As the legislative and municipal elections approach in Cameroon, there is a growing excitement among modest political parties. Dr. Gérard Bounougou, a political science lecturer at the University of Douala, shares his insights on this mobilization. He believes that this fervor should not be seen as a simple conjunctural activism but rather as an expression of politization from below and a quest for legitimation in a historically centralized state.
According to Dr. Bounougou, small parties lack state funding and national symbolic capital, and therefore, see local elections as their only structural opportunity to exist legally and financially. The public financing of parties is conditioned by their representativeness, making their mobilization a strategy for organizational survival. This also reveals a pathology of the Cameroonian party system, characterized by an inflation of parties without sociological anchorage.
Dr. Bounougou notes that the creation of political parties in Cameroon has become similar to creating businesses to monetize an investiture. As a result, he views this fervor with ambivalence, seeing it as a sign of democratic vitality and awareness that decentralization opens up a local political market, but also as a often-fictitious mobilization without a militant base, concrete project, or deployment means.
In the current political context, where the game seems open despite the presence of heavyweights, Dr. Bounougou assesses the chances of small parties. He does not analyze the political game as a market of pure and perfect competition but as a field of forces where the state structures opportunities. The Cameroonian context is marked by an "opening under constraint," with the electoral code and laws allowing multipartyism in local elections and decentralization offering 360 competition spaces.
However, Dr. Bounougou highlights that the field remains closed structurally due to two major obstacles that small parties often underestimate. The first is the economic obstacle of the election, which is extremely costly in Cameroon. The second is the socio-anthropological obstacle, as local voting remains a vote of allegiance, belonging, and network. The heavyweights have capitalized on decades of clientelism and notability, making it challenging for small parties to compete.
Despite these challenges, Dr. Bounougou believes that small parties have chances, albeit conditional and localized, never national. These chances lie in three interstices: the failure of big parties, abstention, and tactical alliances. A small party united around a consensual local leader can create a surprise where big parties are divided. In large cities with high abstention rates and volatile youth votes, a small party with a generational and anti-system discourse can capture an electorate that no longer identifies with heavyweights.
Dr. Bounougou concludes that the best chance for small parties is not to win alone but to form tactical alliances. The upcoming local elections will be an opportunity for these parties to test their strategies and potentially create surprises in the Cameroonian political landscape. The outcome will depend on various factors, including the ability of small parties to mobilize and capitalize on the interstices identified by Dr. Bounougou.
Key points
- Small parties in Cameroon see local elections as a window of opportunity to exist legally and financially.
- The Cameroonian political context is marked by an "opening under constraint," with opportunities and challenges for small parties.
- Dr. Gérard Bounougou identifies three interstices for small parties to succeed: failure of big parties, abstention, and tactical alliances.
