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African Political Systems Revisited: Changing Perspectives on Statehood and Power (Integration and Conflict Studies #26)

Reexamining a classical work of social anthropology, African Political Systems (1940), edited by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, this book looks at the colonial and academic context from which the work arose, as well as its reception and its subject matter, and looks at how the work can help with analysis of current politics in Africa. This book critically reflects upon the history of anthropology. It also contributes to a political anthropology which is aware of its antecedents, self-reflexive as a discipline, conscious of pitfalls and biases, and able to locate itself in its academic, social and political environment.

African Political Thought

Focusing on individual political thinkers and beginning with indigenous African political thought, the book successively examines African nationalism, African socialism, populism and Marxism, Africanism and pan-Africanism, concluding with contemporary perspectives on democracy, development and the African state.

African Politics and Ethics: Exploring New Dimensions

In this book, Munyaradzi Felix Murove explores African traditional ethical resources for African politics. Arguing that African ethics is integral to African post-colonial political contentious discourse, Murove invites the reader to reflect on various problematic political issues in post-colonial Africa and how African ethics has been applied in these situations. Starting with a succinct discussion of the scope of African ethics, he discusses how African ethical values have been applied by post-colonial politicians in the reconstruction of their societies. Further, Murove looks critically at the issue of African poverty and how the ethic of regional integration and economic cooperation among post-colonial African nation-states has been instrumental to efforts aimed at overcoming the scourge of poverty. The main question this book seeks to answer is: Are African traditional ethical values a panacea to modern African political problems?

African Politics in Comparative Perspective

This revised and expanded second edition of African Politics in Comparative Perspective reviews fifty years of research on politics in Africa and addresses some issues in a new light, keeping in mind the changes in Africa since the first edition was written in 2004. The book synthesizes insights from different scholarly approaches and offers an original interpretation of the knowledge accumulated in the field. Goran Hyden discusses how research on African politics relates to the study of politics in other regions and mainstream theories in comparative politics. He focuses on such key issues as why politics trumps economics, rule is personal, state is weak and policies are made with a communal rather than an individual lens. The book also discusses why in the light of these conditions agriculture is problematic, gender contested, ethnicity manipulated and relations with Western powers a matter of defiance.

African Population And Capitalism: Historical Perspectives

This is a synthesis of case studies and theory which takes issue with established African demographic theory, emphasising that demography is an historical process, a permanent and varied adaptation to social and economic change. The book covers 20 African societies in the sub-Saharan region, examining not the effects of slavery, colonialism and capitalism on each, but also the resistance and resilience of indigenous African institutions and individuals.

African Postcolonial Modernity: Informal Subjectivities And The Democratic Consensus (African Histories and Modernities)

African cultures and politics remain significantly affected by precolonial and postcolonial configurations of modernity, as well as hegemonic global systems. This project explores Africa's conversation with itself and the rest of the world, critiquing universalist notions of democratization.

African Presidential Republics (African Governance)

This book provides a systematic assessment of the behaviour of some relatively successful presidents in African presidential republics, examining the part played by presidents in the development of their countries. Using two groups of case studies, African Presidential Republics examines the variations between presidential republics within Africa since decolonisation. Jean Blondel divides the ten countries studied into those in which presidents had always been elected regularly, namely Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal and Tanzania, and those in which there was irregularity in the appointment of presidents, namely Benin, Uganda, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria. The case studies analyse the manner in which presidential republics have manifested themselves in Africa, exploring the argument that the presidential republic is one of the key institutional arrangements likely to lead societies towards development. African Presidential Republics will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, comparative politics and political leadership.

African Refugees: Development Aid And Repatriation

Of the world's refugees, more than a third live in Africa, displaced from their homelands by war, poverty, famine and political persecution. In this book, contributors explore key issues related to these refugee populations. The first section looks at the legal framework for defining and assisting refugees, and the second deals with the issue of relief by considering specific cases, the general problems faced and particular relief efforts. Subsequent chapters examine forced migration, resettlement and repatriation, conflict with local populations, integration of refugees, and sustainable development.

African Security and the African Command: Viewpoints on the US Role in Africa

<p>After the end of the Cold War and a failed mission in Somalia, the US decided to wash its hands of major military operations in Africa. Within the past few years, however, strategic interests in the region have grown, based largely on the threat of international terrorist group activities there. In 2007, the Bush Administration created a new military presence in Africa, AFRICOM (United States Africa Command), professed to be based not on occupying military or fixed bases, but rather on capacity building for and collaboration with African security forces. <p>Some see AFRICOM as the answer to an African security system crippled by a lack of resources, widespread politicization and institutional weakness. Others claim the program is nothing more than a characteristic attempt by the US to secure its own interests in the region without regard to the actual needs of Africans. A variety of viewpoints on the debate, both from the US and Africa, come together in this collection to examine the objectives and activities of AFRICOM. The result provides the reader with a well-rounded picture of longstanding security challenges in Africa and what might be done to address them.</p>

African Security in the Anthropocene (The Anthropocene: Politik—Economics—Society—Science #36)

Much has been written on security in Africa—its democratic deficit, poor civil-military relations, and myriad conflicts—but these are often treated in isolation from one another. This book takes a different approach, as it links all of these issues to the dynamics of the Anthropocene. Penned by African scholars on the continent and in the diaspora, it examines the different challenges not as separate entities but as outcomes of the Anthropocene Age. In this geological epoch, humans have become a global force—unfortunately, not necessarily for good. The interaction between humans and the climate, the effects of waste, the impact of pollution on marine and terrestrial ecosystems, the loss of biodiversity, and the change in the chemical composition of the soil, oceans and atmosphere are key identifiers of the age of the Anthropocene. This has fueled conflict and instability from the vast swathes of the Sahel to Somalia. Responding to these issues of insecurity without understanding their inter-connectedness and how this relates to the environment can only result in failure. From this perspective, the current structures in place are inadequate for the task of confronting insecurity at the state and continental levels, as represented by the African Union. What is needed is a radical reevaluation of Africa’s security architecture and approach to security. This necessitates pooling sovereignty on a continental and global level. It necessitates less state-centric responses that include civil society and the business community as equal partners of states in order to collectively confront insecurity in the age of the Anthropocene.• The authors are academics, policy makers and military veterans who have worked in building capacity on the African continent• The book is comprehensive in scope, strong on theory, pragmatic in policy and reflects experience from the field.• The authors approach makes the book easy, interesting and intriguing.

African Security Issues: Sovereignty, Stability, And Solidarity

As African nations emerge more fully from the immediate postinde-pendence era, there is a pressing need to examine their security concerns from both African and global perspectives. Issues of strategic access and resources, superpower and regional conflict, economic growth and internal stability, and the role of African nations as a significant blo

African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania

Drawing on a wide range of oral and written sources, this book tells the story of Tanzania's socialist experiment: the ujamaa villagization initiative of 1967–1975. Inaugurated shortly after independence, ujamaa ('familyhood' in Swahili) both invoked established socialist themes and departed from the existing global repertoire of development policy, seeking to reorganize the Tanzanian countryside into communal villages to achieve national development. Priya Lal investigates how Tanzanian leaders and rural people creatively envisioned ujamaa and documents how villagization unfolded on the ground, without affixing the project to a trajectory of inevitable failure. By forging an empirically rich and conceptually nuanced account of ujamaa, African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania restores a sense of possibility and process to the early years of African independence, refines prevailing theories of nation building and development, and expands our understanding of the 1960s and 70s world.

African State And Society In The 1990s: Cameroon's Political Crossroads

African State and Society in the 1990s is the first comprehensive English language book to appear on Cameroon's political events since 1989. Designed for academic and policy studies readers, it covers developments from the 1960s to the present as background for an analysis of the continuing conflict since 1990 between the regime and political oppos

The African State and the AIDS Crisis (Global Health Ser.)

This edited volume analyzes African state responses to the AIDS epidemic. Institutionally weak, limited in resources and lacking power in the international system, the African state has been characterized as inefficient, corrupt and illegitimate. The volume questions how aspects of the African state have affected policy responses to AIDS. It highlights how African states must initiate, develop and/or implement the long-term policy solutions necessary to combat AIDS. It employs empirical studies from the international and national arena to illustrate why some African states have been able (and willing) to address AIDS while others have not. Contributions analyze how international actors, civil society organizations, state ideology, patriarchy and state capacity have influenced policies to fight AIDS. Examining AIDS policies through the prism of African state development and linkages to domestic and international actors, this book provides a nuanced understanding of the variety of responses to AIDS in Africa.

African State Governance: Subnational Politics And National Power

Africa is changing and it is easy to overlook how decentralization, democratization, and new forms of illiberalism have transformed federalism, political parties, and local politics. Chapters on Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa help fill an important gap in comparative institutional research about state and local politics in Africa.

African States since Independence: Order, Development, and Democracy (Castle Lecture Series)

Authors Christensen and Laitin argue that an interplay of geographic, historical, and demographic factors undergird sub‑Saharan states’ post‑independence struggles to eradicate poverty, establish democratic accountability, and quell civil unrest. They set out the founding fathers’ challenges in transforming their postcolonial states, many of which are ethnically diverse, geographically diffuse, sparsely populated, and lacking in administrative capacity. With the legacies of the slave trade, partition, Christian missionaries, and extractive colonial institutions complicating their efforts, many African states faced stagnation, authoritarianism, and civil strife. Recent years have seen promising attempts to restore democracy to states under authoritarian rule and to liberalize their economies, suggesting that the region is moving toward a new era. Relying on the best statistical data and richly illustrated with case material, this book is an indispensable source for scholars and policy analysts seeking to understand Africa’s post‑independence political trajectories.

African Struggles Today

Three leading Africa scholars investigate the social forces driving the democratic transformation of postcolonial states across southern Africa. Extensive research and interviews with civil society organizers in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, and Swaziland inform this analysis of the challenges faced by non-governmental organizations in relating both to the attendant inequality of globalization and to grassroots struggles for social justice.Peter Dwyer is a tutor in economics at Ruskin College in Oxford.Leo Zeilig Lecturer at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

African Studies: Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania

Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania is a study of the interplay of vernacular and global languages of politics in the era of decolonization in Africa. Decolonization is often understood as a moment when Western forms of political order were imposed on non-Western societies, but this book draws attention instead to debates over universal questions about the nature of politics, concept of freedom and the meaning of citizenship. These debates generated political narratives that were formed in dialogue with both global discourses and local political arguments. The United Nations Trusteeship Territory of Tanganyika, now mainland Tanzania, serves as a compelling example of these processes. Starting in 1945 and culminating with the Arusha Declaration of 1967, Emma Hunter explores political argument in Tanzania's public sphere to show how political narratives succeeded when they managed to combine promises of freedom with new forms of belonging at local and national level.

African Studies: Political Identity and Conflict in Central Angola, 1975–2002

This book examines the internal politics of the war that divided Angola for more than a quarter-century after its independence. It emphasises the Angolan people's relationship to the rival political forces that prevented the development of a united nation, an aspect of the conflict that has received little attention in earlier studies. Drawing upon interviews with farmers, town dwellers, soldiers and politicians in Central Angola, Justin Pearce examines the ideologies about nation and state that elites deployed in pursuit of hegemony and traces how people responded to these attempts at politicisation. The book not only demonstrates the potency of the rival conceptions of state and nation in shaping perceptions of self-interest and determining political loyalty, but also shows the ways in which allegiances could and did change for much of the Angolan population in response to the experience of military force.

African Studies Series: Political Order And Distributive Crisis (African Studies #Series Number 168)

African Successes, Volume I: Government and Institutions

Studies of African economic development frequently focus on the daunting challenges the continent faces. From recurrent crises to ethnic conflicts and long-standing corruption, a raft of deep-rooted problems has led many to regard the continent as facing many hurdles to raise living standards. Yet Africa has made considerable progress in the past decade, with a GDP growth rate exceeding five percent in some regions. The African Successes series looks at recent improvements in living standards and other measures of development in many African countries with an eye toward identifying what shaped them and the extent to which lessons learned are transferable and can guide policy in other nations and at the international level. The first volume in the series, African Successes: Governments and Institutions considers the role governments and institutions have played in recent developments and identifies the factors that enable economists to predict the way institutions will function.

The African Union: Addressing the challenges of peace, security, and governance (Global Institutions)

Fully revised and updated, the second edition of The African Union continues to offer the most comprehensive overview of the work of the African Union (AU), with special emphasis on its capacity to meet the challenges of building and sustaining governance institutions and security mechanisms. This new edition: Re-examines the African Union at the historic moment of the golden jubilee of the OAU, its predecessor. It examines the AU’s efforts in its first decade, points out some of the organization’s weaknesses, and posits options for addressing more effectively the challenges of peace, security, and governance in coming years. Critically reviews several arrangements and initiatives, including the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). Analyses performance of key institutions and programs of the AU, including the Commission, the Executive Council, the Assembly, and the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) as well as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Discusses how far instability and insecurity on the continent are consequences of bad governance and the lack of strategic leadership. Considers how the absence of a clearly articulated ideology may undermine the implementation of the AU Agenda. In addition to offering revised and updated chapters throughout, this edition includes one new chapter, which critically discusses the AU’s new international partnerships. With an emphasis on the current work of the AU and a view to the future of the organization, this book is essential reading for students and scholars researching African Politics and international organizations.

The African Union: Pan-Africanism, Peacebuilding and Development

The African Union was established in July 2002 by African leaders, evolving from the Organization of African Unity (OAU). However the idea of the African Union can be traced to the Pan-Africanist movement. Timothy Murithi looks at the emergence of Pan-Africanism and how it was institutionalized through the Pan-African Congress and the OAU. He argues that the African Union represents the third phase of the institutionalization of Pan-Africanism. The book examines the limitations of the OAU and discusses whether the African Union can adopt a more interventionist stance in dealing with peacebuilding and development in Africa. The volume assesses the African Union's peace and security institutions and analyzes how it is beginning to collaborate with civil society. It takes a critical look at the Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and argues that Africa needs to adopt a developmental and governance agenda that will be much more responsive towards improving the well-being and livelihood of its peoples.

The African Union (The Evolution of Africa's Major Nations)

Beset by war, disease, famine, human rights abuses, and numerous other problems, Africa today is a continent in need of good leadership. Many people believe the only way Africa will be able to solve its many challenges is by uniting the more than 50 nations on the continent. To that end, the African Union was formed in 2002 as a successor to the largely ineffective Organization of African Unity. The purpose of the African Union is to turn Africa into a political and economic power. The new organization faces many challenges, and the solutions to Africa's problems will not be easy to find. Yet on its shoulders the African Union carries the hopes and dreams of a continent.

The African Union and African Agency in International Politics

This book examines the role of the African Union in relation to African agency in international politics. It examines the manner and extent to which the African Union exercises two forms of agency—shirking and slippage—in its strategic and collaborative partnerships. The author focuses on four major AU partnerships with the European Union, NATO, the United Nations and US AFRICOM. The books examines African agency in each partnership by exploring the politics and dynamics of each partnership in different aspects: the multilevel engagement, institutionalization, resource contribution and disbursement, as well as preference linkage. It specifically does that by examining African ownership and leadership in all of these aspects. The book highlights the role of agency slack as a survival strategy to escape from the AU’s subaltern position in international politics. It designates the partnership with the European Union as emblematic of African agency; while the others exhibit different forms of agency slack. Partnerships with NATO and the United Nations exhibit shirking, while that with the US AFRICOM exhibits slippage.