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Civil society is one of several Western political and social concepts that have not traveled successfully to Africa. Revived in response to the search for democracy in Eastern Europe during the late Soviet era, Western donors promoted and funded new civil society organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, regarding them as an essential grounding for African democratization. Most of these new civil society organizations had little in common with African associational activity. Focusing on the characteristics and behavior of longstand-ing African organizations would appear a better starting point for developing a useful concept of an African civil society. One candidate worth serious investigation is the Buganda Kingdom Government. This organization violates most distinctions central to Western notions of civil society. Yet it continues to behave like a civil society organization. Its political and conceptual collisions offer guidance toward a useful notion of African civil society and understanding Ugandan politics.
Civil society is one of several Western political and social concepts that have not traveled successfully to Africa. Revived in response to the search for democracy in Eastern Europe during the late Soviet era, Western donors promoted and funded new civil society organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, regarding them as an essential grounding for African democratization. Most of these new civil society organizations had little in common with African associational activity. Focusing on the characteristics and behavior of long-standing African organizations would appear a better starting point for developing a useful concept of an African civil society. One candidate worth serious investigation is the Buganda Kingdom Government. This organization violates most distinctions central to Western notions of civil society. Yet it continues to behave like a civil society organization. Its political and conceptual collisions offer guidance toward a useful notion of African civil society and understanding Ugandan politics.
In the scramble for Africa, Britain took a lion’s share of the continent. It occupied and controlled vast territories, including the Uganda Protectorate – which it ruled for 68 years. Early administrators in the region encountered the progressive kingdom of Buganda, which they incorporated into the British Empire. Under the guise of protection, indirect rule and patronage, Britain overran, plundered and disempowered the kingdom’s traditional institutions. On liquidation of the Empire, Buganda was coaxed into a problematic political order largely dictated from London. Today, 56 years after independence, the kingdom struggles to rediscover itself within Uganda’s fragile politics. Based on newly de-classified records, this book reconstructs a history of the machinations underpinning British imperial interests in (B)Uganda and the personalities who embodied colonial rule. It addresses Anglo-Uganda relations, demonstrating how Uganda’s politics reflects its colonial past, and the forces shaping its future. It is a far-reaching examination of British rule in (B)uganda, questioning whether it was designed for protection, for patronage or for plunder.
Unravelling the mysteries of Africas underdevelopment presents an Afrocentric ideological understanding of the continents fragmentation; a scientific and objective (Mijadala) discourse as well as an approach of how to move progressively and sustainably Africa forward. The breadth and depth of the book shows the unwavering impoverishment and urgent need for the continent to stand up and take the bull by the horn. It offers an inspiring means of grappling with the continents problems to build the change we want An African Wealth of Nation not the continent of collapsed, failed states under the governance construct of centralised authoritarian regimes It is a thought-provoking discourse that challenges us all to be inherent participants in the reconstruction of a Brave New Africa far beyond the 21st Century.
The politics of civil society is an original, thought provoking analysis which challenges one-dimensional neoliberal thinking about civil society, and seeks to rediscover its radical roots. The original edition shifted the scholarly debate onto the new ground, offering an accessible and compelling analysis of one of the central issues of our times. In the second, revised edition of this indispensable book, the author looks behind 'the mirror of power' to discover the reality of civil society - or 'Big Society', as it has become known. He finds not one but three forms of civil society: radical, liberal and conservative. In complex interplay between state and civil society, the author argues that citizens contend for power through civil society. This is both an age-long pursuit dating from antiquity and a contemporary democratic struggle between competing visions of modernity that determines the 'real' in politics, as experienced by the citizens. The book will have wide appeal to a broad cross-disciplinary audience.
This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic Cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.
Since the late 1980s the changing dynamic of global development has driven the tide of democratic expansion in the developing world. In Africa, western donors have sought to impose 'neo-liberal' visions of socio-economic and political institution-building, spreading political reforms and economic liberalisation with far-reaching consequences. Associated with external interventions, but also sometimes conflicting with them, are internal protests against authoritarianism, which have problematically reinforced and/or undermined the donor agenda for democratic reform.Here, Usman Tar questions the assumption that Africa was lacking the essential components for a spontaneous transition to democracy. He explores the dynamic, but contradictory, links between external and internal dimensions of neo-liberal democratic expansion in Africa, focusing on Nigeria. Tar dissects the struggles for democracy, and for democratic policy and practice in a country with rich economic potential but a troubled political dispensation.
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
While neoliberals typically view civil society organizations as vital channels for the implementation of economic and political reforms, they are also inclined to blame the politics of belonging for the poor record of these reforms. Piet Konings rejects such notions and argues that the relationship between civil society and the politics of belonging is more complex in Africa than Western donors and scholars are inclined to admit. He argues that ethno-regional associations and movements are more significant constituents of civil society in Africa than the conventional organizations that are often uncritically imposed or endorsed. He shows how the politics of belonging, so pervasive in Cameroon, and indeed much of Africa, during the current neoliberal economic and political reforms, has tended to penetrate the entire range of associational life, and he calls for a critical re-appraisal of prevalent notions and assumptions about civil society in the interest of African reality.