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Bellwethers of Party Dysfunction: Independents in South African Local Elections

Thu, August 29, 12:00 to 1:30pm, Hilton, Cardozo

Abstract

Dominant parties across sub-Saharan Africa tend to face their greatest electoral competition from disgruntled urban voters who have more information, higher education, greater networks and more resources generally than their rural counterparts. Yet, in South Africa, independent candidates crop up in less fertile environments, choosing to run in relatively rural districts where the ruling party has historically high margins of support. In the South African system, local governments are elected according to a combination of proportional representation and the direct election of ward councilors. Why would an independent choose to take on candidates from the country’s dominant party in settings where voters might be comparatively loyal to that party? This phenomenon is particularly puzzling given expectations from the literature on party competition that support for independent candidates is a sign of weakening partisanship.
This paper argues that independent candidates are bellwethers of party dysfunction. A times series analysis of four rounds of local government elections from 2000 to 2016 in South Africa provides evidence that independents enter races where service delivery is comparatively poor. The paper combines data from the Independent Electoral Commission with nationally representative surveys using the municipal ward and municipality as the units of analysis. I find that registered voters are more motivated to turn out in areas where independents enter the race than otherwise. Additionally, the emergence of independents does not simply reflect an increase in party competition generally. This pattern suggests fertile ground for independent entry may exist where voters want change but do not support existing opposition parties. This finding is consistent with my previous theoretical work that suggests party defection is an outcome of party dysfunction and related to weakened electoral accountability. While this paper sheds light on South African dynamics, it is broadly about new sources of political competition in developing democracies and the particular challenges to which dominant parties are susceptible.
But while independent candidates may signal dissatisfaction with the status quo, their ability to effect change in a dominant party system is limited. I show that the emergence of a small party in an electoral district in South Africa is associated with greater competition in future electoral rounds than the emergence of an independent candidate. This implies that whether independents can herald meaningful change depends on their ability to transform local discontent into more than once-off support for a single candidate.
This paper is relevant to the literature on dominant parties, partisanship, democratization and electoral competition. It also makes a methodological contribution by developing a framework for comparing electoral districts over time. The South African municipal demarcation board redistricts wards ahead of each election. I develop an indicator to compare the geographic area of wards across time and show how sensitive my findings are to changes in the cutoff used for this indicator.

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