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Author: Claude Ake
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815723482
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
Despite three decades of preoccupation with development in Africa, the economies of most African nations are still stagnating or regressing. For most Africans, incomes are lower than they were two decades ago, health prospects are poorer, malnourishment is widespread, and infrastructures and social institutions are breaking down. An array of factors have been offered to explain the apparent failure of development in Africa, including the colonial legacy, social pluralism, corruption, poor planning and incompetent management, limited in-flow of foreign capital, and low levels of saving and investment. Alone or in combination, these factors are serious impediments to development, but Claude Ake contends that the problem is not that development has failed, but that it was never really on the agenda. He maintains that political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development. In this book, Ake traces the evolution and failure of development policies, including the IMF stabilization programs that have dominated international efforts. He identifies the root causes of the problem in the authoritarian political structure of the African states derived from the previous colonial entities. Ake sketches the alternatives that are struggling to emerge from calamitous failure--economic development based on traditional agriculture, political development based on the decentralization of power, and reliance on indigenous communities that have been providing some measure of refuge from the coercive power of the central state. Ake's argument may become a new paradigm for development in Africa.
Author: Claude Ake
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815723482
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Get Book Here
Book Description
Despite three decades of preoccupation with development in Africa, the economies of most African nations are still stagnating or regressing. For most Africans, incomes are lower than they were two decades ago, health prospects are poorer, malnourishment is widespread, and infrastructures and social institutions are breaking down. An array of factors have been offered to explain the apparent failure of development in Africa, including the colonial legacy, social pluralism, corruption, poor planning and incompetent management, limited in-flow of foreign capital, and low levels of saving and investment. Alone or in combination, these factors are serious impediments to development, but Claude Ake contends that the problem is not that development has failed, but that it was never really on the agenda. He maintains that political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development. In this book, Ake traces the evolution and failure of development policies, including the IMF stabilization programs that have dominated international efforts. He identifies the root causes of the problem in the authoritarian political structure of the African states derived from the previous colonial entities. Ake sketches the alternatives that are struggling to emerge from calamitous failure--economic development based on traditional agriculture, political development based on the decentralization of power, and reliance on indigenous communities that have been providing some measure of refuge from the coercive power of the central state. Ake's argument may become a new paradigm for development in Africa.
Author: A. Carl LeVan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107081149
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
This book argues that the structure of the policy-making process in Nigeria explains variations in government performance better than other commonly cited factors.
Author: Mawere, Munyaradzi
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
ISBN: 9956763004
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 422
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Book Description
Questions surrounding democracy, governance, and development especially in the view of Africa have provoked acrimonious debates in the past few years. It remains a perennial question why some decades after political independence in Africa the continent continues experiencing bad governance, lagging behind socioeconomically, and its democracy questionable. We admit that a plethora of theories and reasons, including iniquitous and malicious ones, have been conjured in an attempt to explain and answer the questions as to why Africa seems to be lagging behind other continents in issues pertaining to good governance, democracy and socio-economic development. Yet, none of the theories and reasons proffered so far seems to have provided enduring solutions to Africa’s diverse complex problems and predicaments. This book dissects and critically examines the matrix of Africa’s multifaceted problems on governance, democracy and development in an attempt to proffer enduring solutions to the continent’s long-standing political and socio-economic dilemmas and setbacks.
Author: R. James Bingen
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
Mali, a country rich with history and culture, but one of the poorest in the world, emerged in the 1990s as one of Africa's most vibrant democracies. Strengthened by bold political and economic reforms at home, Mali has emerged as a leader in African peace keeping efforts. How has such a transition taken place? How have these changes built on Mali's rich heritage? These are the questions that the contributors to this volume have addressed. During the past twenty-five years, the scholarly research and applied development work of Michigan State University faculty and students in Mali represents the most significant combined, long-term, and continuing contribution of any group of university faculty in the United States or Europe to the study of Malian society, economy, and politics. The applied nature of much of this work has resulted in a significant number of working papers, reports, and conference presentations. This volume represents a coherent and connected set of essays from one American university with a widely known and highly respected role in African development. While the essays identify and review Mali's unique historical and contemporary path to democracy and development, they also contribute to the advancement of theoretical knowledge about African development.
Author: Herman Wasserman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136911618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
This book examines the role that popular media could play to encourage political debate, provide information for development, or critique the very definitions of ‘democracy’ and ‘development’.
Author: John R. Heilbrunn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107049814
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
This book focuses on the history, key industry and policy actors, and political economic outcomes in oil-producing African states, filling a gap in the literature on resource-abundant countries by providing an optimistic assessment of circumstances in contemporary Africa.
Author: Jeffrey W. Paller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316513300
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
A detailed account of politics in Ghana's urban neighborhoods, providing a new way to understand African democracy and development.
Author: Jan Erk
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351259504
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Decentralization reforms introduced to Africa in the 1990s have not always delivered the intended long-term outcomes. This is a collection on the consequences of these reforms two decades on. In addition to general and comparative overviews, the book contains case studies on Ghana, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Ethiopia, and Uganda. The common theme across the chapters is that the reforms seem to have engendered political consequences beyond decentralization itself – mostly through interaction with the broader historical, political, social, and economic context. The book thus speaks both to the scholarly literature (on decentralization, democratization, and development) and to the community of development practitioners. Most of the literature on decentralization and development emphasizes questions of institutional design and policy, but here the harder-to-pin-down political patterns marking the workings of decentralization are the main focus of analysis. The debates on development, through the case studies, are connected to the scholarly literatures on comparative federalism, comparative decentralization, and local democracy. The main conclusion that emerges from the studies in the book is that no magic formula that can turn countries into peaceful, stable, and prosperous democracies overnight exists. Furthermore, there are risks involved in importing formal institutions without regard to the local historical, political, social, and economic context. The chapters of this book were originally published as a special issue in Regional and Federal Studies.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309047978
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 94
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Book Description
The global movement toward democracy, spurred in part by the ending of the cold war, has created opportunities for democratization not only in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but also in Africa. This book is based on workshops held in Benin, Ethiopia, and Namibia to better understand the dynamics of contemporary democratic movements in Africa. Key issues in the democratization process range from its institutional and political requirements to specific problems such as ethnic conflict, corruption, and role of donors in promoting democracy. By focusing on the opinion and views of African intellectuals, academics, writers, and political activists and observers, the book provides a unique perspective regarding the dynamics and problems of democratization in Africa.
Author: Thompson, Gardner
Publisher: Fountain Publishers
ISBN: 9970253115
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
The concepts of democracy and good governance have been at the centre of criticism of governments all over the world. What democracy entails, however, has never been agreed, most notably on the African continent. African politicians who have been criticised for reigning over 'undemocratic' regimes have insisted that the West judges them by criteria that don't apply to African circumstances. Is there such a thing as African democracy? Informed and intrigued by two events that happened in different eras, in different countries, Gardner Thompson has written an in-depth historical examination of the nature of 'imported' democracy as practised in the East African countries of Uganda, where he worked as a young History teacher in the 70s, Kenya and Tanzania. The events were the 1971 Amin capture of power from Milton Obote in Uganda, and the post-election violence that rocked Kenya in 2007/2008, pitting then incumbent Mwai Kibaki against his erstwhile colleague Raila Odinga, along what many read to be tribal lines. Dividing the book into three sections, Thompson treats democracy in the three former colonies from the perspectives of pre-independence (colonialism), the transition to independence, and governance since independence. Reflecting indigenous history, the colonial past and evolving culture, flawed but functioning forms of government have emerged in the three states.
