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This timely book explores the current state of EU-Africa relations from a multidisciplinary perspective, placing emphasis on recent developments in five areas that are crucial for EU-Africa relations: development cooperation, trade, migration, security and democratization. It considers how Africa’s dependence on the EU has decreased due to the declining importance of development cooperation, and increasing cooperation with emerging powers, notably the BRIC nations.
Neopatrimonialism, a system whereby rulers use state resources for personal benefit and to secure the loyalty of clients in the general population, is central to any teaching or conceptualisation of contemporary African politics. This book is a theoretical and comparative study of neopatrimonialism in Africa and across world regions. Although such practices are widespread in other parts of the world, the African neopatrimonial state has also become a global prototype of the anti-developmental state. This volume calls for a reappraisal of the genesis and interpretations of the concepts of patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism. Expert contributors consider recent debates in Africa through the s...
Drawing on original fieldwork in Nigeria, Portia Roelofs argues for an innovative re-conceptualisation of good governance. Contributing to debates around technocracy, populism and the survival of democracy amidst conditions of inequality and mistrust, Roelofs offers a new account of what it means for leaders to be accountable and transparent. Centred on the rise of the 'Lagos Model' in the Yoruba south-west, this book places the voices of roadside traders and small-time market leaders alongside those of local government officials, political godfathers and technocrats. In doing so, it theorises 'socially-embedded' good governance. Roelofs demonstrates the value of fieldwork for political theory and the associated possibilities for decolonising the study of politics. Challenging the long-held assumptions of the World Bank and other international institutions that African political systems are pathologically dysfunctional, Roelofs demonstrates that politics in Nigeria has much to teach us about good governance.
Reviews recent lessons about decentralized governance and implications for future development programs and policies.
“Development Without Aid” opens up perspectives about foreign aid to the world’s poorest countries. Growing up in Malawi the author developed a sense of the limitations of foreign assistance and from this evolves a critique of foreign aid as an alien resource unable to provide the dynamism that could propel the poorest countries out of poverty. The book aims to help move the discussion beyond foreign aid. It examines the rapid growth of the world’s diasporas as a quasi-indigenous resource of increasing strength in terms of both financial and human capital, and considers how far such a resource might supersede aid. It uses extensive research findings to explore the possibilities for a resumption of sovereignty by poor states, especially in Africa, over their own development with the assistance of the world’s diasporas.
This volume includes a selection of papers dedicated to the problems of the contemporary international relations and foreign policies of the African states. Most of these papers were presented at the panels, held within the framework of the 13th International Conference of Africanists "Society and Politics in Africa: Traditional, Transitional and New" (Moscow, Russia, May 27-30, 2014). The book contains many articles devoted to the Western countries' policies in Africa. On the background of the ongoing competition between Washington and Beijing, the US Administration has recently increased the amount of attention it pays to the continent. The European Union is also actively developing its st...
Transcript of papers presented during an international conference in New Delhi in June 2008 hosted jointly by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and International Peace Research Institute, Oslo.
Democracy is easy to talk about but hard to define in other than broad generalizations; its history is a long, complex, and contested subject. What this volume seeks to do is to explore the general evolution of political and social thinking that would eventually coalesce into what we now know as democracy, for all its imperfections and shortcomings. The question of just why some societies evolved into a democratic trajectory and others did not continues to engage the interest of historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists. Much conjecture surrounds the rise of certain elements we now recognize if not as democratic, then proto-democratic, such as collective decision-ma...
This book considers the causes of high-level state corruption as well as the political constraints of countering corruption in Africa. It examines elite corruption in government as well as in the political and military spheres of state activity, and focuses on illegal behaviour on the part of state and non-state actors in decision-making. Situating corruption and anti-corruption within a political framework, this book analyses the motivations, opportunities and relative autonomy of state elites to manipulate state decision-making for personal and political ends. Based on detailed case studies in Uganda, the authors focus on corruption in the privatization process, military procurement, forei...
Since Pauline Konga’s breakthrough performance at the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, the world has become accustomed to seeing Kenyan women medal at major championships, sweep marathons, and set world records. Yet little is known about the pioneer generation of women who paved the way for Kenya’s reputation as an international powerhouse in women’s track and field. In Kenya’s Running Women: A History, historian and former professional runner Michelle M. Sikes details the triumphs and many challenges these women faced, from the advent of Kenya’s athletics program in the colonial era through the professionalization of running in the 1980s and 1990s. Sikes reveals how over time running became a vehicle for Kenyan women to expand the boundaries of acceptable female behavior. Kenya’s Running Women demonstrates the necessity of including women in histories of African sport, and of incorporating sport into studies of African gender and nation-building.