Political Topographies of the African State

Political Topographies of the African State PDF Author: Catherine Boone
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521532648
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
This study brings Africa into the mainstream of studies of state-formation in agrarian societies. Territorial integration is the challenge: institutional linkages and political deals that bind center and periphery are the solutions. In African countries, rulers at the center are forced to bargain with regional elites to establish stable mechanisms of rule and taxation. Variation in regional forms of social organization make for differences in the interests and political strength of regional leaders who seek to maintain or enhance their power vis-a-vis their followers and subjects, and also vis-a-vis the center.

Political Topographies of the African State

Political Topographies of the African State PDF Author: Catherine Boone
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521532648
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study brings Africa into the mainstream of studies of state-formation in agrarian societies. Territorial integration is the challenge: institutional linkages and political deals that bind center and periphery are the solutions. In African countries, rulers at the center are forced to bargain with regional elites to establish stable mechanisms of rule and taxation. Variation in regional forms of social organization make for differences in the interests and political strength of regional leaders who seek to maintain or enhance their power vis-a-vis their followers and subjects, and also vis-a-vis the center.

Property and Political Order in Africa

Property and Political Order in Africa PDF Author: Catherine Boone
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107040698
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
In sub-Saharan Africa, property relationships around land and access to natural resources vary across localities, districts, and farming regions. These differences produce patterned variations in relationships between individuals, communities, and the state. This book captures these patterns in an analysis of structure and variation in rural land tenure regimes. In most farming areas, state authority is deeply embedded in land regimes, drawing farmers, ethnic insiders and outsiders, lineages, villages, and communities into direct and indirect relationships with political authorities at different levels of the state apparatus. The analysis shows how property institutions - institutions that define political authority and hierarchy around land - shape dynamics of great interest to scholars of politics, including the dynamics of land-related competition and conflict, territorial conflict, patron-client relations, electoral cleavage and mobilization, ethnic politics, rural rebellion, and the localization and "nationalization" of political competition.

African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999

African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999 PDF Author: Nicolas Van de Walle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521008365
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This Book explains why African countries have remained mired in a disastrous economic crisis since the late 1970s. It shows that dynamics internal to African state structures largely explain this failure to overcome economic difficulties rather than external pressures on these same structures as is often argued. Far from being prevented from undertaking reforms by societal interest and pressure groups, clientelism within the state elite, ideological factors and low state capacity have resulted in some limited reform, but much prevarication and manipulation of the reform process, by governments which do not really believe that reform will be effective.

Beyond Ethnic Politics in Africa

Beyond Ethnic Politics in Africa PDF Author: Dominika Koter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131677290X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Why do ethnic politics emerge in some ethnically diverse societies but not others? Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, Dominika Koter argues that the prevailing social structures of a country play a central role in how politicians attempt to mobilize voters. In particular, politicians consider the strength of local leaders, such as chiefs or religious dignitaries, who have historically played a crucial role in many parts of rural Africa. Local leaders can change the electoral dynamics by helping politicians secure votes among people of different ethnicities. Ethnic politics thus can be avoided where there are local leaders who can serve as credible electoral intermediaries between voters and politicians. Koter shows that there is widespread variation in the standing of local leaders across Africa, as a result of long-term historical trends, which has meant that politicians have mobilized voters in qualitatively different ways, resulting in different levels of ethnic politics across the continent.

The Postcolonial State in Africa

The Postcolonial State in Africa PDF Author: Crawford Young
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 029929143X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
"A highly readable, sweeping, and yet detailed analysis of the African state in all its failures and moments of hope. Crawford Young manages to touch upon all the important issues in the discipline and crucial developments in the recent history of the African continent. This book will be a classic."---Pierre Englebert, author of Africa Unity, Sovereignty, and Sorrow --

Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal

Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal PDF Author: Catherine Boone
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521410789
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A 1993 study of the ways in which the exercise of state power in Africa has inhibited economic growth, focusing on Senegal.

A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics

A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics PDF Author: David Nugent
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470692936
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
This Companion offers an unprecedented overview of anthropology’s unique contribution to the study of politics. Explores the key concepts and issues of our time - from AIDS, globalization, displacement, and militarization, to identity politics and beyond Each chapter reflects on concepts and issues that have shaped the anthropology of politics and concludes with thoughts on and challenges for the way ahead Anthropology’s distinctive genre, ethnography, lies at the heart of this volume

Ethiopia

Ethiopia PDF Author: John Markakis
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1847010334
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
An historical overview of Ethiopia's transformation from a multicultural empire into a modern nation state. Provides the gist of one scholar's knowledge of this country acquired over several decades. The author of numerous works on Ethiopia, Markakis presents here an overarching, concise historical profile of a momentous effort to integrate a multicultural empire into a modern nation state. The concept of nation state formation provides the analytical framework within which this process unfolds and the changes of direction it takes under different regimes, as well as a standard for assessing its progress and shortcomings at each stage. Over a century old, the process is still far from completion and its ultimate success is far from certain. In the author's view, there are two majorobstacles that need to be overcome, two frontiers that need to be crossed to reach the desired goal. The first is the monopoly of power inherited from the empire builders and zealously guarded ever since by a ruling class of Abyssinian origin. The descendants of the people subjugated by the empire builders remain excluded from power, a handicap that breeds political instability and violent conflict. The second frontier is the arid lowlands on the margins of the state, where the process of integration has not yet reached, and where resistance to it is greatest. Until this frontier is crossed, the Ethiopian state will not have the secure borders that a mature nation state requires. John Markakis is a political historian who has devoted a professional lifetime to the study of Ethiopia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa. He has published several books and many articles on this area.

Global Shadows

Global Shadows PDF Author: James Ferguson
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822337171
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
DIVA collection of Ferguson's essays that bring the question of Africa into the center of current debates on globalization, modernity, and emerging forms of world order./div

Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries

Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries PDF Author: Deborah Brautigam
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139469258
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
There is a widespread concern that, in some parts of the world, governments are unable to exercise effective authority. When governments fail, more sinister forces thrive: warlords, arms smugglers, narcotics enterprises, kidnap gangs, terrorist networks, armed militias. Why do governments fail? This book explores an old idea that has returned to prominence: that authority, effectiveness, accountability and responsiveness is closely related to the ways in which governments are financed. It matters that governments tax their citizens rather than live from oil revenues and foreign aid, and it matters how they tax them. Taxation stimulates demands for representation, and an effective revenue authority is the central pillar of state capacity. Using case studies from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, this book presents and evaluates these arguments, updates theories derived from European history in the light of conditions in contemporary poorer countries, and draws conclusions for policy-makers.