State Recognition and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa

State Recognition and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa PDF Author: L. Buur
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230609716
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Being critical and empirically grounded, the book explores the complex, often counter-balancing consequences of the involvement of traditional authority in the wave of democratization and liberal-style state-building that has rolled over sub-Saharan Africa in the past decade.

State Recognition and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa

State Recognition and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa PDF Author: L. Buur
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230609716
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Being critical and empirically grounded, the book explores the complex, often counter-balancing consequences of the involvement of traditional authority in the wave of democratization and liberal-style state-building that has rolled over sub-Saharan Africa in the past decade.

Democratization in Africa

Democratization in Africa PDF 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.

Democracy in Africa

Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Nic Cheeseman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316239489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic Cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism PDF Author: Tanja A. Börzel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199682305
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 705

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism - the first of its kind - offers a systematic and wide-ranging survey of the scholarship on regionalism, regionalization, and regional governance. Unpacking the major debates, leading authors of the field synthesize the state of the art, provide a guide to the comparative study of regionalism, and identify future avenues of research. Twenty-seven chapters review the theoretical and empirical scholarship with regard to the emergence of regionalism, the institutional design of regional organizations and issue-specific governance, as well as the effects of regionalism and its relationship with processes of regionalization. The authors explore theories of cooperation, integration, and diffusion explaining the rise and the different forms of regionalism. The handbook also discusses the state of the art on the world regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Eurasia, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Various chapters survey the literature on regional governance in major issue areas such as security and peace, trade and finance, environment, migration, social and gender policies, as well as democracy and human rights. Finally, the handbook engages in cross-regional comparisons with regard to institutional design, dispute settlement, identities and communities, legitimacy and democracy, as well as inter- and transregionalism.

Democracy, Good Governance and Development in Africa

Democracy, Good Governance and Development in Africa PDF 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.

The Paradox of Traditional Chiefs in Democratic Africa

The Paradox of Traditional Chiefs in Democratic Africa PDF Author: Kate Baldwin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107127335
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
This book shows that powerful hereditary chiefs do not undermine democracy in Africa but, on some level, facilitate it.

State Legitimacy and Development in Africa

State Legitimacy and Development in Africa PDF Author: Pierre Englebert
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781588261311
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Englebert argues that differences in economic performance both within Africa and across the developing world can be linked to differences in historical state legitimacy.

Working the System in Sub-Saharan Africa

Working the System in Sub-Saharan Africa PDF Author: Corrado Tornimbeni
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443863807
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
What is the extent to which democracy, good governance, liberal citizenship and development are negotiated and shaped in sub-Saharan African countries in the context of the ‘globalised world’? Is this a characteristic of the current historical era alone? Do global ideas about politics and development in sub-Saharan Africa take on new meanings in light of local circumstances and visions? The works presented in this volume offer context-based analyses that contribute to showing how local practices of citizenship, democracy and development in sub-Saharan Africa have been ‘working the system’ of global ideas on good governance policies and development, and how this ‘system’ also builds on the way in which, historically, local narratives are presented to actors in the international context. Democracy and good governance are considered the universally shared paradigms shaping policy prescriptions and development practices in the context of the current ‘globalised’ world. Space for negotiating these recipes at the local level is considered to be particularly narrow, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, but it is also believed that international paradigms are reshaped into peculiar forms when implemented under local circumstances. From the early 1990s onwards, these processes have drawn the attention of academics, as well as the wider public, but rarely is their historical dimension taken into account: the Africa-world nexus in politics and development is not a characteristic of the current ‘global world’ alone, as is too often assumed. Adding an historical perspective to the analysis of the multilevel interconnections between local power relations, the politics of colonial and independent rule and the global discourses of democracy, citizenship and development will contribute to a sound theoretical stance in addressing what is considered the main feature of current times, globalisation and its flows. That is what this volume tries to accomplish. It does so by developing three themes in particular: the trajectory of the colonial and independent nation-state and its impact on the local and national politics of citizenship, identity and development; the way global ideas on development are converted into practice, or how they are interpreted and negotiated at local level; and issues of belonging and identity in relation to concepts and practices of political control. Case studies will include Portuguese colonialism, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Senegal (Casamance) and Uganda.

Imagining the Post-Apartheid State

Imagining the Post-Apartheid State PDF Author: John T. Friedman
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857450913
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
In northwest Namibia, people’s political imagination offers a powerful insight into the post-apartheid state. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork, this book focuses on the former South African apartheid regime and the present democratic government; it compares the perceptions and practices of state and customary forms of judicial administration, reflects upon the historical trajectory of a chieftaincy dispute in relation to the rooting of state power and examines everyday forms of belonging in the independent Namibian State. By elucidating the State through a focus on the social, historical and cultural processes that help constitute it, this study helps chart new territory for anthropology, and it contributes an ethnographic perspective to a wider set of interdisciplinary debates on the State and state processes.

State-Building and Multilingual Education in Africa

State-Building and Multilingual Education in Africa PDF Author: Ericka A. Albaugh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139916777
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
How do governments in Africa make decisions about language? What does language have to do with state-building, and what impact might it have on democracy? This manuscript provides a longue durée explanation for policies toward language in Africa, taking the reader through colonial, independence, and contemporary periods. It explains the growing trend toward the use of multiple languages in education as a result of new opportunities and incentives. The opportunities incorporate ideational relationships with former colonizers as well as the work of language NGOs on the ground. The incentives relate to the current requirements of democratic institutions, and the strategies leaders devise to win elections within these constraints. By contrasting the environment faced by African leaders with that faced by European state-builders, it explains the weakness of education and limited spread of standard languages on the continent. The work combines constructivist understanding about changing preferences with realist insights about the strategies leaders employ to maintain power.