Party Dominance ‘Theory’: Of What Value?

This paper critiques the alleged value of the notion of ‘party dominance’ or the ‘dominant party system’, mainly propagated in South Africa by Roger Southall, Hermann Giliomee and Charles Simkins, and very much in vogue amongst scholars in the Netherlands, and to some extent in the USA and other places. Its overseas lineage is traced and its explanatory powers critiqued. It is argued that the approach is flawed democratically in being...