Introduction

Scholarly interest in the internal workings of African political parties has recently bloomed. This scholarship focuses on understanding how party's strategies and organizational forms affect important democratic qualities, such as accountability, participation, and representation. In particular, most of these studies focus on assessing the relative effectiveness of various campaign strategies, or forms of ‘party voter linkage’ (Kitschelt 2000), to mobilize voters (Cheeseman and Hinfelaar 2009; Bleck and van de Walle 2013; Elischer 2013; Resnick 2013; Weghorst and Lindberg 2013; Kuenzi and Lambright 2015). This literature has also turned to the wider issue of party organization. It has shed light on how decisions taken by party elite in the face of longer running structural factors affect party strength (Arriola 2012; LeBas 2013) and on how the internal organizations of parties affect important political outcomes, such as the selection of candidates and party leaders or parties’ choices of public policies (Darracq 2008; Giollabhuí 2013; Ichino and Nathan 2016; Osei 2016).

While these studies shed light on what parties do, these institutionalist perspectives rarely examine why individuals choose to participate in party activism – perhaps the most intense form of voluntary political participation available to citizens (Whiteley and Seyd 2002). The few studies that do examine political motivations often resort to some account of clientelism (Ichino 2006; Bob-Milliar 2012). These studies focus on the ‘demand side’ of political relations – what participants appear to seek from parties. Yet, in practice, very few activists reap the benefits of patronage in these strapped new democracies (van de Walle 2007). Considering the broader ‘supply side’ of what parties actually provide to party members, instead, sheds more light on the motivations for active party membership, particularly sustained activism, in contexts where patronage resources are scarce.

This chapter weighs into these debates by considering Nigerian party loyalists who participate in party activities at the low points of the electoral cycle in the Fourth Republic. During campaigns and elections, most activists and frequent attendees at party meetings can expect small rewards, such as bars of soap, beer, or a bag of rice, a norm between candidates and their campaigners (Bratton 2008).