Party-Building Inside-Out: Youth and Women’s Wings in African Opposition Parties

• In Event: Comparative Party-Building in Tumultuous Times

Abstract

While electoral authoritarian regimes predominate in sub-Saharan Africa, yet little is known about the internal structures or activities of opposition parties in such settings. This paper focuses on party-building strategies inside opposition parties’ women and youth organizations. I develop a theory of party-building under competitive asymmetries which emphasizes three distinct roles of opposition womens’ and youth wings: (1) activist recruitment, (2) candidate training and (3) electoral mobilization. Drawing on an original survey carried out with members of women and youth wings of opposition parties in Tanzania, the paper provides an “inside the black box” view of these intraparty activities ahead of the 2015 national elections there. I combine these data with a nationally-representative candidate preferences survey carried out in 2015 in order to assess the extent to which opposition party women and youth wings engage in activities that enhance candidate viability in the eyes of voters.

Author

• Keith Weghorst, Vanderbilt University