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Competition and Accommodation in Post-Conflict Democracy: The Case of Mozambique

Mozambique has just completed its second multiparty general elections, five years after the first such elections in 1994 capped a two-year peace process and ended a long-running civil war. Because of the special context of its 'democratic transition', Mozambique's new political system must promote both political competition and reconciliation. This is a tall order for any political system, but particularly so for one where democratic institutions are extremely weak and distrust between political actors runs high. While avoiding the 'fallacy of electoralism', this article takes the 1994 and 1999 general elections and the 1998 local elections as benchmarks with which to assess progress toward accommodating these two goals and establishing a democratic political system in Mozambique. The article compares the three elections in terms of their broader impact on the transition process, with particular attention to how the experience of preparing for and conducting elections in each case has affected the larger transition process in two respects. The first of these respects lies in the creation of norms and patterns of interaction in political institutions; the second is in terms of the impact on the outlooks and strategies of the two major political parties with respect to democratic politics in Mozambique.