To the best of my knowledge, every country that has been run by their Communist Party has at some time (mostly during the Cold War) made that party the only legal political party.
Has any country ever had only one legal political party, and it was someone other than the Commies?
Nazi Germany leaps to mind. I’m certain there are others. Franco’s Spain?
Baathists?
Need some clarification. There is a difference between one-party states, and countries where only one party has any chance of winning. There have been plenty of those, Mexico under PRI comes to mind.
Turkmenistan is a former Communist country, yet they’re still (currently) a one-party state.
Do monarchies count?
I believe that Mexico outlawed most political activity by parties other than the PRI shortly after the Revolution, up until not too long ago. I could be wrong; certainly the country was ruled exclusively by the PRI during that time frame.
Also not every communist country was a de jure one-party state. East Germany had (in theory) several political parties with the Socialist Unity Party being the most powerfull. However no party actually competed with SED.
My God yes–many, many countries have done so. Post-independence Africa was littered with one-party dictatorships, among which Kenya (Kenyan African National Union of Jomo Kenyatta) and Zaire (Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution, Mobutu Sese Seko) spring to mind. There were many others in the Arab world and Latin America.
Your prefatory comment made me think you were going to ask a different question. That question interests me. I think it would not be a hijack to discuss it in this thread. The question is: Have their been countries where a Communist party was elected into power, and then later elected ot of power, without revolution or widespread violence?
-FrL-
Albania?
Bolivia last time I was there was all-Colorado all the time.
Mexico under the PRI in the Old Days.
Argentina at some points, under Peron.
Iraq under Saddam.
Syria now. (As far as I can follow it.)
Fascist Italy was another.
I’m convinced that my Carlista grandfather and his siblings would leave their graves if they heard that Franco guy they helped win the war was a Commie. Them Reds were the ones they fought against!
The Wikipedia article has useful lists of current and former one-party states. These show that the one-party system are not confined to Communist states but rather are a common feature of dictatotorial/authoritarian states.
Conversely not all dictatorships, even not all Communist dictatorships, are/were one-party states. As mentioned by alphaboi867 the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) had several parties (the assignment of parliamentary seats was agreed between the parties before the elections, though - you could strike candidates from the ballot paper but using voting booths was not mandatory so anyone using a booth was declaring himself the unreliable sort of citizen, which was made known to his supervisor and to officials exercising making discretionary decisions about that unreliable citizen).
Nicaragua probably fits the bill. Sandinistas were voted out in 1990. Daniel Ortega was recently re-elected President.
There was no ban on opposition parties during the years the Sandinistas were in power.
The Dominican Republic under Trujillo was a non-communist one-party state - membership of the Partido Dominicano was compulsory.
Isn’t that what Priceguy meant?
Yes… but I just jumped in, I tend to do that.
nitpick This is not entirely accurate. The SED party actually held only about a quarter of the seats in the parliament of East Germany (called the People’s Chamber) throughout most of the country’s existence. There was a number of parties in the country, but all of them were firmly under SED control. The instrument to ensure this was the National Front, a coalition which fielded the candidates for national elections. The various parties were all members of this coalition, and there was a fixed scheme according to which the seats won by the National Front were distributed among its member parties. The National Front was, however, the only entity which fielded candidates - the voter had the opportunity to reject the nominees, but as has already been said, it wasn’t a wise thing to insist on filling out your ballot in secret. This system, combined with the fact that in most countries in the Communist bloc, the crucial decisions weren’t made by parliament anyway but by party boards, ensured that the SED stayed firmly in power although formally it didn’t hold a majority of seats in the People’s Chamber.
Actually the PRI was the third manifestation of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario which became the Partido de la Revolución Mexicana and then morphed into the Partido Revolucionario Institucional in 1946.
I don’t think they outlawed political parties, more like usurped many political organizations. The rival Partido Acción Nacional was founded in 1939.
As far as I can personally remember (since the 60’s) there have been many political parties here including a communist party.
Felipe Calerdón – the current president and member of the PAN party – was born in 1962. He always says that he was inspired into politics by helping his PAN father-candidate try to urge people that YES!; by voting you can change things. Sadly it took until 2000 to do so on a national level. Heck, even back in 1946 the PAN elected its first deputy to the lower house.
Can’t say much for the other parties, since while in the USA I’m a PANista (and in Mexico it’s illegal for me to have an opinion).