Description:
As Tanzanians prepare to go to the polls and the country awaits an election that could mark the end of the CCM rule, potentially ushering in dramatic change in the Tanzanian party system, analysing the relationship between the changeability of the Tanzanian party system and the various aspects of the Tanzanian democracy is both timely and valuable. This is so for at least two reasons. First, such an analysis provides a basis for assessing whether and to what extent the political consequences of party system change in Tanzania are similar to the observations made by Nwokora and Pelizzo (2015) for the South East Asian region. By doing so, we are also able to make a contribution to the comparative study of the consequences of party system change—a topic which, as Nwokora and Pelizzo (2015) reported, has not been adequately covered in the literature. Secondly, such an analysis can also enable us to make some tentative, but educated, guesses as to what may happen in Tanzania if, as many observers have repeatedly predicted, the Presidential elections of next October mark the end of the CCM’s rule.