Zimbabwe And The Polity IV Measure In Zimbabwe

590 Words2 Pages

Renowned for its “of the people” foundation, democracy has become the regime type to which we compare all other regime types- a gold standard of government structure. Because of this ideal, it is of comparative interest that we understand how to classify regimes as either democratic or dictatorial. The Polity IV Measure is a standard for democracy that scores a country (from -10 to +10) on how democratic or dictatorial their election processes and governmental procedures are. Post-independence Zimbabwe is a country that classifies itself as a parliamentary democracy, however due to a history of election scandals and Zimbabwe African National Union’s (ZANU, the current ruling party) maintenance of power for over thirty years, Polity IV granted them a “mixed regime type” score of -4. (Clark, Golder, and Golder 160) It is the purpose of this paper to argue that Zimbabwe does not have a mixed regime, but rather that it employs an authoritarian regime type. After outlining the controversial events resulting from the 2000 general election and surrounding the 2002 presidential election, I...

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