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This book describes the contrast between the strong economic growth and democratization that have occurred in Africa and its stalling political progress. It presents and discusses fragility as the phenomenon that has caused the state to remain weak and faltering and has led to at least one third of the continent’s citizens living in fragile states. Following the examination of the drivers of fragility and the impact of fragility on citizens and neighbouring states, the book discusses capacity building approaches. This part shows how effective states can be built on the African continent, a process that would result in a change from state fragility to state resilience. It is based on lessons learnt from close studies of the nations where the state has been most developed in the region, in Eastern and Southern Africa. The book provides and responds to the most recent and up-to-date information on African development and uses insights of people who have lived and worked in the continent for most of their lives.
The central concern of this study is power and influence, a twin concept: How African countries can obtain power and use it properly for the common good of the people. Thus the transfer of the concepts of power and influence from the plane of theory to that of social practice should render a service to those in search of greater social relevance in social change as well as to those seeking an improved, more precise, and intellectually more manageable and intelligible frame of reference for power and its usage. This publication is different, and the hope is that it will open new vistas to students as well as the reading public who are beginning to learn about state-building, democracy and development (government and politics) in countries other than their own.
The challenges facing the nation-state in contemporary Africa are increasingly attracting the attention of scholars interested to understand how the decomposition and recomposition of popular political identities on the continent are affecting the post-colonial unitary project. The studies presented in this volume show that the challenges to the post-colonial nation-state project in Africa have mainly taken ethno-regionalist, religious and separatist forms. These challenges have been shaped by the long drawn-out economic crisis, zero-sum, market-led structural adjustment, and the legacy of decades of political authoritarianism and exclusion that dates from the colonial period. The contributors to this book present different suggestions to promote national unity and a supporting civic identity in Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa seems to be forgotten in the post-cold war era. But Kaoru Ishikawa's analysis of Africa's history and its political and economic development suggests that a brighter future is in prospect for the nations of Africa. The African nations hosted dynamic societies prior to the slave trade era, and many of the obstacles to their future prosperity and dynamism have been removed. The focus of the book is on how African countries and the international community beyond Africa can work together to realise this potential and build on recent improvements, notably in health and the position of women in society. The ability of South Africa - no longer an international pariah to be a locomotive for growth is assessed.
State building and democratization in Africa rarely attract the attention they deserve. Few have grappled with the relationship between state building (nation-building) and democratic experiments in Africa. This collection consciously corrects this shortcoming in African political studies. Among the issues raised: Does democracy facilitate state building or does it exacerbate ethnic conflicts? Are certain modalities of democratization more likely to facilitate state-building than others? Has the era of democracy created the need for new state building strategies? Does the objective of state building require significant modifications in the essence and form of democracy? This collection combines theoretical explorations with empirical case studies. It looks at both anglophone and francophone countries of sub-Saharan Africa. While the contributors have written extensively on African issues, there is no consensus among the authors; most argue that integrating ethnic groups that already face discrimination and often are engaged in conflict requires compromise, political settlements, and new terms of incorporation into the state. These compromises, in turn, involve new arrangements in how democracy is perceived and instituted. An important collection for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with African political, social, and economic development.
"Building State Capacity in Africa draws on the experiences of public sector reform implementation in more than a dozen African countries to address such topics as the relationship between governance and economic development, public expenditure and accountability, anticorruption reform, decentralization, political structures, and the delivery of public services."--Jacket
Africaís New Public Policy: Imperatives for Globalisation and Nation-building provides a comprehensive analysis of globalisation and democracy, from an African perspective. It also provides policy imperatives that are aimed at seeking solutions to the myriad challenges emanating from managing the consequences of globalisation in Nigeria and other African countries. The author attempts to determine the extent to which public administration principles ñ in Nigeria in particular, and the rest of Africa in general, as well as in other parts of the developing world ñ underpin the management of the effects of globalisation within a democracy and nation building projects. Africaís New Public Policy will not only be a useful resource for public policy decision-making on globalisation issues, but it will also serve as a credible reference material for public sector practitioners, scholars in international relations, as well as officials involved in the diplomatic work environment. It also includes a comparative analysis on how Nigeria and South Africa have handled some of the globalisation and democratisation challenges facing their respective countries under the administrations of Presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki respectively.
What is nation-building and is it ever going to succeed? A critical view from 'old Europe'.
A new and comprehensive look at the reasons behind successful or failed nation building Nation Building presents bold new answers to an age-old question. Why is national integration achieved in some diverse countries, while others are destabilized by political inequality between ethnic groups, contentious politics, or even separatism and ethnic war? Traversing centuries and continents from early nineteenth-century Europe and Asia to Africa from the turn of the twenty-first century to today, Andreas Wimmer delves into the slow-moving forces that encourage political alliances to stretch across ethnic divides and build national unity. Using datasets that cover the entire world and three pairs of case studies, Wimmer’s theory of nation building focuses on slow-moving, generational processes: the spread of civil society organizations, linguistic assimilation, and the states’ capacity to provide public goods. Wimmer contrasts Switzerland and Belgium to demonstrate how the early development of voluntary organizations enhanced nation building; he examines Botswana and Somalia to illustrate how providing public goods can bring diverse political constituencies together; and he shows that the differences between China and Russia indicate how a shared linguistic space may help build political alliances across ethnic boundaries. Wimmer then reveals, based on the statistical analysis of large-scale datasets, that these mechanisms are at work around the world and explain nation building better than competing arguments such as democratic governance or colonial legacies. He also shows that when political alliances crosscut ethnic divides and when most ethnic communities are represented at the highest levels of government, the general populace will identify with the nation and its symbols, further deepening national political integration. Offering a long-term historical perspective and global outlook, Nation Building sheds important new light on the challenges of political integration in diverse countries.