Engendering Democracy in Africa

Engendering Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Niamh Gaynor
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000597067
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
This book investigates women’s political participation in Africa. Going beyond the formal institutions of electoral politics, it explores a range of spaces where everyday politics take place, at national and at local levels. In recent years there have been significant improvements in the number of women elected to parliament in Africa. However, there is little indication that this is translating into better developmental outcomes, and indeed there is mounting evidence that it could in fact help to bolster some authoritarian regimes. Starting from the premise that politics is a far broader project than securing a seat in national or local legislatures alone, this book explores the opportunities for women’s political participation across a number of informal spaces where women and men gather, organise and interact in a more regular and systematic manner. Combining insights from political science, sociology and feminist theory and drawing on detailed cases from the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Rwanda, it examines how power in its multiple dimensions circulates across a range of everyday political spaces, while drawing attention to the links between domestic gender inequalities and the global political economy. Inviting scholars, practitioners and activists to broaden their focus beyond formal electoral institutions if they want to support women to become more politically active, this book provides fresh insights into major issues at the heart of African studies, development studies, gender and development, democratisation, and international relations.

Engendering Democracy in Africa

Engendering Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Niamh Gaynor
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000597067
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book investigates women’s political participation in Africa. Going beyond the formal institutions of electoral politics, it explores a range of spaces where everyday politics take place, at national and at local levels. In recent years there have been significant improvements in the number of women elected to parliament in Africa. However, there is little indication that this is translating into better developmental outcomes, and indeed there is mounting evidence that it could in fact help to bolster some authoritarian regimes. Starting from the premise that politics is a far broader project than securing a seat in national or local legislatures alone, this book explores the opportunities for women’s political participation across a number of informal spaces where women and men gather, organise and interact in a more regular and systematic manner. Combining insights from political science, sociology and feminist theory and drawing on detailed cases from the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Rwanda, it examines how power in its multiple dimensions circulates across a range of everyday political spaces, while drawing attention to the links between domestic gender inequalities and the global political economy. Inviting scholars, practitioners and activists to broaden their focus beyond formal electoral institutions if they want to support women to become more politically active, this book provides fresh insights into major issues at the heart of African studies, development studies, gender and development, democratisation, and international relations.

Domestic Democracy

Domestic Democracy PDF Author: Jennifer Fish
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113548760X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
This study examines the dialectic relationship between social inequality and change in the newly democratic South Africa through the lens of paid domestic labor. The complexities of this institution provide an in-depth analysis of the tension between the race and gender priorities of South Africa's new democracy and the lived realities of the majority of its population. Because paid domestic work remains the largest sector of employment for women in South Africa, it is critical to situating the scope of social change in this emergent democracy. This book presents the first comprehensive study of paid domestic labor since South Africa's 1994 post-apartheid transition. Drawing upon 85 interviews with domestic workers, employers, Parliamentarians, community activists and organizational leaders, this research offers diverse perspectives on the race, class and gender divides that remain integral to social relations in the context of national transition. In contrast, this study also details women's collective agency through the exploration of a critical social policy change shaped by the activism of a new union of domestic workers. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork, this book demonstrates that transformation of social relations remains one of the greatest obstacles to engendering democracy in South Africa.

Consolidation of Democracy in Africa

Consolidation of Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Hussein Solomon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135175128X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2000: The continent of Africa is undergoing great change. While on the one hand there is talk of a re-awakening of Africa or Renaissance various countries in Africa are still plagued by poverty, intra- and interstate violence. In some countries the legacy of neo-colonialism and under development contributed to social strife and the potential criminalization of the State. This book addresses the topic of democratization and sustainable democracy in Africa against this background.

Civil Society and Democracy in Africa

Civil Society and Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Nelson Kasfir
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136323112
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
This work critically reviews the conventional uses of the concept of civil society in promoting democratization in Africa and suggests omissions and modifications are needed for more accurate analyses.

A Decade of Democracy in Africa

A Decade of Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Stephen N. Ndegwa
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004122444
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
The democratic experiment in Africa has had a checkered history over the past ten years. Analysts of this proces tend to focus on the political and legal space instead of including broader issues such as norms, generational change and class. Past experience from Botswana, South-Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Madagascar will give the readers an understanding of democracy in Africa.

Engendering Transitions

Engendering Transitions PDF Author: Georgina Waylen
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191530166
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
What has been the impact of transitions to democracy on gender relations? What roles have women's mobilizations played in processes of democratization? In a new and over-arching thematic analysis, Engendering Transitions answers these questions by comparing the transitions from state socialism and authoritarianism that took place as part of the 'third wave' of democratization that swept the world from the mid 1970s onwards. Using empirical material drawn from eight case study countries in East Central Europe and Latin America as well as South Africa, Georgina Waylen explores the gendered constraints and opportunities provided by processes of democratization and economic restructuring. This book uses a sophisticated analytical framework that brings together the analysis of key actors and institutions and shows that, under certain conditions, transitions to democracy can result in some positive gender outcomes such as improvements in women's political representation and more 'gender sensitive' policy in areas such as domestic violence. Georgina Waylen argues that women's mobilization during transitions is no guarantee of success and change is easier to achieve in some areas than others. Understanding the roles that can be played by organized women's movements, key actors and the wider political environment is crucial in helping us to explain why these gender outcomes vary in different contexts. This book addresses important debates within the study of both comparative politics and gender and politics and substantially improves our understanding of the ways in which transitions to democracy are gendered.

Consensus as Democracy in Africa

Consensus as Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Bernard Matolino
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 192003336X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Some philosophers on the African continent and beyond are convinced that consensus, as a polity, represents the best chance for Africa to fully democratise. In Consensus as Democracy in Africa, Bernard Matolino challenges the basic assumptions built into consensus as a social and political theory. Central to his challenge to the claimed viability of consensus as a democratic system are three major questions: Is consensus genuinely superior to its majoritarian counterpart? Is consensus itself truly a democratic system? Is consensus sufficiently different from the one-party system? In taking up these issues and others closely associated with them, Matolino shows that consensus as a system of democracy encounters several challenges that make its viability highly doubtful. Matolino then attempts a combination of an understanding of an authentic mode of democracy with African reality to work out what a more desirable polity would be for the continent.

The Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies

The Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies PDF Author: Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783030280987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This definitive handbook is the first reference of its kind bringing together knowledge, scholarship, and debates on themes and issues concerning African women everywhere. It unearths, critiques, reviews, analyses, theorizes, synthesizes and evaluates African women’s historical, social, political, economic, local and global lives and experiences with a view to decolonizing the corpus. This Handbook questions the gendered roles and positions of African women and the structures, institutions, and processes of policy, politics, and knowledge production that continually construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct African women and the study of them. Contributors offer a consistent emphasis on debunking erroneous and misleading myths about African women's roles and positions, bringing their previously marginalized stories to relief, and ultimately re-writing their histories. Thus, this Handbook enlarges the scope of the field, challenges its orthodoxies, and engenders new subjects, theories, and approaches. This reference work includes, to the greatest extent possible, the voices of African women themselves as writers of their own stories. The detailed, rigorous and up-to-date analyses in the work represent a variety of theoretical, methodological, and transdisciplinary approaches. This reference work will prove vital in charting new directions for the study of African women, and will reverberate in future studies, generating new debates and engendering further interest.

Gendered Institutions and Women’s Political Representation in Africa

Gendered Institutions and Women’s Political Representation in Africa PDF Author: Diana Højlund Madsen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1913441172
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
During the course of the past three decades efforts of democratisation and institutional reforms have characterised the African continent, including demands for gender equality and women's political representation. As a result, some countries have introduced affirmative action measures, either in the aftermath of conflicts or as part of broader constitutional reforms, whereas others are falling behind this fast track to women's political representation. Utilising a range of case studies spanning both the success cases and the less successful cases from different regions, this work examines the uneven developments on the continent. By mapping, analysing and comparing women's political representation in different African contexts, this book sheds light on the formal and informal institutions and the interplay between these that are influencing women's political representation and can explain the development on women's political representation across the continent and present perspectives on an 'African feminist institutionalism'.

No-party Democracy in Uganda

No-party Democracy in Uganda PDF Author: Justus Mugaju
Publisher: Fountain Books
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
The continuation of no-party democracy has been constitutionalised by the Constituent Assembly of Uganda, causing great controversy. The 1995 constitution provided for a referendum to be held in the year 2000 to enable Ugandans to revisit the question of political systems and choose between multiparty, no-party and any other form of democracy. The eight contributors including Professor Ali Mazrui, examine the case for and against multipartyism, the justification for no-party democracy as well as its myths and realities, and the wider ideological implications of movement politics in the Great Lakes region. They also explore the possibilities of bridging the gap between movementists and multipartyists in order to adopt a political system based on the widest consensus possible among the people in Uganda.