Regional Cooperation on Democratization and Conflict Management in Africa

Regional Cooperation on Democratization and Conflict Management in Africa PDF Author: Gilbert M. Khadiagala
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description
While the African Union (AU) is leading overarching efforts to establish continent-wide norms for acceptable political conduct, regional institutions are also contributing substantially to democratization and peacebuilding in their neighborhoods. Bodies such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have been actively managing conflicts and preventing movement toward authoritarianism. However, country-level commitment to democratic governance remains uneven and inconsistent. Addressing the region’s security and governance challenges calls for further integration and cooperation, which will require significant resources and new notions of sovereignty with responsibility.

Regional Cooperation on Democratization and Conflict Management in Africa

Regional Cooperation on Democratization and Conflict Management in Africa PDF Author: Gilbert M. Khadiagala
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 33

Get Book Here

Book Description
While the African Union (AU) is leading overarching efforts to establish continent-wide norms for acceptable political conduct, regional institutions are also contributing substantially to democratization and peacebuilding in their neighborhoods. Bodies such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have been actively managing conflicts and preventing movement toward authoritarianism. However, country-level commitment to democratic governance remains uneven and inconsistent. Addressing the region’s security and governance challenges calls for further integration and cooperation, which will require significant resources and new notions of sovereignty with responsibility.

Sovereignty as Responsibility

Sovereignty as Responsibility PDF Author: Francis M. Deng
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780815719731
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The authors assert that sovereignty can no longer be seen as a protection against interference, but as a charge of responsibility where the state is accountable to both domestic and external constituencies. In internal conflicts in Africa, sovereign states have often failed to take responsibility for their own citizens' welfare and for the humanitarian consequences of conflict, leaving the victims with no assistance. This book shows how that responsibility can be exercised by states over their own population, and by other states in assistance to their fellow sovereigns. Sovereignty as Responsibility presents a framework that should guide both national governments and the international community in discharging their respective responsibilities. Broad principles are developed by examining identity as a potential source of conflict, governance as a matter of managing conflict, and economics as a policy field for deterring conflict. Considering conflict management, political stability, economic development, and social welfare as functions of governance, the authors develop strategies, guidelines, and roles for its responsible exercise. Some African governments, such as South Africa in the 1990s and Ghana since 1980, have demonstrated impressive gains against these standards, while others, such as Rwanda, Somalia, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sudan, have failed. Opportunities for making sovereignty more responsible and improving the management of conflicts are examined at the regional and international levels. The lessons from the mixed successes of regional conflict management actions, such as the West African intervention in Liberia, the East African mediation in Sudan, and international efforts to urge talks to end the conflict in Angola, indicate friends and neighbors outside the state in conflict have important roles to play in increasing sovereign responsibility. Approaching conflict management from the perspective of the responsibilities of sovereignt

Conflict Resolution in Africa

Conflict Resolution in Africa PDF Author: Francis M. Deng
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815707189
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
While dramatic changes are taking place on the international scene and among the major powers, Africa continues to suffer from a multitude of violent conflicts. The toll of these conflicts is monumental in terms of war damage to productivity, scarce resources diverted to armaments and military organizations, and the resulting insecurity, displacement, and destruction. At the same time, Africans, in response to internal demands as well as to international changes, have begun to focus their attention and energies on these problems and are trying innovative ways to resolve differences by nonviolent means. The outcomes of these attempts have urgent and complex implications for the future of the continent with respect to human rights, principles of democracy, and economic development. In this book, African, European, and U.S. experts examine these important issues and the prospects for conflict management and resolution in Africa. They review the scholarship in resolution in light of international changes now taking place. Addressing the undying, internal causes of conflict, they question whether global events will promote peace or threaten to unleash even more conflict. The authors focus their analysis on the issues involved in African conflicts and examine the areas in need of the most dramatic changes. They offer specific recommendations for dealing with current problems, but caution that unless policymakers confront the security situation in Africa, further destruction to national unity and political and economic stability is imminent. Case studies and themes for further, long-term research are recommended.

Civil War and Democracy in West Africa

Civil War and Democracy in West Africa PDF Author: David Harris
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857732323
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
In the aftermath of explosive civil wars in Africa during the 1990s and 2000s, the establishment of multi-party elections has often been heralded by the West as signaling the culmination of the conflict and the beginning of a period of democratic rule. However, the outcomes of these elections are very rarely uniform, with just as many countries returning to conflict as not. Here, David Harris uses the examples of Sierra Leone and Liberia to examine the nexus of international and domestic politics in these post-conflict elections. In doing so, he comes to the conclusion that it is political, rather than legal, solutions that are more likely to enhance any positive political change that has emerged from the violence. This book is thus of significance to Western and African policy makers, and also to students and scholars who wish to engage with the critical issues of conflict resolution and reconciliation both in Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular and in the wider region in general.

Elections and Conflict Management in Africa

Elections and Conflict Management in Africa PDF Author: Timothy D. Sisk
Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press
ISBN: 9781878379795
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Elections have emerged as one of the most important, and most contentious, features of political life on the African continent. In the first half of this decade, there were more than 20 national elections, serving largely as capstones of peace processes or transitions to democracies. The outcomes of these and more recent elections have been remarkably varied, and the relationship between elections and conflict management is widely debated throughout Africa and among international observers. Elections can either help reduce tensions by reconstituting legitimate government, or they can exacerbate them by further polarizing highly conflictual societies. This timely volume examines the relationship between elections, especially electoral systems, and conflict management in Africa, while also serving as an important reference for other regions. The book brings together for the first time the latest thinking on the many different roles elections can play in democratization and conflict management.

West Africa's Trouble Spots and the Imperative for Peace-Building

West Africa's Trouble Spots and the Imperative for Peace-Building PDF Author: Osita Agbu
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 2869784244
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
This monograph highlights the necessity for taking preventive measures in the form of peace-building as a sustainable and long-term solution to conflicts in West Africa, with a special focus on the Mano River Union countries. Apart from the Mano River Union countries, efforts at resolving other conflicts in say, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, C?te d'Ivoire and Nigeria, have suffered from a lack of attention on the post-conflict imperatives of building peace in order to ensure that sustainable peace is achieved. Given the often intractable and inter-related nature of conflicts in this region, it argues for the need to revisit the existing mechanisms of conflict resolution in the sub-region with a view to canvassing a stronger case for stakeholders towards adopting the peace-building strategy as a more practical and sustainable way of avoiding wars in the sub-region. Peace-building in consonance with its infrastructure is a more sustainable approach to ensuring regional peace and stability and, therefore, ensuring development for the peoples of West Africa. Dr Osita Agbu is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos. His areas of specialization include Peace and Conflict studies, Governance and Democratization and Technology and Development. He was until recently, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies, Chiba, Japan.

Minding the Gap

Minding the Gap PDF Author: Pamela Aall
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 1928096220
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
The prevailing narrative on Africa is that it is awash with violent conflict. Indeed, it does suffer from a multitude of conflicts — from border skirmishes to civil wars to terrorist attacks. Conflicts in Africa are diverse and complex, but there have been a number of cases of successful conflict management and resolution. What accounts for the successes and failures, and what can we learn from Africa’s experience? Minding the Gap: African Conflict Management in a Time of Change takes on these questions, bringing together more than 20 experts to examine the source of conflicts in Africa and assess African management capacity in the face of these conflicts.

Managing Conflicts in Africa's Democratic Transitions

Managing Conflicts in Africa's Democratic Transitions PDF Author: Akanmu G. Adebayo
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739172646
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The democratization process which bolstered a culture of periodic elections has also fostered election-related violent conflicts. As democratic transitions gained currency in the new millennium, orderly transitions through the ballot boxes began replacing military coups but deaths and destructions came in the wake of elections in many countries. Inspired by decades-long pro-democracy movements across Africa that culminated in the Arab Spring of 2010-2011, and motivated by the desire to find long-term solutions to election-related violent conflicts in the continent, this book explores the terrain of democratization, elections, and conflict management. It raises and answers many questions, such as: What are the root causes of election-related conflicts? How free, fair, and credible are elections in many African countries? What institutional mechanisms are available for ballot and voter security and for mandate protection? What has been the role of civil society organizations in conflict prevention and management? What are the responsibilities of the international community, especially regional organizations like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU), in conflict resolution? What indigenous mechanisms for conflict management have been identified that may be proactively engaged?

The Resolution of African Conflicts

The Resolution of African Conflicts PDF Author: Alfred G. Nhema
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821418084
Category : Conflict management
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
"These two volumes clearly demonstrate the efforts by a wide range of African scholars to explain the roots, routes, regimes and resolution of African conflicts and how to re-build post-conflict societies. They offer sober and serious analyses, eschewing the sensationalism of the western media and the sophistry of some of the scholars in the global North for whom African conflicts are at worst a distraction and at best a confirmation of their pet racist and petty universalist theories." --From the introduction by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza This book offers analyses of a range of African conflicts and demonstrates that peace is too important to be left to outsiders.

Routledge Handbook of Conflict Response and Leadership in Africa

Routledge Handbook of Conflict Response and Leadership in Africa PDF Author: Alpaslan Özerdem
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100043205X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
This handbook explores the challenges and opportunities for leadership and conflict response in the context of Africa at several levels. Leadership plays a vital role in affecting conflict response but is frequently only examined at the macro level of state, government, and international organizations. This handbook addresses the need to explore challenges and opportunities for leadership at several levels: macro (global, regional, national), meso (NGOs, religious groups, academics), and micro (civil society organizations, youth groups, women’s organizations). Analysis from multiple levels provides a broader explanation of conflict dynamics and helps to fit localized conflict transformation approaches into wider national or regional structures. The multidisciplinary essays presented in this volume encompass the psychological, political, and structural dimensions of conflict response and demonstrate how its success is fundamentally linked to the style of effectiveness of leadership, among other factors. The volume is divided into four thematic sections: Part I: The theory and dynamics of conflict response and leadership Part II: Macro-level leadership experiences in conflict response Part III: Meso-/micro-level leadership experiences in conflict response Part IV: Recommendations for improved leadership in conflict response This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peace studies, African politics, security studies, and international relations, in general.