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Electoral Process and the Prospects for Democracy Consolidation
Any study of Africa's multiparty elections reveals inherent institutional and systemic difficulties that raise questions about the electoral outcomes in the emerging democracies. An assessment of electoral processes in Africa poses methodological, conceptual, and theoretical challenges to scholars and practitioners. The chapters of this volume address these issues through an assessment of the electoral processes and an examination of democratisation trends in Africa, with special focus on case studies. The chapters on Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, and South Africa analyse these complexities holistically. They examine: the potency and independence of electoral institutions; adherence to electoral laws by those charged with the statutory powers as well as the participants in the elections; the role of the media, election monitors and observers, civil society, and political parties. The authors also assess whether or not elections were conducted in a free and fair environment conducive for multiparty electoral practice and consolidation.
The Political Logic of Cultural Revival
Since 2008, prominent members of the Lhomwe ethnic group - a large but politically marginalized community in Malawi - have waged an aggressive campaign to revive their lost cultural heritage, including their language, names, foods, and dances. Existing research has linked such processes of “inventing tradition” to the strategic actions of political elites who benefit from mobilizing members of marginalized ethnic communities for political ends. Yet, because existing research has focused primarily on elite incentives, we know less about how such elite-led efforts translate into lasting cultural change and active political support among regular people. The Political Logic of Cultural Reviv...
Political Corruption in Africa
Analysing political corruption as a distinct but separate entity from bureaucratic corruption, this timely book separates these two very different social phenomena in a way that is often overlooked in contemporary studies. Chapters argue that political corruption includes two basic, critical and related processes: extractive and power-preserving corruption.
Movers and Shakers
This collection of empirical and theoretical studies of social movements in Africa is a corrective to a literature that has largely ignored that continent. It shows that Africa s social movements have distinctive features that are related to its specific history.
Controlling Territory, Controlling Voters
Violence in election campaigns is common across the African continent and beyond. According to some estimations, most African elections contain some degree of violence and most of this violence happens before elections, during the campaign. While campaign violence is a common problem, it affects citizens differently across localities. When violence and intimidation become an integral part of election campaigns in a locality, they become tools of sub-national authoritarianism that may effectively dismantle local democracy. This book focuses on the political geography of election violence in Africa, building on one important observation: elections in many African countries are highly regional ...
Everyday Choices
Scholars and practitioners seek development solutions through the engineering and strengthening of state institutions. Yet, the state is not the only or the primary arena shaping how citizens, service providers and state officials engage in actions that constitute politics and development. These individuals are members of religious orders, ethnic communities, and other groups that make claims on them, creating incentives that shape their actions. Recognizing how individuals experience these claims and view the choices before them is essential to understanding political processes and development outcomes. This Element establishes a framework elucidating these forces, which is key to knowledge accumulation, designing future research and effective programming. Taking an institutional approach, this Element explains how the salience of arenas of authority associated with various communities and the nature of social institutions within them affect politics and development. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
African Parliaments
This book offers in-depth analysis of parliamentary development set in a historical context informed by Africa's post-1990s democratic resurgence. In particular, it illustrates how African parliaments are caught between the twin processes of being part of the machinery of government while exercising the function of holding government accountable.
Civil Society Narratives of Violence and Shaping the Transitional Justice Agenda in Zimbabwe
In Civil Society Narratives of Violence and Shaping the Transitional Justice Agenda in Zimbabwe, Chenai G. Matshaka shows the shaping of the transitional justice agenda in Zimbabwe from a civil society perspective. Based on the understanding that transitional justice approaches are seen through the lenses by which the violence and conflict is understood, Matshaka explores the complexities that arise when particular narratives of violence dominate the agenda. This book contributes to a discussion on how narratives intervene in the trajectory of a transitional justice process of a society in ways that may be beneficial or detrimental to breaking cycles of injustice and domination.
Political Transition and Inclusive Development in Malawi
Malawi is among the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa that has witnessed significant improvements in relation to meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets. It exhibits some of the main challenges facing African democracies while they attempt to consolidate the benefits of democratisation. Political Transition and Inclusive Development in Malawi critically analyses opportunities and constraints related to the impact of democracy on development in one of the world’s poorest countries. The book explores how, and to what extent, processes related to democratic and economic governance can be strengthened in order to make political and administrative authorities more responsive to ...
Freedom in the World 2019
Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts use...
