Against the Wall

Abstract

Official party rules are not the most accurate guide to the reality of party life. The quest for unity is honoured in the breach. Few political parties can afford to alienate existing or potential members by too severe an insistence on compliance with centrally-imposed decisions. Even the single party in a one-party state can encounter difficulty in eliminating factionalism from its affairs; indeed, as in Kenya in the 1970s and Zimbabwe in the 1980s, the indulgence of factions can act as a safety-valve for the maintenance of the régime. But other one-party states, especially those whose rulers feel internationally isolated and grossly unpopular in their own society, dispense altogether with this mechanism. For Saddam Hussein in Iraq, nothing but utter obedience to his command sufficed from the start of his dictatorship.