This dissertation constitutes a contribution to the ongoing effort in social science to find appropriate explanations for African political problems. On the basis of the premise that the extent to which a country is stable or unstable depends on the type of regime that runs that country, the study focuses on the various types of regimes and on political instability. Specifically, it attempts to measure the performance of the African party systems and regime types of the decade of the sixties with a view to explain why some systems tend to increase while others decrease the possibility of instability and to offer a model capable of explaining instability in African countries. / Our data were drawn principally from the World Bank and the United Nations' sources. Other sources included: Taylor and Hudson, World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators, 1972, Taylor and Jodice, World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators, Vol. 2, 1983. Morrison et al, Black Africa: Comparative Handbook, 1972. / Our analysis centered around two measuring techniques which entailed simple comparisons of the mean scores of the different systems on key variables. In order to interpret the means meaningfully, the level of performance of the five regime types on selected indicators were determined. Once this was done, it was possible to compute the average cluster scores which provided us with further insight into the performance of the various systems. / Our second measuring activity involved both bivariate and multivariate analysis. Furthermore, in pursuance of our objective to construct a theory of political instability, path analysis technique was employed. / Our analysis revealed that multiparty states were more highly stress with low development and economic performance and high ethnic fractionalization, government sanction and instability. On the other hand, the one party pragmatic and the limited multiparty systems maintained high performance on both economic development and economic performance indicators. Another major finding was the emergence of government sanction and party fractionalization as the best predictors of executive and mass instability. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-07, Section: A, page: 2719. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1986.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75871 |
| Contributors | EKPENYONG, JONAH BASSEY., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 223 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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