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Decentralisation and Community Participation
This book explores how policies of decentralisation and community participation adopted in Cameroon in 1996 have played out on the ground since 2004. These reforms were carried out amid economic crisis, structural adjustment and political upheaval. At the time, popular sentiment was that change on the economic and political fronts was imperative. However, the ruling elite, some of whom had been shuttling around the state apparatus since independence, feared that succumbing to popular demands for change was tantamount to political suicide, as was the case elsewhere on the continent. These elites thwarted opposition demands for a ‘sovereign’ national conference to discuss constitutional re...
Elections
Among the most prized and revered democratic institutions are elections. Few other actions typify what it means to participate in the democratic process in the same way that turning up, casting a ballot, and then having that ballot be part of determining who will control power has. Indeed, elections are at the center of what we view as democracy and much ink has been spilled in attempting to explain just how essential the electoral action is to democracy. In this volume our authors explore elections both from an understanding of the systems that govern elections across both the developed and developing world, and from the perspective of the individual voter who participates in that system. Taken together these analyses provide an intriguing look into this core aspect of democracy.
Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon
Cameroon is a land of much promise, but a land of unfulfilled promises. It has the potential to be an economically developed and democratic society but the struggle to live up to its potential has not gone well. Since independence there have been only two presidents of Cameroon; the current one has been in office since 1982. Endowed with a variety of climates and agricultural environments, numerous minerals and substantial forests, and a dynamic population, this is a country that should be a leader of Africa. Instead, we find a country almost paralyzed by corruption and poor management, a country with a low life expectancy and serious health problems, and a country from which the most talent...
Electoral Politics in Africa since 1990
Democratic transitions in the early 1990s introduced a sea change in Sub-Saharan African politics. Between 1990 and 2015, several hundred competitive legislative and presidential elections were held in all but a handful of the region's countries. This book is the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the key issues, actors, and trends in these elections over the last quarter century. The book asks: what motivates African citizens to vote? What issues do candidates campaign on? How has the turn to regular elections promoted greater democracy? Has regular electoral competition made a difference for the welfare of citizens? The authors argue that regular elections have both caused significant changes in African politics and been influenced in turn by a rapidly changing continent - even if few of the political systems that now convene elections can be considered democratic, and even if many old features of African politics persist.
The Perils of Belonging
Despite being told that we now live in a cosmopolitan world, more and more people have begun to assert their identities in ways that are deeply rooted in the local. These claims of autochthony—meaning “born from the soil”—seek to establish an irrefutable, primordial right to belong and are often employed in politically charged attempts to exclude outsiders. In The Perils of Belonging, Peter Geschiere traces the concept of autochthony back to the classical period and incisively explores the idea in two very different contexts: Cameroon and the Netherlands. In both countries, the momentous economic and political changes following the end of the cold war fostered anxiety over migration. For Cameroonians, the question of who belongs where rises to the fore in political struggles between different tribes, while the Dutch invoke autochthony in fierce debates over the integration of immigrants. This fascinating comparative perspective allows Geschiere to examine the emotional appeal of autochthony—as well as its dubious historical basis—and to shed light on a range of important issues, such as multiculturalism, national citizenship, and migration.
Society and Change in Bali Nyonga
Contemporary Bali Nyonga is a rapidly growing town of over 80,000 in habitants, sixteen kilometres southwest of Bamenda, the capital of the North West region, Cameroon. If Cameroon has been aptly referred to in many circles as Africa in miniature, then Bali Nyonga, since its founding in the mid 19th century is emblematic of this so-called multicultural region. This book is about change in Bali Nyonga, but it is also about change in a typical postcolonial African setting grappling with a challenging new world reality. It aims to provide cutting-edge analyses of cultural change in Bali as well as inspire a new kind of scholarship in the Cameroon Grasslands championed by indigenous intellectuals. The contributors to this volume come from diverse academic backgrounds and as will be evident in the various chapters, their disciplinary perspectives have largely shaped their approaches to the topics under study. Hence, this book draws on anthropological, theological, literary and media studies perspective.
Negotiating an Anglophone Identity
This study of Cameroon captures, with fascinating detail and insight, the growing disaffection with the sterile rhetoric of nation-building that has characterised much of postcolonial African politics. It focuses on the resistance of Anglophone Cameroonians to nationhood, which is being pursued to the detriment of minority identities.
Modernising Traditions and Traditionalising Modernity in Africa
Chieftaincy in Africa has displayed remarkable dynamics and adaptability to new socio-economic and political developments, without becoming totally transformed in the process. Almost everywhere on the continent, chiefdoms and chiefs have become active agents in the quest for ethnic, cultural symbols as a way of maximising opportunities at the centre of bureaucratic and state power, and at the home village where control over land and labour often require both financial and symbolic capital. Chieftaincy remains central to ongoing efforts at developing democracy and accountability in line with the expectations of Africans as individual 'citizens' and also as 'subjects' of various cultural communities. This book uses Cameroon and Botswana as case studies, to argue that the rigidity and prescriptiveness of modernist partial theories have left a major gap in scholarship on chiefs and chieftaincy in Africa. It stresses that studies of domesticated agency in Africa are sorely needed to capture the creative ongoing processes and to avoid over-emphasising structures and essentialist perceptions on chieftaincy and the cultural communities that claim and are claimed by it.
Regional Balance and National Integration in Cameroon
This book presents a series of reflections by Cameroon scholars on a variety of topics associated with regional balance and national integration. The different reflections look for answers to some burning questions of the day such as: Where are we coming from? Where are we going? How are we going where we are going? Have the different state ideologies offered appropriate solutions to the quest for a strong, united, stable and prosperous nation-state? If not, what has gone wrong and why? What can be done to shape the future and accommodate the aspirations of the men and women of Cameroon and of their progeny? The book addresses the issue of national unity and national integration within the c...
Democracy in Africa
The two papers included in this analysis examine the political and socioeconomic factors that contribute to and constrain upon democratization throughout southern Africa and the African continent. With an emphasis on the policies of government, business, and civil society geared toward reducing inequality and poverty, these studies promote community empowerment as a way to promote local, regional, and national sustainable development on the African continent.
