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Postcolonial Sub-Saharan African Politics (African Studies)

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Mar 26th, 2018
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  1. Introduction
  2. Postcolonial politics in Africa have been, and continue to be, still very much works in progress. Prevailing designs for building prosperous, viable, stable states have changed markedly over sub-Saharan Africa’s first half-century of independence through reliance upon various hypothesized keys to overcoming fundamental and endemic manifestations of political and economic underdevelopment. Leaders of the mass-based nationalist parties that brought their countries to independence charted the first visions of postcolonial politics, centering upon rapid, egalitarian, state-led political development. These generally dissolved amid political disarray with their objectives largely unrealized. In response, from the 1970s onward, post-independence African countries’ engagement in world affairs coincided increasingly with dominant external influence upon the objectives and shape of African politics. This trend has continued in varied and changing forms into the 21st century. The rapidly and profoundly changing contours of late-20th and early-21st-century world politics and the global economy have intertwined, at least until recently, with predominant weakness and political decay in African politics as well as endemic economic underdevelopment. These conditions have spawned sharply divergent formulations of what has been required to overcome them. The influencing vectors shaping these formulations have been many, varied, and contrasting. They have included (1) residual legacies of colonial rule along with evolving international regimes enshrining democracy and human rights; (2) contending orthodoxies in the academy and in policy arenas concerning the nature of the state and its proper roles in development processes; and (3) African cultural norms, as they have endured and been reformulated in colonial and post-independence times, juxtaposed to increasingly pervasive liberalizing and secular mores of the West, notably with respect to gender and religion. Cross-cutting all of these influencing vectors have been cascading paradigmatic world changing events: (1) the changing roles of the Bretton Woods institutions, (2) the end of the Cold War, (3) revolutionary information technologies, (4) ascendant BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and more recently South Africa) and other emergent economies, (4) increasingly salient environmental imperatives, and (5) fallout from the events of 11 September 2001. Following an overview section, these dimensions of postcolonial African politics will be traced in this annotated bibliographic essay in terms of (1) political decolonization processes; (2) African postcolonial visions and their decay; (3) externally induced models of postcolonial polities in response to paradigm changing global events, reflecting emergent international regimes; (4) post–Cold War democratization; (5) claims and quests for postcolonial cultural and political identity; (6) crises of the postcolonial African state and their amelioration; (7) indicators and measures of postcolonial political development; and (8) intimations of possible futures for postcolonial African states.
  3.  
  4. General Overviews
  5. The study of postcolonial African politics has both influenced (and been influenced by) salient themes in the study of comparative politics more generally. Goran Hyden, one of the foremost students of African politics, supplies that context in Hyden 2013. The fields of comparative politics and international relations have always been closely interconnected and at no time more so than in the early 21st century. Four editions of Africa in World Politics since 1991 (and a fifth forthcoming in 2013) edited by John Harbeson and the late Donald Rothchild (Harbeson and Rothchild 2013), have brought together leading students of these interrelationships. The study of African postcolonial politics can be properly understood only through an appreciation of the long sweep of African history, including colonial and centuries of precolonial history. Basil Davidson has been one of the premier students of African history, and Davidson 1994 brings together his insights and those of distinguished students of African history and politics to supply that perspective. The nature and condition of the African state has been perhaps the central problem of the study of African politics in post-independence times, but it has necessarily taken into account the roles and both colonial and precolonial precedents. At the heart of the problem of the African state has been the reality that as it is generally understood today the state has been a Western implant in Africa. Meeting the requirements of Western stateness has posed profound, even controversial, challenges for African political leaders and their citizens, a struggle that Herbst 2000 explores. The nature of the colonial state as a genre of Western stateness and their enduring influence on postcolonial politics are the subject of two magisterial books by Crawford Young, The African Post Colonial State (Young 2012), and The African Colonial State (Young 1994, cited under Weak, Corrupt, Unreconstructed Colonial States). The condition and problems of the state in post-independence Africa has been at the forefront of the study of African politics in an era when the economic as well as political failings of new postcolonial states throughout the developing world prompted the rescue of the state within the field of political science from its reductionist treatment in both modernization and dependency theories. Evans, et al. 1985 was instrumental in that rescue of the state.
  6.  
  7. Davidson, Basil, ed. The Search for Africa: History, Culture, and Politics. New York: Times Books, 1994.
  8.  
  9. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  10.  
  11. A collection of essays that yields important and representative perspectives on the African cultural aspirations as expressed in the troubled political arenas.
  12.  
  13. Find this resource:
  14.  
  15.  
  16. Evans, Peter B., Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds. Bringing the State Back In. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
  17.  
  18. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511628283Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  19.  
  20. The story of post-independence African politics has largely centered around the struggles and travails of African states. This collection was pathbreaking in restoring the study of the state to preeminence after decades in which it was largely subordinated to the study of broader processes of modernization and/or dependent development that African and other developing countries were thought to be immersed in.
  21.  
  22. Find this resource:
  23.  
  24.  
  25. Harbeson, John, and Donald Rothchild, eds. Africa in World Politics: Reforming Political Order. 5th ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2013.
  26.  
  27. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  28.  
  29. A dozen leading students of African politics reflect on the major contemporary issues affecting the continent’s participation and roles in world affairs. A sixth edition is forthcoming in 2017.
  30.  
  31. Find this resource:
  32.  
  33.  
  34. Herbst, Jeffrey. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
  35.  
  36. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  37.  
  38. An important historically and comparatively grounded study of the problem of sub-Saharan African state formation, addressing the nature and basis of their pervasive contemporary weakness.
  39.  
  40. Find this resource:
  41.  
  42.  
  43. Hyden, Goran. African Politics in Comparative Perspective. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  44.  
  45. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  46.  
  47. The most cogent and concise introduction to the study of African politics from the perspective of the broader study of comparative politics of which it is a component.
  48.  
  49. Find this resource:
  50.  
  51.  
  52. Young, Crawford. The Post-Colonial State in Africa: A Half-Century of Independence, 1960–2010. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012.
  53.  
  54. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  55.  
  56. A magisterial, authoritative review of the evolution of half a century of post-independence politics, deeply influenced as they have been by colonial precedents.
  57.  
  58. Find this resource:
  59.  
  60.  
  61. Journals
  62. Leading scholarly journals devoted to the study of Africa, including its politics, include the Journal of Modern African Studies, African Studies Review, African Affairs, and African Studies Quarterly. Articles on African politics also appear with varying frequency and regularity in leading political science journals, including the American Political Science Review, World Politics, Comparative Politics, and Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics.
  63.  
  64. African Affairs.
  65.  
  66. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  67.  
  68. A leading journal of African scholarship with perhaps somewhat greater focus than others on historical, anthropological, and environmental scholarship.
  69.  
  70. Find this resource:
  71.  
  72.  
  73. African Studies Quarterly.
  74.  
  75. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  76.  
  77. Online journal of African scholarship from all fields.
  78.  
  79. Find this resource:
  80.  
  81.  
  82. African Studies Review.
  83.  
  84. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  85.  
  86. The leading US-based journal of African scholarship from all fields. Available online at JSTOR and Project Muse.
  87.  
  88. Find this resource:
  89.  
  90.  
  91. American Political Science Review.
  92.  
  93. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  94.  
  95. The official journal of the American Political Science Association and one of the foremost political science journals worldwide. Publishes in all areas of the discipline and accepts occasional articles concerning all world regions.
  96.  
  97. Find this resource:
  98.  
  99.  
  100. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics.
  101.  
  102. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  103.  
  104. Particular but by no means exclusive emphasis on the countries of the British Commonwealth. Has tended to focus somewhat more upon domestic than international politics, similar to the focus of Comparative Politics.
  105.  
  106. Find this resource:
  107.  
  108.  
  109. Comparative Politics.
  110.  
  111. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  112.  
  113. Specializes in articles centering on the politics of individual countries, or groups of countries. Focus is principally upon domestic politics as opposed to articles more concerned with international relations.
  114.  
  115. Find this resource:
  116.  
  117.  
  118. Journal of Modern African Studies.
  119.  
  120. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  121.  
  122. Leading journal of African scholarship from all fields, published in the United Kingdom.
  123.  
  124. Find this resource:
  125.  
  126.  
  127. World Politics.
  128.  
  129. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  130.  
  131. One of the leading political science journals with a somewhat more interdisciplinary focus than the American Political Science Review. Theoretically supported policy-centered articles appear from time to time.
  132.  
  133. Find this resource:
  134.  
  135.  
  136. Decolonization
  137. The trajectories of sub-Saharan African postcolonial politics charted by the influencing vectors, outlined in the Introduction, have emerged, broadly, in three phases, along with the possible outlines of an emergent fourth phase. The essence of phase one, encompassing the 1960s and very early 1970s, was decolonization. Decolonization processes were animated by (1) the shortcomings, contradictions, and profound sociocultural, economic, and political impacts of colonial rule itself; (2) the manner in which African nationalism grew in opposition to it; (3) the processes and terms by which the European colonial powers retired in favor of independent African governments in response both to African nationalism and their own shifting post–World War II priorities; and (4) the visions, governing priorities, and performance of the newly independent governments. Emerson 1960 is a classic portrayal of the overall emergence of nationalism in African and Asian colonies, especially following World War II. Hodgkin 1957 is a classic exposition of the policies of the main colonial powers in Sub-African Africa and the contradictions in them in practice that fueled African nationalism. Rodney 1972 is perhaps the harshest judgment on colonial rule, juxtaposed to the expectations of African leaders that post-independence development would indeed occur and scholarly analyses that the rise of nationalism itself epitomized progressive social change underway in what is now known as the “global south.” Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, in his thoughts summarized in Uhuru na Ujamaa (Nyerere 1968) and Senegal’s Leopold Senghor in his On African Socialism (Senghor 1964) were the preeminent philosophers of a predominant view that post-independence African development would take the form of democratic socialism with distinctively African components, standing between (yet apart from) the capitalist democracy of the West and authoritarian socialism of the Soviet sphere. Modernization theory built historicism and teleology into the behavioral revolution in social sciences to explain the rise of African and other developing nations, of which Almond and Coleman 1960 was a classic explication. The destinies of these early models of development thinking as they emerged in—and were applied to—African and other developing nations were captured from different perspectives. Rosberg and Callaghy 1979 summarizes the achievements and failings of African socialism at the point when this vision was eclipsed for most of the continent. Huntington 1968 exposes the then-evident fallacies of modernization theory: its teleological pretentions at a point when African and its reductionist deemphasis of the importance of strong, party-based institutional order at a time when most African one-party states were in political disarray.
  138.  
  139. Almond, Gabriel, and James Coleman, eds. The Politics of Developing Areas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960.
  140.  
  141. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  142.  
  143. The first comprehensive, authoritative study of the political development of colonies in all world regions approaching or having reached independence. The studies employ modernization theory categories to organize intra- and inter-world region comparisons.
  144.  
  145. Find this resource:
  146.  
  147.  
  148. Emerson, Rupert. From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self-Assertion of Asian and African Peoples. Boston: Beacon, 1960.
  149.  
  150. DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674333154Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  151.  
  152. One of the first and most influential studies of decolonization throughout Africa and Asia by an eminent and influential Harvard political scientist. Focuses on the drama, struggles, and hopefulness of the movements for national independence.
  153.  
  154. Find this resource:
  155.  
  156.  
  157. Hodgkin, Thomas. Nationalism in Colonial Africa. New York: New York University Press, 1957.
  158.  
  159. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  160.  
  161. A succinct and definitive account of the guiding purposes of British, French, and Belgian colonial rule juxtaposed to their fundamental contradictions, created by the manner in which each power, in general, tended to rule. Implicit in this analysis is the hypothesis that it was the contradictions of colonial rule as much as the fact of colonial rule itself that animated sub-Saharan African nationalism.
  162.  
  163. Find this resource:
  164.  
  165.  
  166. Huntington, Samuel. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968.
  167.  
  168. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  169.  
  170. Well over a decade before Evans, et al. 1985 (cited under General Overviews), Huntington called attention to the teleological and indeed ethnocentric pretensions of modernization theory in which early studies of African independence were predominantly couched. He emphasized the imperatives of an autonomous, integrated party-led state if the objectives of social and economic modernization were to be achieved.
  171.  
  172. Find this resource:
  173.  
  174.  
  175. Nyerere, Julius K. Uhuru na Ujamaa. London: Oxford University Press, 1968.
  176.  
  177. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  178.  
  179. A collection of speeches and writings by the leader of Tanzanian nationalism and its first president, known as mwalimu (teacher), from 1961 to 1985. The essays detail his thoughts on a wide range of subjects bearing on the quest for African socialism.
  180.  
  181. Find this resource:
  182.  
  183.  
  184. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1972.
  185.  
  186. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  187.  
  188. The title captures succinctly the theme of this book by a distinguished Guyanese historian that shatters the idea that colonialism, for all its faults, may have brought progress to Africa rather than profoundly undermining elegant and noble precolonial African civilizations.
  189.  
  190. Find this resource:
  191.  
  192.  
  193. Rosberg, Carl G., and Thomas M. Callaghy, eds. Socialism in Sub-Saharan Africa: A New Assessment. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1979.
  194.  
  195. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  196.  
  197. A comparative and essentially retrospective study of the common themes and variations of African socialism across the continent a decade after its demise throughout much of the continent—although also including studies of late entrants.
  198.  
  199. Find this resource:
  200.  
  201.  
  202. Senghor, Leopold. On African Socialism. New York: Praeger, 1964.
  203.  
  204. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  205.  
  206. An exploration of cultural as well as political and economic dimensions of a vision of African socialism shared by many independence-era African leaders by the leader of Senegal’s independence movement: Senghor was its first president from 1960 to his voluntary retirement in 1980 and a poet and philosopher who became the first African member of the prestigious L’Académie Française.
  207.  
  208. Find this resource:
  209.  
  210.  
  211. Development beyond the State
  212. Phase Two, roughly the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, featured coordinated and sharply contrasting international initiatives to address prolonged and profound African economic political decay. Expectations of what the United Nations had hoped would be a “development decade” ran aground for most sub-Saharan and other new nations and their peoples. Political decay in the forms of military coups, and corrupt, autocratic rule became prevalent (African Political Decay). Rival theories of development from below and dependency supplanted modernization theory while Afro-Marxist conceptions of political and economic development supplanted African socialism in countries emerging late from imperial rule. All this both contributed to and reflected profound transformation in the international order itself: a period of détente in the Cold War, profound disruption of the global economic by cartel-generated oil price shocks, and surrender of unchallenged US leadership of the Bretton Woods Institutions to shared collective governance by a coalition of the seven leading economies. Initiatives in the 1970s to circumvent governments by promoting development from below via local and international non-governmental organizations (see The 1970s: Global Transformation) yielded in the 1980s to demands that governments shrink and retreat from their failed initiatives to promote development in favor of reliance upon full engagement with global market forces (see The 1980s: Return to Development Orthodoxy). In retrospect, implicit but largely unobserved in these initiatives, there emerged the reality that beyond autocratic and ineffective ruling regimes lay profound weakness in the structure of African states themselves, inherited but largely unreconstructed from the colonial era.
  213.  
  214. African Political Decay
  215. The decaying of African states within a decade or two of their independence took many forms. In virtually all cases, newly independent African regimes inherited, rather than fundamentally revamped the governance structures established by colonial authorities. Ekeh 1975 is an essay that explains the costs in terms of lost legitimacy, with particular reference to the author’s native Nigeria. The failure of newly independent, predominantly one-party regimes to manage (let alone transform) their economies as they intended produced extensive informal economies operating outside the reach of these regimes, siphoning off the energies of both high- and low-level government employees. The shrinking de facto scope of governmental authority is captured in Kasfir 1976. Military regimes supplanted civilian regimes, frequently in some countries, but they generally proved no more effective or even stable as Decalo 1976 explains, even when they attempted to rely upon civilian officials and decision-making processes, as Harbeson 1987 details. Reacting to these manifestations of political decay, regimes in countries gaining independence in the 1970s—Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia—rejected more democratic African socialist models for more hard-core Soviet-style Marxist-Leninist models, reflecting (and to some extent contributing to) the ascendancy of these models in the academy and parts of policy arenas globally. Keller and Rothchild 1987 addresses these more resilient but no more effective models in these countries.
  216.  
  217. Decalo, Samuel. Coups and Army Rule in Africa: Studies in Military Style. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976.
  218.  
  219. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  220.  
  221. Military regimes seized authority from authoritarian albeit unstable civilian governments in many Africans, though often equally unstable and short-lived themselves. Decalo’s book was authoritative in portraying the governance patterns of these military regimes.
  222.  
  223. Find this resource:
  224.  
  225.  
  226. Ekeh, Peter. “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 17.1 (1975): 91–112.
  227.  
  228. DOI: 10.1017/S0010417500007659Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  229.  
  230. The single most penetrating essay discerning the illegitimacy of inherited and largely unreconstructed colonial states written by a distinguished Nigerian academic.
  231.  
  232. Find this resource:
  233.  
  234.  
  235. Harbeson, John, ed. The Military in African Politics. New York: Praeger, 1987.
  236.  
  237. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  238.  
  239. The theme of this collection is the reliance of many later military regimes on civilian support and methods of rule.
  240.  
  241. Find this resource:
  242.  
  243.  
  244. Kasfir, Nelson. The Shrinking Political Arena in African Politics: With a Case Study of Uganda. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
  245.  
  246. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  247.  
  248. A penetrating study of effective shrinkage of governmental authority in African countries resulting from bankruptcy of their economic policies and expanding informal economies largely beyond the reach of governmental regulation. “Economies of affection” governed by mores of traditional societies helped to fill a quasi-vacuum in legitimate governmental authority.
  249.  
  250. Find this resource:
  251.  
  252.  
  253. Keller, Edmond, and Donald Rothchild, eds. Afro-Marxist Regimes: Ideology and Public Policy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1987.
  254.  
  255. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  256.  
  257. Explores the substitution of Afro-Marxist models for those of African socialism with emphasis on four new states born in the 1970s: Zimbabwe gaining independence from Britain and white minority rule, Mozambique and Angola newly independent from Portugal, and Ethiopia after the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie’s regime.
  258.  
  259. Find this resource:
  260.  
  261.  
  262. The 1970s: Global Transformation
  263. The failure of what had been termed “a development decade” of the 1960s prompted a radical new agenda led by the World Bank under the leadership of Robert McNamara. Focused on relieving the plight of the “poor majority” in developing countries, development strategies centered on going around weak, unstable, often military governments to reach African and other developing country peoples at the grassroots level through their local organizations and networks of international and local nongovernmental organizations. This paradigmatic shift in development theory initiated an enduring shift in shaping prevalent models of African political development from African regimes and scholars to the international community.
  264.  
  265. A Fractured, Contentious Global Economy
  266. The era of détente between the two super-powers in the 1970s allowed countries affiliated with each bloc to experiment with ideas from the other, notably Yugoslavia and Hungary in the Soviet bloc, and to act more independently of the blocs in their foreign policies, notably France in the Western alliance. At the same time, the era witnessed a flowering of diverse models of development to explain and rectify the sagging economies and weakened polities of the newly independent countries. Gilpin 1987 details the theory and practice of these liberal, realist, and Marxist models in international relations globally.
  267.  
  268. Gilpin, Robert. The Political Economy of International Relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
  269.  
  270. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271.  
  272. An authoritative account of rival conceptions of global political economy in sharp contention with one another especially during the 1970s.
  273.  
  274. Find this resource:
  275.  
  276.  
  277. Development from Below
  278. The emphasis on targeting the poor majority reflected both scholarship and practice showing that beneficiaries of development efforts possessed wisdom that needed to be integrated with that of Western planners. Poor majorities resided disproportionately in rural areas and the importance of their participation in development initiatives through their local organizations became axiomatic. Uphoff and Esman 1984 is an account of these policies and their application in Africa and elsewhere. Critical to the policy of pursuing development from below was the hypothesis that growth and equity could be pursued simultaneously, not just sequentially. Chenery 1974 was a highly influential work that practitioners of this new approach relied heavily on. Korten and Klauss 1984 focuses on the importance of a more responsive, client-oriented bureaucracy to make this approach work. Bryant and White 1982 explores this model in more academic terms.
  279.  
  280. Bryant, Coralie, and Louise G. White. Managing Development in the Third World. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1982.
  281.  
  282. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  283.  
  284. Bryant and White wrote in support of the development-from-below model with particular emphasis on the requirements and capabilities of small-scale producers as academics and consultants to the development community. These two books best set forth the theoretical and empirical foundations of this approach.
  285.  
  286. Find this resource:
  287.  
  288.  
  289. Chenery, Hollis, et al. Redistribution with Growth: Policies to Improve Income Distribution in Developing Countries in the Context of Economic Growth. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
  290.  
  291. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  292.  
  293. Chenery was the leading guru of economic theory, and his book was the most influential source of said theory in support of pursuing economic growth and equity simultaneously.
  294.  
  295. Find this resource:
  296.  
  297.  
  298. Korten, David, and Rudi Klauss. People-Centered Development: Contributions toward Theory and Planning Frameworks. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian, 1984.
  299.  
  300. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  301.  
  302. Korten and Klauss were active in the international development community as theorists and advocates of development from below, with a particular emphasis on influencing governmental agencies concerned with economic and social development to learn from the knowledge of their clients and adapt the expertise of their clients to their own.
  303.  
  304. Find this resource:
  305.  
  306.  
  307. Uphoff, Norman T., and Milton Esman. Local Organizations: Intermediaries in Rural Development. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984.
  308.  
  309. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  310.  
  311. Central to development from below was the idea that successful policies needed to rely on the expertise of the poor acting through their own local organizations, supported by bureaucracies that listen to and learn from citizens as well as direct them. Uphoff and Esman authoritatively distill the nature and outcomes of these initiatives.
  312.  
  313. Find this resource:
  314.  
  315.  
  316. The 1980s: Return to Development Orthodoxy
  317. Détente died on the sands of the Kalahari, as one distinguished student of international relations observed, as Russian Soviet and Western interests clashed bidding for the allegiance of regimes and liberation movements in southern Africa and the Horn. This and the threat that heavily indebted developing countries might default on their debts to Western banks and governments brought an abrupt end to détente, a resumption of the Cold War, and G7 insistence that developing countries abandon state-led development to participate fully in a market-driven global economy, all punctuated by the election in of sharply more conservative governments in the United States, Britain, and what was then West Germany. In retrospect, this “Structural Adjustment” forced on corrupt, authoritarian governments betrayed the fundamental underlying weakness of substantially unreconstructed postcolonial states (see Weak, Corrupt, Unreconstructed Colonial States). Meanwhile, the emergence of emboldened grassroots resistance to authoritarian rule in Latin America and southern Europe, which in hindsight was a weakening Soviet Bloc, was captured within the academy as civil society resurrecting the concepts of pioneer democratic theorists John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau. The flowering of what would be known as Democracy’s Third Wave would reach African shores later with the end of the Cold War.
  318.  
  319. Structural Adjustment
  320. Callaghy and Ravenhill 1993 explores the applications, achievements, and shortcomings of structural adjustment policies in several African countries. Hyden 1980 addresses the retreat of rural peoples into “economies of affection” guided by traditional norms of group-centered behavior, in response to Tanzanian government African socialism initiatives, curable in the author’s view only by more market-centered development policies. Bates 1981 explores the logic by which African regimes pursue self-serving economic initiatives at the expense of the interests of most small-scale producers, especially in rural areas.
  321.  
  322. Bates, Robert H. Markets and States in Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
  323.  
  324. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  325.  
  326. A classic and highly influential study exposing the logic of corrupt developing country economies in which the poor and their indispensable rural economies are marginalized by elite interests to the macro-level detriment of developing country economies.
  327.  
  328. Find this resource:
  329.  
  330.  
  331. Callaghy, Thomas M., and John Ravenhill, eds. Hemmed In: Responses to Africa’s Economic Decline. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
  332.  
  333. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  334.  
  335. An authoritative study of the evolutions, lessons, achievements, and shortcomings of international financial institutions–enforced structural adjustment, conditioning development assistance for heavily indebted, and bankrupt governance on fundamental market-centric reforms.
  336.  
  337. Find this resource:
  338.  
  339.  
  340. Hyden, Goran. Beyond Ujamaa: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
  341.  
  342. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343.  
  344. A classic study of what the author considered ultimately unsustainable resistance to market-driven economic reform overcoming “economies of affection” in local societies organized in terms of societal rather than individual entrepreneurial norms.
  345.  
  346. Find this resource:
  347.  
  348.  
  349. Weak, Corrupt, Unreconstructed Colonial States
  350. Though implicit in the disarray and ineffectiveness of African regimes fairly soon following independence, it was only with the reasserted centrality of the state, as distinct from ruling regimes, that the underlying weakness of African states, concealed by assertive regimes, became apparent. Tilly 1992 traces the building of European states through war, war preparation, and accommodation with capital, provoking the fundamental and largely unanswered question of what may explain and advance state building in postcolonial countries such as those of sub-Saharan Africa. By contrast the dimensions of state weakness have been well explored. Unreformed structures and governance practices from the colonial era were one important factor as Young 1994 explains. Bayart 1993 explores the pervasiveness of corruption in African societies, as well as polities, as another fundamental dimension of the problem. The dependence of African states on external sources of legitimacy, notably recognition in United Nations circles, as well as bilateral relations with major powers, is the theme of Jackson 1990, while Jackson and Rosberg 1982 explores the varying forms of autocratic regimes and their deleterious effects on underlying state legitimacy. Harbeson 1988 explains how the quest for revolutionary socioeconomic reform pursued by a brutal military rule foundered with the absence of consensus on the contours of a state to replace the empire state of Haile Selassie and his predecessors.
  351.  
  352. Bayart, Jean-Francois. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. London: Longman, 1993.
  353.  
  354. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355.  
  356. A classic study of the political economy of corruption in African states by a distinguished French scholar and diplomat.
  357.  
  358. Find this resource:
  359.  
  360.  
  361. Harbeson, John. The Ethiopian Transformation: The Quest for the Post-Imperial State. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1988.
  362.  
  363. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  364.  
  365. An account of the transition from empire through military regime-led Marxist-Leninist socioeconomic reform that foundered on failure to design and construct a postimperial state generally recognized as legitimate.
  366.  
  367. Find this resource:
  368.  
  369.  
  370. Jackson, Robert H. Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
  371.  
  372. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  373.  
  374. This study, along with Jackson and Rosberg 1982, probed the nature of autocratic rule in African countires, their marginal stateness, and their dependence on acceptance by the United Nations and other external agencies for their domestic legitimacy.
  375.  
  376. Find this resource:
  377.  
  378.  
  379. Jackson, Robert H., and Carl G. Rosberg. Personal Rule in Black Africa: Prince, Autocrat, Prophet, Tyrant. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
  380.  
  381. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  382.  
  383. As the title communicates, the book focuses on four types of personalistic authoritarian and generally ruthless rule characteristic of most African countries in the 1970s and 1980s. These autocrats are contrasted with their more visionary predecessors who led their countries to independence and postulated the model of one-party democracies.
  384.  
  385. Find this resource:
  386.  
  387.  
  388. Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1992. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
  389.  
  390. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  391.  
  392. One of several classic studies of the origins of European states by this leading scholar, emphasizing the centrality of war making and war preparation, posing the to-date largely unsatisfactorily addressed question of how violence and instability in autocratically governed African polities might and/or might not follow a different course.
  393.  
  394. Find this resource:
  395.  
  396.  
  397. Young, Crawford. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
  398.  
  399. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  400.  
  401. An authoritative and definitive exploration of the nature of colonially generated African states and the persistence of their dominant features well into the post-independence era. Despite lacking critical components of stateness, Young’s post-independence states merit the designation.
  402.  
  403. Find this resource:
  404.  
  405.  
  406. Post-Cold War Political Reform and Reconstruction
  407. Defining Phase Three, the 1990s and the first years of the 21st century, has been an extension to sub-Saharan Africa of democracy’s post–Cold War Third Wave that originated in eastern and southern Europe and Latin America. Democratization initiatives coincided with serious domestic conflict in many sub-Saharan African countries that made explicit the reality of broken and failed states along with many other chronically weak, corruption-prone ones. External responses to these conditions have included broadened support for human development initiatives in partnership with African governments, greater international insistence of democratic practices and observance of basic human rights, and prosecution of those deemed guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity where African and other states find themselves unable or unwilling to do so. Coupled uneasily with these initiatives have been expanded counterterrorism security initiatives, notably in failed states and/or in partnership with weak ones. Meanwhile, domestically, post–Cold War democratization in sub-Saharan Africa has complicated two fundamental and profoundly intertwined issues requiring effective treatment if it is to usher in what some have hopefully deemed an era of the continent’s second independence. First, as a putative end in itself, there is the question of how democracy can be rendered sustainable so as to forestall and recover from reversals. Second, as a means to other ends, how can steps toward broader, deeper, sustainable democratization be sequenced with those necessary to achieving (a) strengthened economic development, (b) broader human development, and (c) fulfillment of quests for cultural identity in multicultural societies so that pursuits of all four objectives are mutually reinforcing.
  408.  
  409. Intimations of Political Change
  410. Preceding the end of the Cold War at the conclusion of the 1980s were societally grounded movements to effect political change in autocratic regimes whose aggressiveness masked the fragility of their states. Keane 1998 was influential in characterizing these movements as those of civil society, resurrecting a theme central to the political philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau more than two centuries earlier. O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986 explores the centrality of civil society in this sense in accomplishing democratic regime change in southern Europe and Latin America well in advance of the Cold War, anticipating a wave of democratic initiatives that would follow the end of the Cold War. Putnam 1993 emphasizes the importance of civic-mindedness and traditions, characteristic of democratic civil societies in Italy.
  411.  
  412. Keane, John. Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
  413.  
  414. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  415.  
  416. One of a set of pathbreaking studies restoring the concept of civil society to contemporary usage to define the significance of grassroots resistance movements against authoritarian rule for the emergence of democracy.
  417.  
  418. Find this resource:
  419.  
  420.  
  421. O’Donnell, Guillermo, and Phillippe C. Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
  422.  
  423. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  424.  
  425. One of a set of pathbreaking studies emphasizing the significance of civil society in bringing about the breakthroughs in Latin America of the first regimes to realize democracy’s Third Wave.
  426.  
  427. Find this resource:
  428.  
  429.  
  430. Putnam, Robert D. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
  431.  
  432. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  433.  
  434. Putnam’s work emphasized the critical importance of civic democratic traditions to sustainable democracy, in this instance contrasting their presence in northern Italy to a significantly greater degree than in southern Italy.
  435.  
  436. Find this resource:
  437.  
  438.  
  439. Democracy’s Third Wave
  440. Huntington 1991 places post–Cold War democratization in the historical perspective of an earlier era of democratic initiatives following the two world wars, prompting hypotheses of neighborhood and “snowball” effects as causes of these “waves.” Huntington focuses on alternative models of transition accomplished while disarming military and ancien régime resistance to them. Linz and Stepan 1996 remains the classic study of the problems of extending regime transitions to accomplish consolidation of full-scale democracy.
  441.  
  442. Huntington, Samuel. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
  443.  
  444. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  445.  
  446. Huntington coined the term “Third Wave” to portray democracy as having occurred in tandem in many countries more or less simultaneously following the two world wars and at the end of the Cold War. The work identified three models of transition for overcoming ancien régime resistance, processes and requirements for democratic transitions to occur, and core issues to be addressed.
  447.  
  448. Find this resource:
  449.  
  450.  
  451. Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
  452.  
  453. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  454.  
  455. An authoritative account of the issues and problems of extending, completing, and sustaining democratic institutions and practices once the first steps have been undertaken.
  456.  
  457. Find this resource:
  458.  
  459.  
  460. The “Third Wave” in Africa
  461. A paradox of democracy’s “Third Wave” in Africa has been the paucity of African voices defining how and in what forms democratization has taken hold as compared to whole libraries of analysis by non-African scholars and policy analysts. Ake 1996 is among the most important of these few African democratic philosophies. Bratton and van de Walle 1997 has been the definitive study of the years of post–Cold War African democratic transitions, a major theme of which is the weight of authoritarian precedents in shadowing these transitions. Harbeson, et al. 1994 initiates a stream of theoretical and empirical explorations of the meaning, and challenges facing civil society in African democratization. Wing 2008 explains the factors differentiating successful singular sovereign national conferences in Benin and especially Mali, from others in advancing African democratization. Lindberg 2007 explores the importance of successive, relatively free and fair elections in advancing consolidation of democracies. Bratton 2013 examines the meaning of democracy in economic and political terms for ordinary citizens drawing on the multicountry Afrobarometer surveys. Diamond and Plattner 2010 is a survey of democratic progress by two leading students and advocates for democratization. Pitcher 2012 examines the complicated interfaces of simultaneous initiatives to advance democratization and economic reform.
  462.  
  463. Ake, Claude. Democracy and Development in Africa. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996.
  464.  
  465. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  466.  
  467. Written in the early days of the “Third Wave” in Africa, Ake saw indigenous communities and decentralization along with reliance on traditional agriculture as legitimate African starting points for democratization and economic development and for overcoming authoritarian rule rooted in colonial practices.
  468.  
  469. Find this resource:
  470.  
  471.  
  472. Bratton, Michael, ed. Voting and Democratic Citizenship in Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2013.
  473.  
  474. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475.  
  476. With the benefit of four rounds of Afrobarometer surveys of citizen opinion in thirty African countries, this book singularly addresses the meaning of democracy’s “third wave” for ordinary Africans and the extent and limits of their evolving sense of democratic citizenship.
  477.  
  478. Find this resource:
  479.  
  480.  
  481. Bratton, Michael, and Nicolas van de Walle. Democratic Experiments in Africa in Comparative Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
  482.  
  483. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139174657Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  484.  
  485. The authoritative treatment of the early stages of “Third Wave” democratization in Africa, noting the importance of institutional inheritances of neo-patrimonial rule in shaping democratic transitions: i.e., inheritances of “big man” personalistic, fused economic and political rule as distinct from differentiated, rational-legal structures in the Weberian mold.
  486.  
  487. Find this resource:
  488.  
  489.  
  490. Diamond, Larry, and Marc F. Plattner. Democratization in Africa: Progress and Retreat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
  491.  
  492. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  493.  
  494. A collection of sectoral and case studies assessing sub-Saharan progress toward realizing democratic norms in the first two decades following the end of the Cold War.
  495.  
  496. Find this resource:
  497.  
  498.  
  499. Harbeson, John, Donald Rothchild, and Naomi Chazan, eds. Civil Society and the State in Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994.
  500.  
  501. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  502.  
  503. An exploration of the roles and significance of civil society in quests for democratization in sub-Saharan Africa in both theoretical and empirical terms.
  504.  
  505. Find this resource:
  506.  
  507.  
  508. Lindberg, Staffan. Democracy and Elections in Africa. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
  509.  
  510. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  511.  
  512. Explores the thesis that democratic elections in Africa are not just ends in themselves but, through repetition, they establish momentum for broadening and deepening adherence to democratic values.
  513.  
  514. Find this resource:
  515.  
  516.  
  517. Pitcher, M. Anne. Party Politics and Economic Reform in Africa’s Democracies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  518.  
  519. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139014700Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  520.  
  521. Destined to be an authoritative account of the interface of party organizations and those of economic reform in determining progress toward both democracy and development.
  522.  
  523. Find this resource:
  524.  
  525.  
  526. Wing, Susanna D. Constructing Democracy in Transitioning Societies of Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
  527.  
  528. DOI: 10.1057/9780230612075Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  529.  
  530. Sovereign national conferences have been distinctive Francophone country pathways to democracy. Wing’s account focuses on one of the two most successful of these conferences, the conference in Mali, accounting for why those of Benin and Mali have been more successful than others.
  531.  
  532. Find this resource:
  533.  
  534.  
  535. Measuring Democratic Progress
  536. Quantitative measures of progress toward democratic governance have become highly influential, notwithstanding methodological critiques centering on multicollinearity among the variables measured. Their emphases vary and overlap. The most prominent of the measures have included Freedom House, which evaluates country performance in upholding civil and political liberties; Polity IV, which assesses checks on executive power and openness and competitiveness of competition for executive power; the World Bank Institute’s “Governance Matters” assessments that focus more on quality of government regulation and control of corruption as well as on rule of law, extent of political voice, and state stability. CIRI assesses degrees of women’s rights observance, physical security, and judicial independence as well as the other rights assessed by Freedom House. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation includes assessments of human development in economic and social as well as political terms. The Mo Ibrahim Index focuses only on African countries, including those of North Africa. Five rounds of Afrobarometer surveys in thirty-five African countries have gauged the opinions of ordinary Africans about the political and economic meaning of democratization in their lives and the nature and extent of their evolving sense of democratic citizenship.
  537.  
  538. CIRI Human Rights Data Project.
  539.  
  540. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  541.  
  542. Created by academics David Cingranelli and David Richards, the Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset scales have centered on measures of physical security, judicial independence, and women’s political and economic rights as well basic freedoms of expression and association. Fourteen measures are scored from zero to two. Has a worldwide focus.
  543.  
  544. Find this resource:
  545.  
  546.  
  547. Freedom House.
  548.  
  549. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  550.  
  551. Worldwide country assessments of civil and political liberties on seven-point scales since 1972 that aggregate tallies of seven underlying sets of democratic values. Tallies since 2005 have traced overall partial declines in democratic performance in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world.
  552.  
  553. Find this resource:
  554.  
  555.  
  556. Mo Ibrahim Foundation.
  557.  
  558. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  559.  
  560. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation, established by a wealthy Sudanese businessman, measures progress annually only in African countries (including North Africa) in terms of safety and the rule of law, participation and human rights, sustainable economic development, and human development opportunities.
  561.  
  562. Find this resource:
  563.  
  564.  
  565. Polity IV.
  566.  
  567. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  568.  
  569. Focuses on the strength of rules limiting executive authority and facilitating open competition for executive office. Scales performance from minus 10 for authoritarian regimes to +10 for democratic ones, subtracting authoritarian practices from democratic ones. Scores of +6 or better indicate democracies, minus 6 or worse indicate authoritarian rule. Scores in between indicate varying degrees of semi-authoritarian and hybrid democratic rule.
  570.  
  571. Find this resource:
  572.  
  573.  
  574. World Bank Institute.
  575.  
  576. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  577.  
  578. Drawing on a wide array of sources, including Freedom House, WBI focuses on the quality of governmental regulation and effectiveness, rule of law, corruption control, and state stability as well as democratic expression for all countries. Scores are averaged for each of the six variables. Initially biennial beginning in 1996, the scores are now released annually.
  579.  
  580. Find this resource:
  581.  
  582.  
  583. Democracy and Crises of the State
  584. The post–Cold War arrival of democratic initiatives on African shores coincided with laying bare the realities of chronically weak states, collapsed and failed states, and states fractured by prolonged violent civil conflict. Core questions have been and have remained concerning how sequencing elements of democracy bear on preserving and strengthening states and on advancing economic reform.
  585.  
  586. Dimensions of Democratic State Building
  587. The nature of the interfaces between processes of strengthening states and processes of democratizing them has remained an insufficiently explored, crucially important topic. Joseph 1997 has remained a pioneering initial exploration of this topic. Boone 2003 and Forrest 2004 explore the importance of democratic processes in relatively understudied linkages between central and local levels of government in strengthening states. Boone 2014 offers a comparative study of property relations in several African countries that complements Pitcher 2012 (cited under the “Third Wave” in Africa) in addressing the interface of critically important economic and political dimensions of democratic state building.
  588.  
  589. Boone, Catherine. Political Topographies of the African State. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  590.  
  591. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511615597Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  592.  
  593. An authoritative account of the varied dynamics of state making in West Africa as a function of the contours of local economics and interactions with regional and central government elites.
  594.  
  595. Find this resource:
  596.  
  597.  
  598. Boone, Catherine. Property and Political Order in Africa: Land Rights and the Structure of Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
  599.  
  600. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  601.  
  602. Land tenure relationships have always been at the core of social and political structures in sub-Saharan Africa and an underlying cause of political and economic conflict. Although there have been many seminal works on land tenure in individual countries, Boone’s book is one of the first to look comparatively at these relationships.
  603.  
  604. Find this resource:
  605.  
  606.  
  607. Forrest, Joshua B. Subnationalism in Africa: Ethnicity, Alliances, and Politics. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004.
  608.  
  609. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  610.  
  611. Emphasizes the critical importance of central-local linkages to strengthened African state building
  612.  
  613. Find this resource:
  614.  
  615.  
  616. Joseph, Richard, ed. State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997.
  617.  
  618. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  619.  
  620. A comprehensive set of essays centered on the dynamics of advancing democracy and strengthening weak states.
  621.  
  622. Find this resource:
  623.  
  624.  
  625. State Building and State Crisis
  626. Post–Cold War democratization in sub-Saharan African coincided with the visible breakdown of states into civil war, complete collapse, jousting of rival militias, and/or chronic weakness. Reno 1998 and Reno 2011 explore the fraying of commitment even to the very idea of a public sector as officials resort to formation of private militias in pursuit of economic and political gain, aided by international linkages and by exploiting official connections. Mansfield and Snyder 2005 contends that competitive multiparty elections prior to democratizing the state in other respects have been responsible for state weakening civil and even regional conflict. Beissinger and Young 2002 seeks common themes in the emergence of states in crisis between post-Soviet empire states and postcolonial states in Africa. Samatar and Samatar 2002, written by two distinguished Somali scholars, has been one of the relatively few to examine the phenomenon of state crisis from an African perspective.
  627.  
  628. Beissinger, Mark R., and Crawford Young. Beyond State Crisis: Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
  629.  
  630. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  631.  
  632. A pioneering collection of essays focused on building comparative understanding of state crises into distinct liberated regions struggling with vestiges of empire and authoritarian rule in the post–Cold War era.
  633.  
  634. Find this resource:
  635.  
  636.  
  637. Mansfield, Edward, and Jack Snyder. Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.
  638.  
  639. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  640.  
  641. An important and much-debated study arguing that conducting democratic elections prior to cultivating other elements of democracy like the rule of law, bureaucratic transparency, a vibrant civil society, and a measure of economic development endangers state stability, risking domestic and even regional violent conflicts.
  642.  
  643. Find this resource:
  644.  
  645.  
  646. Reno, William. Warlord Politics and African States. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998.
  647.  
  648. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  649.  
  650. Perceptive studies of the decay of formal state institutions into quasi-Hobbesian conflict between militias and security forces of individual political leaders, built on exploitation of country economic resources and connections to external economic interests, and relying in part on fig leaves of formal governmental authority.
  651.  
  652. Find this resource:
  653.  
  654.  
  655. Reno, William. Warfare in Independent Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  656.  
  657. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511993428Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  658.  
  659. Updates Reno 1998. Puts contemporary warlord behavior in the deeper historical context of African rebellions from anticolonial insurgency through those emerging in post-independence Africa.
  660.  
  661. Find this resource:
  662.  
  663.  
  664. Samatar, Abdi I., and Ahmed I. Samatar, eds. The African State: Reconsiderations. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002.
  665.  
  666. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  667.  
  668. African perspectives on state crisis.
  669.  
  670. Find this resource:
  671.  
  672.  
  673. Ameliorating African State Crises
  674. Zartman 1995 and Zartman 2005 distill the findings of his distinguished career exploring processes by which weak, collapsed states can be put back together again, some of the most successful examples in practice to date having been Liberia and Sierra Leone, one of the least having been Somalia. Wolpe 2008 explores conflict mitigation approaches applying the skills of a seasoned and experienced diplomat who twice served as US presidential special envoy to the troubled Great Lakes region of central Africa. Getting to peace agreements is one thing, implementing them is quite another. Stedman, et al. 2002 explores strategies and recounts case studies of peace agreement implementation.
  675.  
  676. Stedman, Stephen John, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth M. Cousens. Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002.
  677.  
  678. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  679.  
  680. A comprehensive set of essays assessing strategies and approaches to ending civil wars, African and non-African case studies, and policy recommendations.
  681.  
  682. Find this resource:
  683.  
  684.  
  685. Wolpe, Howard, and Steve McDonald. “Democracy and Peace-Building: Rethinking the Conventional Wisdom.” Round Table 97 (2008): 394.
  686.  
  687. DOI: 10.1080/00358530701844742Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  688.  
  689. Exploration of alternatives to convention peacemaking from the perspective of a distinguished diplomat and former US special envoy to the Great Lakes region of Africa.
  690.  
  691. Find this resource:
  692.  
  693.  
  694. Zartman, I. William, ed. Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995.
  695.  
  696. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  697.  
  698. A set of authoritative works on state collapse and the politics of their reconstruction with restored legitimacy by the preeminent student of the subject.
  699.  
  700. Find this resource:
  701.  
  702.  
  703. Zartman, I. William. Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005.
  704.  
  705. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  706.  
  707. Cases studies of inadequate conflict prevention efforts.
  708.  
  709. Find this resource:
  710.  
  711.  
  712. Democracy, the State, and Quests for Cultural Identity
  713. The post–Cold War era ending the Soviet empire and undermining autocratic rule everywhere has unleashed long suppressed quests for ethnic and religious identity that have long been, at a minimum, just below the surface from the beginning in post-independence Africa. Berman, et al. 2004 traces the roots of struggles for ethnic identity and the complications they present for building democratic institutions from late colonial times on. Mamdani 1996 examines the failure of the end of colonial rule to accomplish ethnic accommodation and integration as well as deracialization. Young 1976 is a magisterial account of the resulting struggles to build pluralistic societies throughout the developing world as well as in Africa. Rothchild 1997 brings political science scholarship to bear on the problem in theory and in practice. Among more recent studies, Tripp, et al. 2008 traces the progress and problems of expanding roles of women in African politics and the manner in which to some degree they cross-cut ethnic divides. Schatzberg 2001 examines the continuing significance of ethnic ties for the economic and social survival and well-being of peoples in central Africa. Posner 2005 is a landmark study that examines the pragmatic manipulation of ethnic identity for political advantage in Zambia.
  714.  
  715. Berman, Bruce, Dickson Eyoh, and Will Kymlicka, eds. Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa. Oxford: James Currey, 2004.
  716.  
  717. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  718.  
  719. A comprehensive set of essays on dimensions of ethnicity as they pertain to the pursuit of democracy in Africa from the late colonial era to the early 21st century.
  720.  
  721. Find this resource:
  722.  
  723.  
  724. Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
  725.  
  726. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  727.  
  728. Landmark study asserting that political independence in Africa has accomplished deracialization of politics while failing to bring about liberation of ethnic communities from legacies of compartmentalization left over from colonially created reserves.
  729.  
  730. Find this resource:
  731.  
  732.  
  733. Posner, Daniel. Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
  734.  
  735. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511808661Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  736.  
  737. A landmark study focused on pragmatic dimensions of ethnic identity formation and use in Zambia.
  738.  
  739. Find this resource:
  740.  
  741.  
  742. Rothchild, Donald. Managing Ethnic Conflict: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1997.
  743.  
  744. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  745.  
  746. An important collection of essays focused on problems of ethnic conflict and approaches to its management by leading scholars on the subject.
  747.  
  748. Find this resource:
  749.  
  750.  
  751. Schatzberg, Michael G. Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, Family, Food. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
  752.  
  753. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  754.  
  755. An insightful study of the continuing economic and political significance of ethnic institutions and mores to the well-being of African communities.
  756.  
  757. Find this resource:
  758.  
  759.  
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  785. A collection of essays organized by a distinguished Sudanese scholar and diplomat who argues that unlimited state sovereignty in international relations, ordained by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, has been and must be qualified in the late 20th and 21st century to admit responsibility to international regimes for adherence to basic human rights.
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  794. A thoughtful appraisal of roles external actors have played and might play in accelerating African political and economic development.
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  799. Implications of BRICS Economics
  800. At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, there is the possibility of an emergent fourth phase in which strengthened economic growth and engagement with a widened array of strong, emergent BRICS (as well as mature economies) may bid to rival or even overshadow preoccupation with questions of domestic political reform and renewal. China’s expanding economic engagement with Africa may be a foretaste of things to come. Broadman 2007 is an authoritative and detailed account of the incipient and growing significance of two ascendant economies for those of African countries. Taylor 2014 comparatively examines the impact of rising mid-level economic powers’ investment on the health of the continent’s economies.
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  806. A first exploration of China’s postmillennial investment and aid initiatives in Africa, examined with field-research interviews. In general, the author regards these initiatives sympathetically.
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  815. Penetrating insights and analysis of the increased engagement of two BRICS economies with Africa.
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  824. Taylor’s book broadens the focus on middle economic powers’ investment in Africa, beyond China, to include especially Russia, India, and Brazil. It questions to what extent this investment, which has helped spur a decade of generally strong economic growth rates across the continent, has actually strengthened development, and not led to deindustrialization and joblessness.
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