Despite growing interest in party politics in Africa, the activities and roles of African opposition parties are still underexplored, especially in the context of one-party-dominant ‘hybrid’ regimes where they are allowed to operate but face a myriad of constraints. In these settings, opposition parties face a common dilemma: having to participate in the regime’s institutions and protest against them at the same time. Existing frameworks fail to provide a full and accurate picture of how opposition parties can erode the incumbent’s dominance and promote regime change. This article offers a novel functional framework, drawing from comparative research in Burkina Faso and Uganda. It identifies a set of three functions that opposition parties perform within a hybrid regime: denunciation, mobilization of dissent, and succession signalling. Understanding opposition parties’ functions in a hybrid regime through this alternative framework enables us to reconcile the seemingly contradictory behaviour of opposition parties that work both within and against the status quo and to better evaluate their role in this setting.

中文翻译：

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混合政权中的反对派：布基纳法索和乌干达反对党的职能

尽管人们对非洲政党政治的兴趣与日俱增，但非洲反对党的活动和作用仍未得到充分探索，尤其是在一党主导的“混合”政权的背景下，它们被允许运作但面临着无数的限制。在这种情况下，反对党面临一个共同的困境：必须同时参与政权机构并对其进行抗议。现有框架未能全面准确地说明反对党如何削弱现任者的主导地位并促进政权更迭。本文提供了一个新颖的功能框架，借鉴了布基纳法索和乌干达的比较研究。它确定了反对党在混合政权中执行的三项职能：谴责、动员异议和继任信号。