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This book focuses on the politics of democratization in Africa, especially the strategic choices of the political elite, both incumbent and opposition within the context of transition politics. The decade 1990- 2000 saw a total of 78 top leadership elections involving 43 of the 48 sub-Saharan African countries. Of these elections, only 27% led to regime change. Yet even where regime change occurred, authoritarianism persisted. The objective of the book is to analyze and explain this dual paradox of limited change of regime and persistent authoritarianism in the face of democratization. Its central thesis is that this eventuality is a function of the strategic environment of political engagement, which was not reshaped fundamentally to enable the emergence of a new mode of politics. Whereas the book focuses on Kenya and Zambia, it draws examples from a cross-section of African countries and its conclusions are applicable to most African countries and other democratizing countries across the world. The significance of the book is that it eschews country-specific analysis and employs the comparative approach in examining the social struggles for democracy in Africa. Its treatment of the rise of authoritarianism and the democratic counter-forces as well as the juxtaposition of "demo-pessimists" and "demoptimists" in Africanist scholarship is particularly innovative and cogently illuminating.
The path towards democracy in Kenya has been long and often tortuous. Though it has been trumpeted as a goal for decades, democratic government has never been fully realised, largely as a result of the authoritarian excesses of the Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki regimes. This uniquely comprehensive study of Kenya's political trajectory shows how the struggle for democracy has been waged in civil society, through opposition parties, and amongst traditionally marginalised groups like women and the young. It also considers the remaining impediments to democratisation, in the form of a powerful police force and damaging structural adjustment policies. Thus, the authors argue, democratisation in Kenya is a laborious and non-linear process. Kenyans' recent electoral successes, the book concludes, have empowered them and reinvigorated the prospects for democracy, heralding a more autonomous and peaceful twenty-first century.
This handbook constitutes a single collection of well researched articles and essays on African politics, governance and development from the pre-colonial through colonial to the post-colonial eras. Over the course of these interconnected periods, African politics have evolved with varied experiences across different parts of the continent. As politics is embedded both in the economy and the society, Africa has witnessed some changes in politics, economics, demography and its relations with the world in ways that requires in-depth analysis. This work provides an opportunity for old and new scholars to engage in the universe of the debate around African politics, governance and development and will serve as a ready reference material for students, researchers, policy makers and investors that are concerned with these issues.
A former Africa editor for The Economist, Robert Guest addresses the troubled continent's thorniest problems: war, AIDS, and above all, poverty. Newly updated with a preface that considers political and economic developments of the past six years, The Shackled Continent is engrossing, highly readable, and as entertaining as it is tragic. Guest pulls the veil off the corruption and intrigue that cripple so many African nations, posing a provocative theory that Africans have been impoverished largely by their own leaders' abuses of power. From the minefields of Angola to the barren wheat fields of Zimbabwe, Guest gathers startling evidence of the misery African leaders have inflicted on their people. But he finds elusive success stories and examples of the resilience and resourcefulness of individual Africans, too; from these, he draws hope that the continent will eventually prosper. Guest offers choices both commonsense and controversial for Africans and for those in the West who wish Africa well.
Against the background of a long and continuing record of political instability in Africa, this edited collection presents a multi-disciplinary approach to selected issues in African political studies. The contributions explore a range of political and conflict situations, discuss efforts to develop indigenous conflict resolution mechanisms and consider some of the key political and economic issues facing the continent. The specific country studies illuminate the diversity of the African continent and indicate the ways in which the political and socio-economic contexts of African states bear directly upon the ability of states to solve political and economic challenges. The volume seeks to present and promote novel analytical frameworks, conceptual approaches and empirical accounts of relevance to scholars working on Africa and to practitioners and policy makers in politics, governance and peace initiatives in Africa.
This book examines the impact of post-colonial leadership on political integration in Nigeria, offering an in-depth understanding of the historical and contemporary forces that shape Nigeria's national politics as well as African politics generally. Okafor discusses how Nigeria's pre-colonial and colonial political histories along with contemporary external forces like neo-colonialism, as well as internal social, economic and political structures and developments, have affected emerging post-independence politics in the country. The study climaxes with an Africa-centered theory of political and integrative leadership and then uses it as a prism for analyzing six Nigerian post-independence political leaderships, encompassing Nigeria's First and Second Republics, along with their military interregna. The concluding chapter includes a discussion of the implications of the study for leadership and political integration in Africa in general.
Bringing together African and international scholars, this book gives an account of the present state of the discipline of political science in Africa - generating insights into its present and future trajectories, and assessing the freedom with which it is practiced. Tackling subjects including the decolonization of the discipline, political scientists as public intellectuals, and the teaching of political science, this diverse range of perspectives paints a detailed picture of the impact and relevance of the political science discipline on the continent during the struggles for democratization, and the influence it continues to exert today.
An exploration of how states address the often conflicting challenges of development, order, and inclusion.
This book provides an original treatment of the concept of good and beauty in ancient Egypt. It seeks to examine the dimensions of nefer, the term used to describe the good and the beautiful, within the context of ordinary life. Because the book is based upon original research on ancient Egypt it opens up space for a review of the aesthetics of other African societies in the Nile Valley. Thus, it serves as a heuristic for further research and scholarship.
This book provides an analysis of the country's political economy in transition. It documents the history of the gold mining industry's involvement in shaping the political landscape of South Africa, and shows the degree to which the political transition was induced to put in place a new mode of regulation for capital accumulation. In the process, the victims of apartheid have now become victims of democracy's neo-liberalism as the government is constrained from being developmental, interventionist and redistributive.