Towards an Institutional Neutrality Index for Party System Fragmentation: An African Case Study

Political fragmentation in Africa lead to a significant challenge to effective governance and stability. Traditional measures of party system fragmentation, such as the Effective Number of Parties (ENP) index, often fail to capture the nuanced realities of African political landscapes, particularly the influence of dominant parties, fluid party affiliations, and the impact of ethnic and regional cleavages. To address these limitations, this paper introduces two novel, \emph{"apolitical"} or \emph{institutional} metrics for calculating the effective number of parties, focusing on geographical and demographic dimensions, including population size and land area. By integrating these local realities and ensuring a minimum threshold of two parties, the proposed models offer a simpler, more contextually relevant framework for understanding political dynamics in Africa, especially in data-scarce environments. This approach provides a valuable tool for analyzing and rationalizing political systems, with potential for broader application beyond the African context.