fledged democracies by the end of 2012.6 Eighteen
African countries were in Freedom House’s “partly free” category, which
8 C. L. KELLY

signals the presence of many aspects of the uneven playing field that char-
acterizes competitive authoritarian rule. In addition, 14 of the 35 coun-
tries that were deemed by Levitsky & Way as competitive authoritarian by
1995 were African.
By analyzing specific aspects of the Senegalese party system during a
prolonged period of competitive authoritarianism, the forthcoming chap-
ters are designed to propose explanations for party formation, defection,
trajectories, and turnover in and of themselves, as well as to explore how
competitive authoritarianism has contributed to or reified those patterns.
Each set of conclusions should thus be considered as hypothesis-­
generating, helping to further theorize prominent patterns in contempo-
rary Senegalese party politics that experts have also observed but not yet
explained in several other African countries.

Party Creation Can Serve Non-electoral Purposes


The book first documents the prominence of parties with leaders who are
neither election-oriented nor promoters of policies that advance particular
ideologies or special interests. Although Senegal has various parties that
contest elections and attempt to forge stable constituencies among voters,
party creation is more consistently an expedient way to access state
resources than a means of regular electoral contestation. Parties are often
the expression of the ambition of a single politician, whose organization
consists of the politician’s family, friends, and neighbors who are socially
and materially invested in his success. The founder and his followers tend
to seek advancement through the politician’s ability to negotiate access to
the state, whether through a plum job, material benefits from the ruling
entourage, or greater proximity to the ruling party’s network of cadres
able to solve personal problems.
As previously mentioned, the proliferation of such parties contrasts
with the fundamentally election-oriented organizations depicted in the
classic literature on party development. Downs (1957) holds that parties
originate out of ambitious politicians’ need to pool their resources and
form teams to facilitate winning elected office; politicians create parties in
order to better organize election campaigns, develop linkages to constitu-
ents to increase the likelihood of re-election, and aggregate preferences to
propose legislation in a timely manner (Aldrich 1995). Senegal, in con-
trast, has a significant subset of parties that are not formed by leaders pri-
marily for regular electoral competition. Perhaps the most telling evidence
1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 9

of the primacy of patronage negotiation over vote-maximization is that by


about six months before the 2012 presidential elections, only 43 of the
174 registered parties had ever run on their own labels for seats in the
National Assembly or for the presidency. In other words, three-quarters of
Senegal’s parties were not behaving according to Downs’ model. Even for
realists expecting to observe some divergence between parties’ actual and
stylized functions of parties, this disparity is large.7
Through these arguments, the book lends further credence to the claim
that party behavior in non-democracies is not always vote-maximizing
(Levitsky and Way 2010b; Mainwaring 2003; Riedl and Lupu 2013; Van
de Walle 2007). However, the research herein also considers the fates of
all types of registered parties, which makes the book distinctive from many
other studies in political science and economics. The latter tend to be
based on measures of the effective number of parties (ENP) competing in
elections or holding seats in parliament, which are weighted by the amount
of the vote that each party garnered in an election or by the percentage of
seats won in parliament (Laasko and Taagepera 1979).8 These measures
are useful for understanding the relative electoral strength among the par-
ties that compete on their own labels in elections or gain legislative repre-
sentation. However, ENP has its drawbacks too. It masks qualitative
variation in the range of party types (Bogaards 2004: 186) and provides a
limited summary of Senegal’s fluid party system, where parties can become
major players quickly and disappear from the electoral arena just as fast
(Resnick 2013).
ENP is useful for studying politics in its electoral form, but understand-
ing political contestation in Senegal requires analyzing much more than
just the electoral outcomes of party activity. Because many Senegalese par-
ties are active in politics even if they do not contest or win elections, their
persistence suggests that they represent ambition for other political, eco-
nomic, and social advantages; similarly, a variety of parties that have par-
ticipated only once in elections—and some that did not perform very well
in them—have leaders who have been appointed to the government. The
interest and willingness of Senegalese presidents to entertain these party
leaders’ claims on the state indicate that electoral success is just one of
several factors shaping patronage negotiation and political ascension.
ENP is problematic in this setting because it ignores the legal and
political presence of parties that choose not to run in elections, even if
they influence governance and political contestation in other ways.9
Focusing instead on the total number of legally recognized parties allows
10 C. L. KELLY

us to examine the full range of partisan actors: those that become major
electoral players and those that do not. If we abandon the premise that
parties are election-oriented, and if we inductively study whether creating
a party advances a founder’s political goals both within and outside of the
electoral sphere, then we get a more complete and accurate picture of how
patronage distribution, political bargaining, and politicians’ engagement
with the state work.

Party Trajectories Often Entail Collaboration, Not Opposition


The logics of party formation and proliferation affect longer-term party
trajectories. Opposition parties are generally characterized as vehicles for
voicing alternatives to the ideas and policies that incumbents propose,
serving as counterweights to the ruling party and fostering accountability
and government responsiveness to citizens (Grzymala-Busse 2007; Lipset
2000; Stepan 2007). Opposition parties are expected to rival those in gov-
ernment and “present a viable alternative to the political status quo,” even
if the opposition more generally does not always coalesce (Arriola 2012:
5; LeBas 2011). But in Senegal, few of the political parties formed since
the start of proliferation engaged in trajectories of consistent opposition
throughout the Wade presidency. Instead, many parties have collaborated
with the president even when their support to the ruling coalition was not
necessary to form a government or constitute a legislative majority.10
The book demonstrates that party founders’ capacities and decisions to
pursue consistent opposition are shaped by the degree and type of
resources they possess to overcome structural disadvantages on the uneven
playing field. Party leaders rarely possess the endowments that together
foster the pursuit of consistent opposition trajectories—namely, prior
experience as either high-level state administrators or national-level civil
society figures, and access to international sources of private financing.
With experience as state administrators or national civil society figures,
party leaders can market themselves as capable replacements to incum-
bents. With access to international private financing, they can compete for
office using the clientelist strategies that citizens expect of serious candi-
dates. For the few party leaders with both endowments, the prize of the
presidency is so large, and their potential to win it is serious enough, that
consistent opposition is an attractive long-term pursuit. Overall, these
insights complement findings that private sector resources of party leaders,
as well as party ideology and institutionalization, shape the opposition’s
1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 11

coordination against incumbents in specific elections and the electoral


coalition choices of parties in single contests (Arriola 2012; Bogaards
2014; Wahman 2014). However, the literature has thus far overlooked the
role that international private financing specifically can play in shaping
consistent opposition, particularly in combination with a party leader’s
state or civil society experience.

Ex-regime Insiders Induce Turnover


The previous findings raise an additional question: if consistent opposition
parties are rare and the uneven playing field handicaps them, then why did
Senegal have presidential turnovers in 2000 and 2012? Africanist scholar-
ship has already identified economic crisis, opposition coalescence, patron-
age scarcity in the ruling party, and presidential death or resignation as
structural factors that increase prospects for turnover in all kinds of regimes
with multiparty competition (Cheeseman 2010; Reuter and Gandhi 2010;
Van de Walle 2006). However, there are few systematic accounts of who
the agents of turnover are and how their behavior fosters it.
To begin filling these gaps in the case of Senegal, the book shows that
politicians who have accessed state resources through ministerial appoint-
ments, known as “ex-regime insiders,” were the most serious electoral
challengers in Senegal’s 1993, 2000, 2007, and 2012 presidential elec-
tions. Politicians who are insiders before emerging as opponents have
opportunities to access state resources—including salaries, media expo-
sure, control over low-level state employment, and opportunities to net-
work with well-resourced elites—that can help them attain the financial
capital and political credibility needed to outperform outsider presidential
candidates.11 Although insider advantage does not ensure turnover, those
who make the most of it have plausible chances of defeating incumbents.
These dynamics correspond to a paradoxical political reality: former
government collaborators, rather than the committed outsiders conven-
tionally defined as the opposition, are often the ones who defeat incum-
bent presidents. This was the case when Macky Sall, an ex-PDS elite,
defeated Abdoulaye Wade in 2012; it was also the case when Abdoulaye
Wade, a participant in the enlarged presidential majority governments in
the 1990s, defeated Abdou Diouf in 2000. However, to fully differentiate
the turnovers of 2000 and 2012 from incumbent re-elections of 1993
and 2007, we must also consider two relatively contingent factors: pro-
longed uncertainty about succession within the ruling party (which
12 C. L. KELLY

increases former insiders’ chances of attracting the support of former col-


leagues), and the leading ex-insider’s resistance to the president’s attempts
to co-opt him right before the campaign (which helps ex-insiders brand
themselves as genuine alternatives to the incumbent).

Party Defection Fuels Further Party Creation


The rise and fall of the PDS as the ruling party provides further insight into
the dynamics of party loyalty, party defection, and party creation in Senegal.
The PDS began in 1974 as a “party of contribution” to the ruling PS. It
made history in the 2000 presidential elections when its leader, Abdoulaye
Wade, defeated Abdou Diouf and ended 40 years of PS rule. Now, the PDS
is one of Senegal’s most popular opposition parties. Yet despite the PDS’s
considerable historical legacy and nationwide implantation, it has constantly
grappled with the challenges of preventing defection. Structurally, Senegal
lacks the ideologically polarized party system, high legal and bureaucratic
costs of party creation, and strongly enforced internal party rules that foster
party loyalty. Most Senegalese parties also lack the inclusive candidate selec-
tion procedures that rein in incentives for defection (Doorenspleet and
Nijzink 2013; LeBas 2011; Mac Giollabhuí 2011). Personal, cultural, and
contextual factors also shape how PDS elites understand and evaluate their
“exit, voice, and loyalty” options (Hirschman 1970).
Over time, PDS elites have weighed various push and pull factors in
determining whether to remain loyal to the PDS, form a new party, join
an existing party, or leave party politics altogether. Ideational and affective
factors played significant roles in all periods. In addition, low levels of
internal democracy in the PDS and Wade’s selective application of party
rules became salient sources of grievance that fostered various forms of
defection, especially after 2000, when PDS leaders prioritized running the
state over maintaining the party. During Wade’s presidency, the party con-
tinually delayed internal elections, the Directing Committee became too
unwieldy to shape the party’s direction, and Wade increasingly favored his
son and his son’s supporters in the party and the government. Under
these conditions, the value of exit increased relative to the potential gains
of using voice within the party to express discontent about its inner work-
ings. PDS politicians increasingly came to use party creation both as a
means of permanent exit from the PDS as well as a tool for attempting to
use voice unconventionally, outside of the PDS, to negotiate a return to
the party on better terms.
1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 13

1.2   Why Senegal Is a Critical Case


of Party-Building

Senegal under Diouf (1981–2000) and Wade (2000–2012) is a critical case


of party-building under competitive authoritarianism. As subsequent chap-
ters illustrate in more detail, party proliferation became a noticeable pattern
in Senegal around 1998, at the end of the Diouf presidency, and acceler-
ated throughout the Wade presidency. Despite Senegal’s reputation as one
of Africa’s oldest electoral democracies, it was arguably a competitive
authoritarian regime during this period according to the procedural mini-
mum criteria for democracy. Minimalist definitions classify countries as
democratic if they have multiparty elections; electoral definitions are less
permissive, requiring multiparty elections that are regularized, free, and
fair. The procedural minimum definition of democracy requires both free
and fair elections and the respect of civil liberties and fundamental free-
doms (Dahl 1971).12 Although not explicitly part of this definition of
democracy, the absence of an uneven playing field is also constitutive of the
procedural minimum conditions obtaining (Levitsky and Way 2010b).
Competitive authoritarian regimes may exhibit some but not all of the pro-
cedural minimum qualities of democracy due to an uneven playing field,
which gives the ruling party systemic and deep advantages in its “access to
state institutions, resources, and the media” and makes opposition more
structurally difficult than in democracies (Levitsky and Way 2010a: 58).
Senegal has been a minimalist democracy since it held competitive,
multiparty elections from 1978 onward and several prominent scholars
applying a variety of stricter standards have labeled Senegal under Diouf
and Wade a “full-fledged electoral democracy” (Gellar 2005: 156) and a
“clientelist democracy” (Beck 2008). This book argues that Senegal only
partially met procedural minimum standards of democracy in the 1990s
and 2000s, and was instead best characterized as competitive authoritarian
at the time. In that period, the degree of election transparency fluctuated,
civil liberties were not consistently respected, and an uneven playing field
significantly constrained the opposition. There was modest progression
toward democracy based on these standards under Diouf, whereas Wade’s
presidency brought about multiple, serious regressions of sufficient degree
and gravity to question the evenness of the playing field. Although democ-
racy is undoubtedly best conceived as a “process rather than an event”
(Villalón 1994), Senegal between 1992 and 2012 was arguably in a more
competitive authoritarian stage of that process.
14 C. L. KELLY

Under Diouf, even as Senegal made some significant reforms in terms


of free and fair elections starting with a democratic electoral code in 1992,
certain competitive authoritarian practices persisted. Consensually elabo-
rated by government and opposition leaders, the 1992 electoral code
established a secret ballot, expanded voting rights to the diaspora and
18-to-21-year-olds, required the use of ballot boxes and indelible ink for
the vote, allowed party representatives to be present at the polls, guaran-
teed equal media access to all candidates, and established a national ballot-­
counting commission, among other reforms (Kanté 1994). However, the
elections that followed were freer, but not always fair. The 1993 presiden-
tial election was a “small step forward,” but not a “definitive transition
from quasi-democracy to democracy” (Villalón 1994: 192). Moreover,
the “the political playing field was not entirely level in that the PS retained
control over the state apparatus that legislated, administered, and adjudi-
cated the electoral process” (Beck 2008: 64). Difficulties in preventing
electoral fraud persisted into the late 1990s as the ruling PS stalled nego-
tiations with the opposition for a more independent electoral commission
(Fall 2011).
Under Wade, electoral integrity improved, but the president used the
uneven playing field to shape elections to his advantage. Senegal’s major
opposition parties accused the ruling party of fraud after Wade’s re-­
election in 2007; rigorous statistical tests also suggest that it was likely
(Beber and Scacco 2012). The opposition ended up boycotting the 2007
National Assembly elections after Wade manipulated the electoral calendar
twice and there had been no independent audit of the electoral register
after its reconstruction for biometric voter registration.13
In the domain of civil liberties, including freedom of speech, assembly,
and association, violations of procedural minimum standards occurred
under Diouf and even more significantly under Wade. Under Diouf,
­several major opponents were arrested and jailed when they protested
about political issues. For instance, after the 1993 National Assembly elec-
tions, Moustapha Sy, the young leader of the Moustarchidine religious
movement, was detained on vague charges of posing threats to public
order; and in 1994, “public meetings and rallies were regularly forbidden
as the government sought to curtail the activities of both the opposition
and the Moustarchidine movement” (Villalón and Kane 1998: 144, 150).
Under Wade, the government violated the civil liberties of journalists and
opposition politicians on several occasions. Perhaps the most extreme case
was the near-deadly attack in 2003 on opposition party leader, Talla Sylla,
1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 15

by thugs allegedly employed by the PDS. After Sylla went to France for
medical treatment and returned to Senegal, the PDS used its legislative
supermajority to pass the Ezzan Law, providing amnesty for all political
crimes committed between 1983 and 2004 (Kelly 2012). More typical
violations of civil liberties included President Wade’s use of the Division of
Criminal Investigation (DIC) as a “political force” to intimidate opposi-
tion politicians (Mbow 2008: 163),14 the ongoing harassment of journal-
ists,15 and the administration’s violent suppression of pre-electoral protests
in 2007, 2011, and 2012.
Freedom of the press was intermittently threatened as well. As of 1993,
the electoral code guaranteed equality of access to the state media during
election campaigns. However, the state did not establish an independent
regulatory authority until 1998 (Fall 2011: 175). Opposition access to
media improved as the number of private media outlets grew, but it
remained skewed in favor of the ruling party both before and after alter-
nance (Diop 2013; Gellar 2005). As the private media further expanded
under Wade, the government censored controversial political writing,
intermittently shut down private newspapers and radio stations, and
harassed journalists (Havard 2004; Loum 2013). In general, Wade’s
administration targeted “troublemaking politicians, public figures, and
journalists” with “a range of legal measures such as temporary closure of
newspapers, suing for libel or for threatening the security of the state
(according to Article 80 of the Penal Code) and police investigations”
(Dahou and Foucher 2009: 28).16
Finally, Senegalese politics took place on an uneven playing field during
both presidencies. Access to state resources was so skewed in favor of the
ruling party that many opposition parties had trouble surviving without
collaborating with the president. Each president enjoyed discretionary
powers to create and destroy government institutions that he could pack
with sympathizers, thereby multiplying his allies’ advantages and further
weakening the opposition. For instance, in the late 1990s, Diouf used the
ruling party’s supermajority in the National Assembly to create the Senate,
a body that is two-thirds appointed, to distribute more patronage to PS
supporters and increase party cohesion. Wade also used packable institu-
tions filled largely through executive appointment to meet patronage
needs. To these ends, he created the Council for the Republic for Economic
and Social Affairs (Conseil de la République pour les Affaires Economiques
et Sociales, CRAES) in 2004, revived the Senate in 2007, and converted
the CRAES into the Economic and Social Council in 2008.
16 C. L. KELLY

The judiciary also depended on the executive branch in ways that


skewed the playing field. Regarding election disputes, “in nearly every
instance in which the opposition went to court before 2000…to contest
alleged election irregularities, the courts invariably rejected these claims.”
Under Wade, the judiciary “remained subordinated to the president who
nominated all judges and to the Minister of Justice…who was responsible
for taking the lead in prosecuting criminal cases” (Gellar 2005: 159).
Wade controlled the salary, perks, and appointments of all five appoint-
ments to the Constitutional Council, which was legally permitted to pro-
nounce on the constitutionality of Wade’s controversial decision to run for
a third term in 2012 and decided in his favor. More generally, as well,
Wade skewed the playing field by using state resources to recruit, reward,
and retain a vast set of collaborators.
In comparative perspective, Senegal under Diouf and Wade exhibited
fewer autocratic attributes and more democratic attributes than many
other cases of competitive authoritarianism in Africa, like Cameroon,
Gabon, or Kenya. Given these relative differences, Senegal under Diouf
and Wade was thus one of Africa’s competitive authoritarian regimes that
was most likely to exhibit patterns of party-building that are common in
democracies. Theoretically, it is a least-likely crucial case of party prolifera-
tion and a most-likely crucial case of consistent opposition, yet in reality, it
exhibits a great deal of party creation—as well a paucity of parties that
pursued consistent opposition trajectories—in the period under study.

A Least-Likely Crucial Case of Proliferation


Senegal’s sequence of political development and the timing of its transi-
tion to multipartism make the country a least-likely case of proliferation.
In early modern Europe and North America, the confluence of economic
development with political liberalization, as well as the sequencing of this
liberalization (with the advent of multiparty competition preceding the
extension of universal suffrage), yielded institutionalized and consolidated
party systems (Shefter 1977). Industrialization did not accompany these
political changes in Senegal and other African countries. However, unlike
most of its African counterparts, Senegal did follow the Western sequenc-
ing of liberalization, with a period of multiparty competition among an
exclusive elite under French colonial rule prior to the extension of mass
suffrage. In 1848, the French colonial administration extended citizenship
to all long-term residents of Senegal’s Four Communes, the urban com-
1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 17

munities of Dakar, Saint-Louis, Rufisque, and Gorée. While residents of


other parts of French West Africa remained colonial subjects who were
disenfranchised, Africans from the Four Communes gained the right to
vote in multiparty elections for the French National Assembly.17 Senegal
thus had significant experience with competitive elections among a small
urban elite when, nearly a century later, the French colonizers extended
mass suffrage in 1946 and reinforced it thereafter.
Furthermore, as mentioned previously, Senegal shifted to multiparty
politics in 1978, about a decade earlier than many other African countries
that did so in the early 1990s. Senegal has since developed a party system
that is quite fluid, but still more institutionalized than that in counterparts
like Benin, Mali, and Zambia (Kuenzi and Lambright 2001; Mainwaring
and Scully 1995; Riedl 2014). Given Senegal’s extra decade of multiparty
competition, it is one of the places where we would least expect parties to
remain so numerous if proliferation is supposed to spike but then fall after
founding elections.18 Senegal is thus also a place where we would expect
most politicians to have incentives to build their careers within the set of
parties that already have the social and financial capital to compete regu-
larly in elections. Analyzing proliferation in Senegal, a least-likely case, will
help to identify some of the sources and mechanisms of party formation
that are likely to be the strongest and apply across other African countries
in which proliferation is theoretically less surprising.

A Most-Likely Crucial Case of Consistent Opposition


Senegal is also a most-likely crucial case of consistent opposition based on its
institutions: many consistent opposition parties were expected under Diouf
and Wade because until 2012, the president’s party had always controlled a
parliamentary majority on its own and did not need other parties to form a
government. Under these conditions, opposition parties are expected to
resist co-optation or collaboration with the ruling party and to serve repeat-
edly as counterweights to incumbents by monitoring, critiquing, and chal-
lenging them. Yet in practice, while there are dozens of parties that run on
their own label against any given president at least once, fewer parties persist
in this across multiple consecutive elections or an entire presidency. By iden-
tifying factors that explain various party trajectories in a place where consis-
tent opposition is less common than expected, the research generates an
explanation that works even in the case where divergence between theoreti-
cal expectations and reality is potentially the hardest to explain.
18 C. L. KELLY

1.3   Methodology
The research employs interdisciplinary approaches. Several theories and
methodologies used in the study come from comparative politics (the
author’s core discipline), but they are combined with other ideas and tech-
niques from political economy, anthropology, and history. This framework
is used, in turn, to answer theoretically relevant questions that are also of
practical concern in Senegal. Many conclusions drawn in the book are
based on data collected during 18 months of fieldwork in Senegal between
2010 and 2015, including during the 2012 presidential and National
Assembly elections. Through the fieldwork, the author consulted a rich set
of primary and secondary sources to gather information about party lead-
ers’ backgrounds, political experiences, and resources, as well as parties’
purposes, behavior, and relationship to government and opposition.
The interdisciplinary and field-intensive approach serves three principal
purposes. The first is to produce an ethnographic account of why so many
politicians create their own parties and what purposes they and other poli-
ticians see these organizations serving. The second is to use descriptive
analysis and comparative case studies to explain party formation, party
trajectories, presidential turnover, and elite choices about party loyalty and
defection. The third is to use the subnational study of politicians and par-
ties in Senegal to generate hypotheses about party-building that are worth
testing elsewhere in Africa.
Often, the advancement of these goals hinged upon gathering qualita-
tive data through semi-structured interviews that the author conducted in
French and Wolof with approximately 175 Senegalese politicians, govern-
ment officials, journalists, and activists. It also required processing archival
materials from government institutions, parties, and politicians’ personal
papers. Three of the most notable elements of the field-based materials
include comprehensive information on all parties that formed within a
particular time frame (1998–2003); an original dataset on those parties
that captures their behavior over all five national elections spanning the
Wade presidency; and detailed information from party and government
documents about the party membership patterns of former ruling party
(PDS) elites with ministerial experience.

1.4   Plan of the Book


The book has six additional chapters. Chapter 2 situates the project and its
claims in political science theories of party formation, party-building, and
democratization. The chapter illustrates that party proliferation initially
1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 19

took hold during a phase of Senegalese politics that was competitive


authoritarian. It explains how competitive authoritarian regime dynamics
can enhance our current understanding of the purposes and behavior of
Senegalese parties, particularly on the uneven playing field maintained by
Presidents Diouf and Wade. Finally, it describes how the book’s argu-
ments about Senegal improve or refine extant theories, findings, and
assumptions about party politics, which tend to focus on either democra-
cies or fully authoritarian regimes.
Chapter 3 describes patterns of party formation in Senegal and addresses
the sources of party formation and proliferation. It presents an in-depth
account of the logics of party creation among a chronological subset of poli-
ticians who contributed to Senegal’s initial acceleration in party formation.
The research features information acquired through primary source, semi-
structured interviews that the author conducted in French and in Wolof
with all 46 people whose parties were registered between 1998 and 2003,
the six years surrounding Senegal’s first presidential turnover in 2000.19
Several vignettes of party creation illustrate the rarity of parties that regularly
compete in national elections on Senegal’s uneven playing field. The
vignettes also trace the logics of pre- and post-­alternance party formation.
They are bolstered by analysis of the types and frequencies of new parties’
electoral activity and performance, as well as by their leaders’ backgrounds
and declared motivations. Interviews with additional party founders, politi-
cians, intellectuals, human rights advocates, trade unionists, and ­journalists—
with material from research in government, party, and personal archives,
local newspaper coverage, and political b ­ iographies—expand and verify the
information provided by founders in the sample.
Chapter 4 explores how and to what extent party leaders’ levels of state
or civil society experience and international private financing correspond
to the tendencies of their organizations to engage in consistent opposi-
tion, tactical alliances, or full-fledged co-optation. The research is based
on information from an original dataset that captures party behavior over
all five national elections spanning the Wade presidency, including the
coalition choices and electoral behavior of all 46 parties created between
1998 and 2003, the number of years of state or civil society experience
that the leader of each party had prior to creating the organization, and
the level of international private financing that primary and secondary
sources estimate that each leader possesses. Eighteen months of fieldwork
in Senegal yielded information from interviews, local newspaper coverage,
party statistics on the retention of key elites, political biographies, and
official rosters solicited from party and coalition administrators. Descriptive
20 C. L. KELLY

statistical analysis of all 46 sampled parties attests to the correlation


between party leader endowments of experience and financing on the one
hand, and long-term party trajectories on the other. Comparative case
studies of parties that exhibit a wide range of levels of experience and
financing reveal the ways in which party leaders’ different combinations of
endowments shape their response to the built-in incentives to collaborate
with the president on the uneven playing field. Ultimately, the analysis
demonstrates how party leaders’ resource endowments, political networks,
and initial patterns of electoral participation interact to shape the longer-­
term series of strategic decisions they make across elections.
Chapter 5 identifies both structural and contingent factors that explain
Senegal’s two presidential turnovers in 2000 and 2012; each occurred
despite the paucity of consistent opposition parties in the contemporary
party system and was achieved by an ex-regime insider. The chapter first
compares the political biographies and electoral performance of several
insider and outsider presidential candidates in order to articulate why
insiders can often compete more seriously with the incumbent and create
real potential for turnover. Relying on local newspaper coverage of the
campaigns, official reports about each election’s conduct, and secondary
research including ample Senegalese sources, it then characterizes how
structural and contingent factors related to insiders’ candidacy and behav-
ior played out before Senegal’s last four presidential elections. The condi-
tions in place before turnover (2000 and 2012) differed from those
observed before races resulting in incumbent re-election (1993 and 2007).
The analysis of insiders’ emergence and their subsequent oppositional
behavior augments our understanding of electoral competition in the con-
text of patronage-based ruling parties like the PS and the PDS.
The chapter also documents how proliferation and inconsistent opposi-
tion continue under President Sall, who initiated democratic reforms but
is now arguably in the process of overseeing democratic retrenchment, if
not a competitive authoritarian resurgence in Senegal. This pattern per-
sists despite reforms that reduced the scope of the uneven playing field,
especially in the first years of Sall’s presidency. In this way, legacies of the
recent competitive authoritarian past still shape party politics.
Chapter 6 applies the concepts of exit, voice, and loyalty developed by
the economist, Albert Hirschman, to contextualize defections from the
PDS before and after Wade’s defeat in 2012. To shed further light on how
Senegalese politicians evaluate and enact the concepts of party loyalty and
party switching, the chapter first traces the evolution of underlying incen-
1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 21

tives for exit, voice, and loyalty during the party’s foundational phase in
opposition (1974–2000), its presidential phase (2000–2012), and its
return to opposition (2012–present). It subsequently examines party
membership patterns among all current and former PDS elites with min-
isterial experience, quantifying trends in loyalty and defection among
some of the party’s most privileged members. The relevant dataset is based
on information from PDS members who are critical to the party’s institu-
tional memory, official documentation of ministerial appointments, and
archival documents. The chapter closes with case studies of the loyalty and
defection choices of former ministers, legislators, mayors, regional and
local party leaders, and people who belonged to party institutions like the
National Secretariat and the Directing Committee. Each case study seeks
to account for the ways that various individual, personal factors interacted
with the enforcement of party rules and procedures to influence people’s
decisions about party loyalty and defection. The work marshals informa-
tion from archives, local newspapers, books by local analysts, and over 20
semi-structured interviews that the author conducted with current and
former PDS elites in mid-2015.
Chapter 7 provides concluding insights on the relationship between
parties and democratization in Senegal, reviewing the conclusions drawn
in preceding chapters. The conclusion places these insights from Senegal
into comparative perspective, discussing where beyond Senegal it would
be productive to explore the book’s hypotheses about party formation,
opposition trajectories, ruling party loyalty, and presidential turnover. It
also summarizes the policy implications of the research, describing how
the book’s findings have the potential to enhance the approaches taken by
domestic policymakers, foreign diplomats, and international development
practitioners concerned with democracy, rule of law, and governance
issues in countries like Senegal. Tying together various parts of the
research, the conclusion then explains why party proliferation in Senegal
has neither definitively fostered nor structurally impeded democratization
as of the time of writing, December 2018.

Notes
1. The party registration statistics for these countries were available via govern-
ment websites, newspapers, or secondary publications devoted to the issue.
See AfriMAP 2009; Africa Confidential 2014; Benin Ministry of Interior
2007; CMD 2012; CGD-IGD 2009; Diatta 2018; Diop 2006, 2011;
22 C. L. KELLY

Investir en zone franc n.d.; MATCL 2011; Madagascar Ministry of Interior


2014; Diop 2011 and additional tracking of party registration statistics from
the Ministry of Interior; Svasand 2014; Tandé 2009; UNDP 2003.
2. For more on least-likely and most-likely crucial cases, see Gerring 2007 (89).
3. Interview with Moustapha Niasse, 7/21/15, Dakar.
4. Presidents, who had extensive and relatively unchecked control over state
resources, could often temper the transition, moving their country toward
but not to democracy.
5. Chapters 5 and 7 provide additional analysis of democracy under President
Sall.
6. There are multiple viable datasets for measuring democracy, including
Polity IV, V-Dem, the Freedom House Freedom in the World index.
Freedom House 2013 (with 2012 as year of review) data was used to gen-
erate the cursory glance provided here. Ten African countries of the 47
that Bratton & Van de Walle studied were “free.”
7. For instance, Gazibo (2006) expects some degree of divergence, but
asserts that analyzing the “…dynamics of alliances, fusion, and often the
process of scission that leads to the proliferation of parties and coalitions”
is critical for a deeper understanding of party politics in Africa (19).
8. In Senegal, the acceleration in the number of legally registered parties has
not been accompanied by a constant upward trend in the effective num-
ber of parties. After the adoption of a democratic electoral code in 1992,
ENP fluctuated but stayed within the range of 2 and 3 for six elections,
and only surpassed the 1–3 zone indicative of a dominant party system in
the 2012 presidential race. This provides further evidence that the total
number and effective number of parties do not capture the same features
of party politics.
9. Measures of electoral volatility are also useful for studying how new
entrants and established players in the electoral sphere influence the nature
of the party system. However, these measures also focus on the organiza-
tions that are already in the electoral arena and are therefore subject to
critiques similar to those of ENP.
10. Chapters 2 and 4 cover the president’s strategic interaction with party lead-
ers in greater detail. In a nutshell, presidents seek to fragment and destabi-
lize the opposition in order to ensure their re-election, but presidents in
competitive authoritarian regimes are constrained in the amount of repres-
sion they can use and often also use positive inducements to incentivize
opponents to collaborate. Ideally, the president would permanently co-opt
the leaders of the parties that are most electorally threatening, but she is
not always successful because those parties often have some resource
endowments that help them resist co-optation. Presidents thus tend to
1 INTRODUCTION: PARTY PROLIFERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES… 23

target party leaders with a variety of goals, resource endowments, and


vote-mobilizing capabilities who react differently to the president’s
attempts at co-optation and generate variation in party trajectories.
11. Lucan Way (2005) originally identified these mechanisms in the post-­
communist context; the book uses them as guiding hypotheses for Senegal.
12. Dahl (1971) provides eight criteria that essentially boil down to free and
fair multiparty competition, the protection of civil liberties, and mecha-
nisms for democratic accountability.
13. Wade formally postponed them for flood-related reasons and administra-
tive concerns, but was suspected of postponing for his own political gain.
14. For example, Wade used the DIC to interrogate opposition party leaders
like Amath Dansokho and Jean-Paul Dias. In 2005, police also arrested
Idrissa Seck’s deputy, Yankhoba Diattara, for organizing anti-Wade rallies
during the President’s visit to Thiès, Seck’s hometown and stronghold.
15. In 2006 and 2007 alone, “the DIC beat two journalists who had published
speculations about the president’s ‘nighttime whereabouts’; police arrested
one journalist who wrote about Senegal’s high cost of living and another
who wrote about Wade buying a limousine; and the state shut down a
newspaper that published stories about the involvement of Karim Wade,
the president’s son, in corruption scandals.” (Kelly 2012: 124).
16. The government also banned Abdou Latif Coulibaly’s Wade, un opposant
au pouvoir: L’alternance piégée? (Dakar: Editions Sentinelles, 2003), which
detailed the Wade regime’s abuses.
17. Five percent of the population had these citizenship rights before World
War II. Although competitive elections were confined to the Four
Communes in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, plural
associational life spread to the hinterlands before the advent of mass suf-
frage (Gellar 2005: 40).
18. At the very least, we would expect the number of parties to plateau if lead-
ers of electorally unsuccessful parties do not deregister them but instead
abandon them to join more successful parties in subsequent elections.
However, this does not appear to be the case. For instance, of the 46
chronological parties sought, 43 remained politically active in 2011–12.
19. For several politicians who were either deceased or difficult to meet, the
author interviewed a close colleague or family member in the party. Several
founders were not trackable, but local newspaper reporting provided par-
tial information about them and their parties. No founders were entirely
unidentifiable; all were active in Ministry of Interior meetings about the
electoral code as late as 2004–2006 or were known by Senegalese journal-
ists or politicians.
24 C. L. KELLY

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CHAPTER V.

IN THE GORGE AGAIN.

"But 'tis done—all words are idle—


Words from me are vainer still,
But the thoughts we cannot bridle
Force their way without the will."
BYRON.

ONCE more Jem and Jean were in the gorge, not rushing
headlong down the steep path, but walking steadily up.
Jean could have raced as lightly the one way as the other;
only she held herself in for the sake of her companion. Jem
was overworked and out of condition. He had come to
Dulveriford for rest, arriving late the evening before.

This sharp ascent was about as much as he could manage,


taking it easily. There is no great practice in hill-climbing to
be had at the East-End. Jean's quick eyes noted the
occasional pauses, which were not only for admiration of
the scene. He had lost his healthy tan, gaining instead a
fixed paleness; but the face at twenty-nine was handsomer
than at twenty-two. It had grown finer and more refined.
The nobility of deep thought and the purity of self-
abnegation shone through every feature.

Seven years since he had walked through this gorge.


The former time was vividly present with Jem. He found
himself unexpectedly haunted by recollections of the fair
girl, whom he had last seen here. Seven years at his age
are a considerable slice out of a lifetime; and Jem had long
ago risen out of the despair into which he was plunged by
Evelyn's engagement to General Villiers. He could look back
now, with a kind compassion, to his own misery of mind at
that time, almost as to the misery of another person; and
he could feel a friendly interest in Evelyn's welfare. He had
ceased to dream of her in connection with himself. His life
was full of thought, full of work; it was a life entirely
devoted to the good of others; and so of necessity it was a
joyous life.

Yet somehow he had never managed to fall in love a second


time. Evelyn Devereux had been his first and only love.
That one short episode had tinged his whole being. Evelyn
Devereux, his love, was dead; but Evelyn Villiers would
always be to him "a bright particular star."

All these seven years he had not been to Dulveriford. At


first he had purposely stayed away, in dread of associations,
in dread still more of seeing Evelyn, and so renewing the
misery of loss. Later, he had not been free to come.

During five years past he had toiled, with every power of


mind and body, in a great East-End Parish, rising to the
position of Senior Curate—a man esteemed and beloved by
all who knew him. He was in touch with his brother clergy,
in touch with the working men around, in touch with the
mothers, the children, the sick, the poor. Dominated in his
uttermost being by the love of Christ, intensely loving and
lovable himself, he won the love of others, and through
their love for him, he led them to a nobler life, a life of
service to the Muster whom he served. But the doing of this
meant no easy-chair existence.
Offers of livings had come to him, not once or twice only.
Jem was, however, in no haste to change. He delighted in
his present sphere; and he cared little for advancement.

Once a year, generally in spring or early summer, he went


for a month to Scotland, to recruit his much-tasked
energies. At other times he could seldom be spared; and
when he had a few days, his mother wanted him. Two or
three times he had met the Trevelyans of Dulveriford in
Scotland, when his holiday had happened to coincide with
that of Mr. Trevelyan: but Dulveriford, he had not seen,
declining all invitations.

This year his annual change had, from one cause or


another, proved less successful than usual; and the advent
of hot weather knocked him down. Jem struggled on till
August; then doctor and friends insisted on another rest. An
invitation from Dulveriford Rectory, coming at the right
moment, was accepted.

Jem had not known, till after his arrival, that General and
Mrs. Villiers were at home again. The knowledge would
have made no difference as to his coming; for he counted
himself completely cured of that long past suffering, able
even to smile over it. Yet, walking through the glen once
more, amid the surroundings of golden water, flecked leaf-
shadows, sunshine and rocks, Jem experienced something
like a transient revival of the old pain. He seemed to see
Evelyn's face at every turn; to meet again the fringed black-
blue eyes turned full upon him in wondering delight.

"Is it too far? Shall we turn back?" asked Jean, when Jem
paused again near the rustic bridge, to lean against a tree.

Jem smiled at her. "You must give me a day or two to get


up my powers," he said.
Jean did not pester him with solicitude. She had been
trained to despise fussiness in the health-line. To be ill at
the Rectory was almost a crime; not in the sense in which
Sybella Devereux made it a crime, by always ascribing it to
the sufferer's own imprudence; but bodily weakness was
something to be ashamed of, something to be hidden and
trampled under foot.

"Do you remember the last time you and I were here?"
asked her companion.

He could not get the recollection of Evelyn out of his head.


It was, however, a soft recollection, not unpleasing, though
sad; and he could quite well bear to talk of her.

"Just after General Villiers was engaged to Cyril's sister,"


Jean answered promptly.

"General Villiers told me of the engagement here—in the


gorge."

"Yes; I heard him begin, and I ran away. Aunt Marie had
been so vexed, because I came upon her and my father
talking about it. Aunt Marie didn't like her to marry
somebody so old."

"You were a funny little girl in those days." Jem looked


attentively into the grave face. "Jean—I should like to see
you laugh more."

"Would you? But there is nothing to laugh at."

"Never?"

"Oh, sometimes—when people do odd things. Not often.


Why should one be always laughing?" asked Jean, with
girlish solemnity. "I don't think life is so very funny. It is
worse than funny. There are so many things that one can't
understand."

"What things?" Jem moved to a fallen log, and sat down,


motioning Jean to do the same.

"A great many. There are no end of puzzles."

"Tell me one of them."

Jean considered, and came out abruptly with—

"I never do see how Evelyn could marry General Villiers."

"Hardly needful for another person to see, if she cared for


him enough."

"No—but—" There was a singular echo of Jem's "if" in Jean's


expressive face.

"And we have not to settle that point."

"No—but—" a second time, followed by another pause. "No:


of course. Only I don't see how one can help wondering.
Evelyn is so unlike everybody else; so beautiful and clever.
Oh, 'clever' isn't the word. She is much more than clever."

"Intellectual."

"Yes; that is more what I mean. She seems to have such a


—I don't know what to call it! She takes everything in, and
thinks everything over; and then it comes out quite
different, and so fresh. I'm not explaining myself properly.
My father says she is original. And General Villiers isn't the
least original, or clever, or anything. He is only good."

"That is a very important 'only.'"


"Oh, but don't you understand? One ought to be good, but
one ought not to be only good. It shouldn't be just mere
commonplace goodness."

"It ought to have a distinct character of its own, in each


individual," suggested Jem, not a little interested in the play
of Jean's face.

"Yes; I suppose that is what I want to say. My father always


talks of General Villiers as such a 'very good man;' and it
sounds to me as if he said it because he had nothing else to
say. But I don't think one loves people merely because they
are good—does one? At least I don't. There are numbers of
good people that I can't love at all. I suppose I like their
goodness, but I don't love themselves, because there
doesn't seem to be anything in them to love."

"Or if there is something, Jean does not see it."

Jean was silent for a minute, and her next words might
have seemed disconnected with her last. They did not so
seem to Jem. He had the clue, and he could supply the
connecting link.

"Evelyn was only two or three years older than I am now


when she married. Only just eighteen—and he was the
same age that my father is now."

"A considerable difference!"

"Cyril says people drift into things and can't help


themselves."

"Cyril has had immense experience, no doubt."

"Then it isn't true?"


"Some people are weak enough to let themselves drift; but
nobody need. Mind that, Jean."

"If Evelyn drifted into marrying the General—"

"Yes?" as Jean came to a stop.

"She must be very sorry now. That is what I have been


thinking. Because it wouldn't be enough, I should think, to
have a husband who was only just so very good and
nothing else. And he doesn't care for the same things or the
same people that she does. He never reads the books she
likes most . . . Evelyn often looks as if she were sorry. She
looks as if—I don't know exactly how to put it—only there's
a look in her face, as if she did so want something else,
something more than she has. He is very kind, of course;
but still—I shouldn't think she was so very happy."

Jem rested his forehead on his hand. Jean's words brought


a curious sharp sense of pain; literal pain darting through
his temples, symbol and fruit of an acuter pain below. The
pain was for Evelyn, not for himself. He was not thinking of
himself, or of his own loss. Personally he had nothing to do
with Evelyn Villiers, whatever he had felt for Evelyn
Devereux. But, if Jean's conjecture were true—if that fair
creature's life had been marred by hasty action, before she
was old enough to judge for herself, Jem hardly knew how
to face the thought. It seemed to him so very possible, and
so very terrible.

If Evelyn were happy, he could rest in the consciousness of


her happiness, going his own way peacefully enough; but if
she were not—How could he rest, knowing her to be
miserable, while he was powerless to help? "Miserable" is a
strong word; but if love and sympathy were lacking
between the husband and wife, what could it mean less
than misery for either of them?

Jem's pulse throbbed with the picture which unconscious


Jean had conjured up; yet he spoke quietly: "Jean, you
must take care how you say such things."

"I wouldn't, to anybody accept you. I never do. But I can't


help seeing: and it is true."

A good ten minutes of silence followed. Jean rose and went


to the edge, gazing down upon a swirl of dark water in the
rocky bed below. Jem remained where he was. He had to
quell a rush of fierce longing to ask more, to find out more,
to learn how things really were with Evelyn, to know if
possible only that she was happy. He craved nothing further,
but that he did crave, passionately, bitterly—just to know
that she was happy!

The peace of years was suddenly broken up, and a whirlpool


of the old suffering had him in its grasp. There was nobody
to see, for Jean's back was turned; and had anybody else
been present, there was not much to be seen. At the ten
minutes' end, Jem had mastered himself.

He came to Jean's side, only a little paler than usual, to say,


"Don't go too close to the edge. You would have a poor
chance if you fell over."

Jean retreated two steps obediently. "But I am never giddy,"


she said. "Cyril can't stand there. It makes no difference to
me."

"You have strong nerves."

"I've always lived here, you know. Shall we go on now?"


"I don't think I can walk much further to-day. Stupid of me,
isn't it?" said Jem cheerfully. "I'm a little—tired, perhaps.
So, on the whole, we may as well turn back."

It seemed like a dream to Jem. He could hardly believe his


own eyes, when, as they came down the path, two people
advanced towards them from below, passing out from the
tree-shadows as once before. It was almost on the self-
same spot that the encounter took place. Jem and Jean
were not rushing now, however. Jean was no longer a child,
but verging on womanhood; and Jem had lost some of his
buoyancy; and twice seven years might have passed over
the General's head.

Evelyn was perhaps the least altered of the quartette; or so


Jem thought at the first moment. She appeared hardly less
young or less lovely than the picture stored in his memory.
Yet the next instant, he saw that she, too, was changed—
not only developed into fuller beauty and more womanly
grace. Development had not taken place merely along the
lines that might have been expected. The faintly satirical set
of her lips was altogether new; and the eyes—those
wonderful violet eyes—no longer shone with delight in the
world around her, but were full of a sad forlornness, as if
she had come to the end of her life, had tasted all it had to
offer, and had found that all unsatisfying. Jem understood
now what Jean had meant.

The four stopped, of course, and exchanged kind greetings.

General Villiers was delighted to see Jem. "I meant to call


on you this afternoon," he said, "but we met Mr. Trevelyan,
and my wife has asked him to bring you in to dinner to-
night. Just a family dinner—only one or two others. You will
come, of course. Mr. Trevelyan could not promise for
Madame Collier."

"Thanks, I shall be much pleased," Jem answered.

"Why not give us three or four nights before you go back?


We should be delighted," urged the General.

"I don't think I can. I'm afraid I shall have to hurry away,
even sooner than I meant."

Jean gave him a look.

"Thanks, all the same."

"So you have secured a peep at the glen the first thing,"
remarked Evelyn. "Is it not curious that we should meet
again just on this spot, after so many years? Do you
remember?"—with her gracious smile. Then she asked,
"Have you been ill lately? I had not heard of it."

"Rather out of sorts. Yes—I remember! Seven years ago."

"Only seven. It seems so much longer. I could believe you if


you said 'seventeen years!'"

General Villiers looked down on her with a smile. "That


would make you a good deal older than you are, my dear,"
he said. He was proud of her youthful beauty, and never
sought to hide the discrepancy in age—which, indeed,
would have been a hopeless task. "Now, with me the years
slip by in a marvellous way—like lightning. Almost as soon
as a year begins it is gone. Seven years! Impossible! But
Mr. Trevelyan looks older."
Evelyn's glance went again to Jem with kind solicitude. "He
looks—not at all well," she said.

"East-End work takes something out of a man," Jem said, in


apology for his appearance.

"You will not keep on at that always. You will have a living
some day," said the General.

Jem might have told of several rejected livings.

"Some day, perhaps. One would wish to give one's best


years to that work—and then—"

"But not to go on too long," suggested Evelyn. "Not to use


up all your powers."

"They could hardly be used up to a better purpose."

"No—only—" she hesitated, dropping her voice, as the


General turned to speak with Jean. "Oh, I understand! It
must be a splendid life—a life worth living."

"It is a life worth living."

"So different from most people's lives!" and the deep blue
eyes, which for a moment had kindled as of old, went
forlornly to some far distance, with a listless sadness which
struck home to Jem like a keen stab. Then they came back
to him, kind and anxious again. "But you do look too much
overdone. You must remember your friends."

"My love, we have not much time to spare," the General


said. "I suppose we can hardly ask Mr. Trevelyan to come
again with us to the bridge."

"He said he was tired," put in Jean.


"I am sure he is. Oh no; we shall meet by-and-by. He ought
to go back now," Evelyn said at once, and they parted.

Jem made no effort to decide the matter for himself.

Few words were spoken on the way home. Jean gave a


questioning glance now and then, of which Jem seemed
unconscious. He was absorbed in his own thoughts. They
did the remaining distance at a good brisk pace, never
slackening speed. But when the house was reached, Jem all
at once succumbed, seeming to be utterly wearied out. Jean
had never known him so before, and she saw with a sense
of dismay. To be scolded by Madame Collier for not taking
better care of her cousin was a new experience, in a house
where nobody ever thought about health; but Jem's
exhaustion was something new also.

He had found his way to the drawing-room sofa, and there


it seemed most merciful to leave him undisturbed. None in
the house could guess at the real cause of his prostration—
could know how the haunting vision of those sad violet eyes
never left him for a moment. Jem saw them continually,
whether his own aching eyes were open or shut.

"I'm sure I don't know what's to be done. He doesn't seem


fit to go," said Madame Collier, when six o'clock came.

Jean would hardly have been more startled by the fall of a


stack of chimneys than by the implied doubt. Not go to
dinner at the Park! Memory failed to supply any precedent
in the shape of a broken engagement. If a Trevelyan
undertook to do something, he did it at all costs and
hazards, short of absolute impossibility.

"I don't know what he really wishes, or what is the matter


with him. He is tired and has a headache, and he can't or
won't say more. Do bring him to a point, Jean, somehow. I
wish he had not been so far this morning: but one could not
guess, and it had no business to knock him down like this.
Your father ordered a fly, for we didn't suppose Jem could
manage the walk; and it will be here soon after seven."

Jean went to the drawing-room, wondering. Flys were not a


common indulgence at the Rectory. She found Jem in the
deep easy-chair near an open window, with his hand over
his eyes. Jean's step was light as of old, and he seemed
unconscious of her entrance. She stood looking at him for
some seconds.

"Aunt Marie thinks you don't want to dine at the Park," she
said at length.

Jem's sudden movement was as of one awakened from a


dream. "It's no matter," he said.

"But if you are too tired—" Jean paused, astonished at her


own words. Nobody at the Rectory ever thought of leaving a
matter undone, merely on account of fatigue.

Jem did not at once reply. He was leaning back, quiet


enough outwardly: and Jean could not see through the
shield of composure. She could see the pale and drawn
look: she could not know how intense was the craving to
judge for himself as to Evelyn's happiness. The whole force
of his desires pointed in that direction. But there was
another side to the matter. Jem needed all his powers for
his work: and if one glimpse of Evelyn's face had so
destroyed his calm, how would things be after a whole
evening in her presence? Might he deliberately risk it?
Would it not be wiser, better, to keep away? For he could do
no good. If Evelyn were not happy, he had no power to
touch her unhappiness. Seeing her thus could only mean
distress to himself, not gain to her.
Jean stood waiting, perplexed at his indecision; and as his
hand went slowly over the rumpled hair, she began again—

"If your head is so bad—I mean, if you think you had better
not go—"

"It is bad. Yes—I think I had better not go."

"Stay at home! Must you?" Jean had not expected this; and
she was a good deal disappointed in Jem.

"I am afraid I must."

"It isn't walking, you know. The fly is ordered. And Evelyn
will expect you. Wouldn't going do you good?"

Jem could truly answer, "No, I think not." He added in a


gentle voice, which Jean knew to be decisive—"Tell aunt
Marie I will give it up. And, Jean, I wish you would explain
something else. I am sorry, but I find I can only stay two
more nights here."

"You are not thinking of London again so soon."

"No."

Jean moved away without a protest, and gave her double


message.

"Well, it can't be helped, though I know your father will be


vexed," was Madame Collier's comment. "There's something
wrong with Jem that we don't understand. Go home in two
days! That he will not. He has heard something from
somebody by post, I suppose. It doesn't matter. We won't
let him off any of his week."
But when Jem knew himself to be in the right, his will was
unbending as iron. After two nights, he left and he did not
see Evelyn again meantime.

CHAPTER VI.

FRICTION.

"If two lives join, there is oft a scar,


They are one and one, with a shadowy third,
One near one is too far."
R. BROWNING.

MRS. VILLIERS of Dutton Park was a marked personage in


Dutton; partly from her husband's wealth and position,
partly from her own personal charms. Her actions were
watched and commented on to any extent. Where she
drove, how she dressed, what she said, thought, and did,
became matters for daily chit-chat. Above all, whom she
called upon, whom she chose to welcome, and whom she
treated with coldness, were questions which stirred the
neighbourhood—more especially that part of the
neighbourhood which belonged to the congregation of St.
John's.
General Villiers was looked upon as the exclusive property
of the St. John's clique; and where he belonged, his wife of
course belonged also. How could she help it? He always
occupied in Church one of the few carved chancel chairs,
and Evelyn occupied a second by his side—an enviable
distinction not to be accorded to everybody. When he stood
up, martial and handsome, he was a fine specimen of the
"old soldier," and he spoke out the responses in a deep bass
voice, while his face was illuminated with earnest feeling,
the sincerity of which none could doubt.

Evelyn, standing by his side, looked lovely and graceful, of


course, for she never could be anything else; but nobody
could help noting her air of habitual weariness, more
especially during the sermon. Mr. Kennedy always preached
for half-an-hour, sometimes more, on no occasion less.
Whether or no his brain happened to contain matter enough
for a thirty minutes' discourse, thirty minutes at least the
congregation invariably had. Now a sermon, like a gas, is
capable of indefinite expansion; but also, like a gas, a
sermon grows thinner through stretching. That which might
be a forceful little address, when compressed into fifteen or
twenty minutes, becomes too often thin and weak when
pulled out to fit thirty or forty minutes.

The congregation generally did not object. These soothing


effusions, lengthily spun out, suited them—or at least suited
their taste, which is not quite the same thing—and since
they thoroughly accepted Mr. Kennedy, they were loyally
willing to accept any amount of sermon from him, wholesale
and without criticism. But to this state of mind Evelyn had
not attained; and she chafed beneath the weekly infliction,
making little effort to hide what she felt, and thus becoming
a subject for animadversion. To add to the displeasure of
the clique, she only came to St. John's when her husband
came. If he were kept in by rheumatism, she wandered to
Dulveriford Church.

Evelyn cared little what might be said, since she cared little
for Dutton people. If any murmur reached her, she smiled
her faintly satirical smile, and went on, unmoved. Why
should she shape her life to suit the notions of Lady Lucas,
or the Atherstones, or a dozen other people, whose very
existence was a matter of indifference to her? The only
friends she had in the place were the Trevelyans.

General Villiers had shown displeasure more than once at


her persistent coldness to those whom he most favoured.
He loved his young wife intensely—not, of course, with the
romantic worship of courtship days, which could see no fault
in her; but with a deep and tried affection, far transcending
hers for him. It is not too much to say that he would
willingly have given his life for hers, any day. Nevertheless
he was keenly conscious of a certain independence of will,
which would not submit to his dictation; and, as we have
seen, he did not scruple to tell her plainly when he counted
her in the wrong, though never with harshness.

"My love, I wish you would arrange to see a little more of


Colonel Atherstone and Miss Atherstone," he said one day in
the beginning of December, speaking with his air of gentle
authority. He had been incited to this, of course, and of
course quite unconsciously on his part: for he was a most
transparent man, and very much under the dominion of
others, without being in the least aware of it.

Evelyn's wifely instinct divined or guessed both facts. She


did not blame him for the first, because she understood the
second. She had complete trust in his chivalrous honour.
That any person should venture directly to blame her to him
was a thing impossible in her eyes. Her affection for him
was far more akin to that of child for father, than of wife for
husband; and it was often buried under a pile of rubbish,
resulting from everyday friction; but her trust was
undoubting. Nor was that trust misplaced. Yet—and Evelyn
knew it—others could turn him to and fro, without his
knowledge.

"I am afraid it is sometimes remarked," he went on, "that


you hold aloof from them. You are so often engaged when
they call; and you never receive them with any warmth. I
do not ask you to give up your friends, Evelyn, but surely I
have a right to expect kindness to mine."

"Anybody except the Atherstones,"' she said.

"Nay, Evelyn; why?"

"I cannot endure them."

"You do not give yourself the opportunity to become


acquainted—"

"I am too much acquainted already. Anybody rather than


them! I can get on with Lady Lucas, for she is a perfect
lady. I could not make a friend of her, but we are on civil
terms."

"Civil terms!"

"I mean, we are all politeness. We discuss the weather, and


we don't yawn. But none of that set suit me."

General Villiers wore a look of displeasure. "I should not


have expected you to call my friends by such a term."

"To call them a 'set!' Is there any harm? I thought all


Dutton was divided up into sets and cliques. William, I do
try to be polite to the Atherstones when they come; but I
can't do more. I cannot make myself like them."

"I wish to ask them in to lunch one day soon. To-day is


Monday. Will Thursday suit you?"

"If you like," she said coldly.

"You will write the invitation, of course. To lunch, quietly—


by ourselves."

"I would rather have some one else to meet them."

"No—I think not this time. In fact, I have promised the


Colonel that we would be alone. There are matters that I
wish to talk over with him."

"And I am to have the pleasure of Miss Atherstone's


interminable gossip."

Evelyn spoke scornfully, and the General sighed, feeling the


state of things to be deplorable. He was conscious of a
widening gulf between himself and his wife. They could
scarcely talk now on any subject without a jar. If only she
would have submitted herself to his dictum on disputed
points, all would have gone with such delightful
smoothness; but this was far from being the state of the
case.

He had an odd liking for the hugely-moustached Colonel,


whose loud voice and boisterous laugh were so in contrast
with his own gentlemanly quietness. Such likings are
difficult to understand. The Colonel could talk down all
Dutton, and he did not know the meaning of refinement. He
was broad and stout, plain-featured and roughly resolute,
and he would trample with an iron heel on the opinions of
all who differed from himself. He loved nothing better than
to decry the doings of Bishops and Clergy, with a slap-dash
and jaunty vehemence, surrounded by a circle of listeners,
and he would handle recklessly the dearest beliefs of
others, caring nothing whatever for the pain he gave.

This it was which utterly repelled Evelyn. Strange to say,


the General could listen and not disapprove. He would never
himself speak thus; but he would permit and condone
harshness, even coarseness, in his friend. Evelyn could only
look upon the Colonel's power over her husband as a
species of bewildering fascination.

Thursday afternoon happened to be a free time with Jean,


and as she had not seen Evelyn for some days, she started
for the Park. The sky looked threatening; a sharp frost had
set in; and Mr. Trevelyan foretold snow; but Jean cared little
for weather. She was secure of a welcome from Evelyn, and
secure of an escort home, if she should not return till after
dark.

Light of foot and light of heart, she sped briskly on her way.
The bitter cold and the half frozen slippery fields were
nothing to her young vigour. She had a great joy ahead, for
Oswald would be at home for the New Year. Oswald was in
the Army now, a fine young man, Jean's pride and delight.
She firmly believed that no such promising subaltern had
ever been seen in the Service before. Oswald's choice of a
profession had been something of a trial to Mr. Trevelyan,
who would have wished his only son to follow in his own
steps; but he was the last man to use pressure for such a
result.

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