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This book focuses on the politics of democratization in Africa, especially the strategic choices of the political elite, both incumbent and opposition within the context of transition politics. The decade 1990- 2000 saw a total of 78 top leadership elections involving 43 of the 48 sub-Saharan African countries. Of these elections, only 27% led to regime change. Yet even where regime change occurred, authoritarianism persisted. The objective of the book is to analyze and explain this dual paradox of limited change of regime and persistent authoritarianism in the face of democratization. Its central thesis is that this eventuality is a function of the strategic environment of political engagem...
Shows how the struggle for democracy has been waged in civil society, through opposition parties, and amongst traditionally marginalised groups like women and the young. This book also considers the remaining impediments to democratisation, in the form of a powerful police force and damaging structural adjustment policies.
This book focuses on the problem of ethnic conflict in Africa and seeks to explain its root causes. The main thesis of the book is that ethnic political mobilization is essentially a function of deeply-felt grievances on the part of the groups so mobilized.
Since the decolonization of the African continent that began in earnest in the late 1950s, the trajectory of the continent's socioeconomic change and development has seen its fair share of contentious politics. Such contentions range from benign forms of electoral contestations and conflicts over the form and substance of democratic reform to spirited violence and outright war manifested in coups and counter-coups as well as the newly emergent specter of terrorism, particularly in the regions of West and East Africa. This volume grapples with this broad spectrum of the forces at play in the contentious dynamics of social change and development in Africa under the themes of violence, war, and political change; the dynamics of socioeconomic change and development; social movements and identity politics; and the politics of revolts and protests. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin.
This book examines the efforts of one particular civil society organization, the human rights ministry of a Catholic parish located in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, to determine the extent to which it was able to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law. It concludes from an analysis of the social, economic and political environment of Kibera as well as church structures, that parishioners demonstrated an observable improvement in their democratic values and behavior at a localized level, but they did not increase their involvement in advocacy and lobbying efforts. Parishioners were inhibited from holding government officials to account for their abuse of power primarily due to fears of retaliation; other factors such as apathy, ethnic divisions, limited resources and restrictive church protocols further curtailed their actions. The findings of this book are important for scholars and students active in the fields of political science, African Christianity, development studies, international law and human rights. This book is also an important resource for practitioners who are addressing the social, legal, political challenges facing the urban poor in Africa.
Bringing together scholars from a wide array of disciplines - including anthropology, economics, history, sociology, and political science - this volume addresses the problems of the regime change and state failure in Africa in the context of the global economy, but from a specifically African perspective, arguing that the underdevelopment of the African economy is linked to the underdevelopment of the continents' nation states.
This is a book that students and professionals from different disciplines and backgrounds, including from academia, international organisations, non-governmental organisations, the medical community, governments, etc., will find to be a valuable resource in their quest to learn more about an area of study that has long been neglected. 2 Volume set.
As an ethnic minority the Nubians of Kenya are struggling for equal citizenship by asserting themselves as indigenous and autochthonous to Kibera, one of Nairobi’s most notorious slums. Having settled there after being brought by the British colonial authorities from Sudan as soldiers, this appears a peculiar claim to make. It is a claim that illuminates the hierarchical nature of Kenya’s ethnicised citizenship regime and the multi-faceted nature of citizenship itself. This book explores two kinds of citizenship deficits; those experienced by the Nubians in Kenya and, more centrally, those which represent the limits of citizenship theories. The author argues for an understanding of citiz...
This handbook constitutes a single collection of well researched articles and essays on African politics, governance and development from the pre-colonial through colonial to the post-colonial eras. Over the course of these interconnected periods, African politics have evolved with varied experiences across different parts of the continent. As politics is embedded both in the economy and the society, Africa has witnessed some changes in politics, economics, demography and its relations with the world in ways that requires in-depth analysis. This work provides an opportunity for old and new scholars to engage in the universe of the debate around African politics, governance and development and will serve as a ready reference material for students, researchers, policy makers and investors that are concerned with these issues.
Addresses the various political aspects of the Kenyan political mosaic during the time of Bishop David Gitari, later Archbishop 1997-2002. These essays focus on both this courageous man and the various aspects of the political mosaic in Kenya at that time to 2008, in an effort to bring out the religious dimensions of Kenyan and African politics.