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Believers, Skeptics, and Failure in Conflict Resolution
This book discusses the following questions: Why are some conflicts so enduring and why is conflict resolution so hard? The author begins by introducing two conflicting perspectives, Skeptics and Believers, to highlight the lack of consensus on conflict resolution. The book further examines the literature on the sources of violent conflict, including ethnic, economic, environmental, and religious sources, and investigates the claim that an absence of knowledge, power, or political will are at the center of conflict resolution failures. By focusing on the problem of state formation, the author demonstrates the ways in which the nature of the state contributes to violent conflict. In the end, conflict resolution fails because individuals, groups, and external powers choose war and often prefer it over peaceful alternatives.
Civil War in African States
How do disputants in Africa¿s civil wars¿rebel movements, ethnic groups, state leaders¿find security in the midst of anarchic situations? Why do some rebel movements pursue a secessionist agenda while others seek to overthrow the existing government? Under what circumstances will insurgents agree to share power? Proposing answers to these questions, Ian Spears offers a fresh perspective on the possibilities for ending violent political conflict in Africa. Spears focuses on the security predicaments of the disputants themselves as he closely examines the roots and dynamics of civil wars in Angola, Ethiopia, and Somalia. His original analysis leads to conclusions that challenge prevailing assumptions about the nature both of conflict resolution and of peacebuilding in postconflict societies.
States-Within-States
Many of the existing juridical states in the Third World remain fragile and prone to collapse. Yet, these conditions have not always given way to anarchy. In some cases, the breakdown of weak and often arbitrary states has given way to more coherent and viable, though not necessarily benevolent, political entities. This book examines the extent to which these sub-units - ' states within states ' - represent alternatives that the international community could look to in a long-term effort to bring stability, security and development to peoples in the Third World.
An Analysis of Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject
Mahmood Mamdani’s 1996 Citizen and Subject is a powerful work of analysis that lays bare the sources of the problems that plagued, and often still plague, African governments. Analysis is one of the broadest and most fundamental critical thinking skills, and involves understanding the structure and features of arguments. Mamdani’s strong analytical skills form the basis of an original investigation of the problems faced by the independent African governments in the wake of the collapse of the colonial regimes imposed by European powers such has Great Britain and France. It had long been clear that these newly-independent governments faced many problems – corruption, the imposition of a...
The Hard Road to Reform
Analyzes political, economic, and social developments since the defeat of ZANU-PF in the 2008 parliamentary election, the formation of the GNU, and the end of one-party rule in Zimbabwe.
From Power Sharing to Democracy
From Power Sharing to Democracy examines the theoretical underpinnings of power sharing as a means of achieving sustainable democratic governance. Contributors examine key areas, including Afghanistan, Cyprus, Kosovo, Macedonia, and South Africa, where power-sharing constitutions and political institutions have been employed or proposed. They provide an in-depth exploration of consociationalism, under which the previously warring ethnic communities are guaranteed a proportionate share of political offices and protection of their vital interests, and federalism, which provides for substantial territorial autonomy in cases where the communities are territorially segregated.
Effective Governance Under Anarchy
Democratic and consolidated states are taken as the model for effective rule-making and service provision. In contrast, this book argues that good governance is possible even without a functioning state.
Who Owns Africa?
The independence of African countries from their European colonizers in the late 1950s and 1960s marked a shift in the continent's political leadership. Nevertheless, the economies of African nations remained tied to those of their former colonies, raising questions of resource control and the sovereignty of these nation-states. Who Owns Africa? addresses the role of foreign actors in Africa and their competing interests in exploiting the resources of Africa and its people. An interdisciplinary team of scholars examines the concept of colonialism from a historical and socio-political perspective. They show how the language of investment, development aid, mutual interest, or philanthropy is used to cloak the virulent forms of exploitation on the continent, thereby perpetuating a state of neocolonialism that has left many African people poor and in the margins.
Reconstructing our Understanding of State Legitimacy in Post-conflict States
This book reassesses performance legitimacy in the context of statebuilding and identifies the paradox between state institution building and state legitimacy by looking at the interplay between state legitimacy and leaders’ legitimacy The author reviews the significant weaknesses associated with the current measures of state legitimacy and uses this to demonstrate the incompatibility of these measurements with the reality faced by conflict and post-conflict countries. The author uses the Performance Legitimacy Theory of Transition framework to demonstrate the potential legitimacy paths that post-conflict countries can embark on and proposes a new approach for building state legitimacy in post-conflict countries. The author also introduces new indicators to measure performance legitimacy that also reflect its non-exclusive nature. Essential reading for students and researchers of Peace and Conflict Studies and especially of post-conflict development, peacebuilding, statebuilding, intervention, and democracy promotion. Also accessible to policy makers.
Remapping Africa in the Global Space
"What are the benefits and risks for Africa’s participation in the globalisation nexus? Remapping Africa in the Global Space is a visionary and interdisciplinary volume that restores Africa’s image using a multidisciplinary lens. It incorporates disciplines such as sociology, education, global studies, economics, development studies, political science and philosophy to explore and theorise Africa’s reality in the global space and to deconstruct the misperceptions and narratives that often infantilise Africa’s internal and international relations. The contributions to this volume are a hybrid of both ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’ perspectives that create a balanced critical discour...
