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Regime Change and Succession Politics 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.
Coalitions of the Well-being
This book shows that the design of electoral rules shapes how political leaders make health policies in response to social forces.
Security and Democracy in Southern Africa
Southern Africa has embarked on one of the world's most ambitious security co-operation initiatives, seeking to roll out the principles of the United Nations at regional levels. This book examines the triangular relationship between democratisation, the character of democracy and its deficits, and national security practices and perceptions of eleven southern African states. It explores what impact these processes and practices have had on the collaborative security project in the region. Based on national studies conducted by African academics and security practitioners over three years, it includes an examination of the way security is conceived and managed, as well as a comparative analysis of regional security co-operation in the developing world.
The Politics of Necessity
The end of apartheid in South Africa broke down political barriers, extending to all races the formal rights of citizenship, including the right to participate in free elections and parliamentary democracy. But South Africa remains one of the most economically polarized nations in the world. In The Politics of Necessity Elke Zuern forcefully argues that working toward greater socio-economic equality—access to food, housing, land, jobs—is crucial to achieving a successful and sustainable democracy. Drawing on interviews with local residents and activists in South Africa’s impoverished townships during more than a decade of dramatic political change, Zuern tracks the development of commu...
Competitive Authoritarianism
Based on a detailed study of 35 cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and post-communist Eurasia, this book explores the fate of competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2008. It finds that where social, economic, and technocratic ties to the West were extensive, as in Eastern Europe and the Americas, the external cost of abuse led incumbents to cede power rather than crack down, which led to democratization. Where ties to the West were limited, external democratizing pressure was weaker and countries rarely democratized. In these cases, regime outcomes hinged on the character of state and ruling party organizations. Where incumbents possessed developed and cohesive coercive party structures, they could thwart opposition challenges, and competitive authoritarian regimes survived; where incumbents lacked such organizational tools, regimes were unstable but rarely democratized.
State and Economic Development in Africa
This book critically assesses the impact of Ethiopia’s policy of Agriculture Development Led Industrialization. Employing qualitative and quantitative analysis, it presents empirical evidence suggesting persistent economic growth. The research highlights improvements in infrastructure, health care, education, poverty alleviation as well reductions in infant mortality rate. The impact of this economic growth has however had led to only slight improvements in the plight of the poor. The author argues that, while significant steps have been achieved with measurable economic gains, there are still undeniable obstacles within the federal system: prevailing patron-client relationships, constraints on state capacity to efficiently and effectively implement policy, and bureaucratic rent-seeking in the provision of public goods. The author concludes that these problems will have to be resolved before Ethiopia’s political economy can achieve the stage of sustainable development
Bushmen in the Tourist Imaginary
This book is a semantic and semiotic analysis of tourism texts that represent specific groups of San (or Bushmen) in modern Botswana, and is framed by postcolonial theory, post-tourism and resistance theories. Critically, the book demonstrates the power that both written and visual language can have upon consumers of texts. It provides a case-study of neo-colonial exploitation and, conversely, reveals the efficacy of self-representation for tourist consumption, with an increasing number of San offering alternatives to an entrenched ethnic hegemony, effecting gradual political and social recognition and autonomy. As such, the book is written in a spirit of optimism for the burgeoning self-determination of a long-marginalised group.
Contemporary Intelligence in Africa
The edited volume examines contemporary intelligence and tradecraft in Africa. The work offers a timely and empirically grounded account of African intelligence. It provides a multi-contributor narrative that explains contemporary dynamics without discounting historical and external influences, as well as explaining systemic dynamics borne by African agency. The volume features chapters on different issues and themes in intelligence studies, which include but are not limited to intelligence politicization, covert operations and subversion during political transitions, institutionalizing intelligence in post-conflict states, intelligence and counterterrorism, financial intelligence and comple...
The Nature of Politics
This case study of Botswana focuses on the state-building qualities of biodiversity conservation in southern Africa. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Annette A. LaRocco argues that discourses and practices related to biodiversity conservation are essential to state building in the postcolonial era. These discourses and practices invoke the ways the state exerts authority over people, places, and resources; enacts and remakes territorial control; crafts notions of ideal citizenship and identity; and structures economic relationships at the local, national, and global levels. The book’s key innovation is its conceptualization of the “conservation estate,” a term most often used as an apol...
Business and Social Crisis in Africa
Much of the time, when confronted with a crisis of national dimensions, businesses do exactly what we expect them to do: they look to their own survival. Occasionally, however, firms in some contexts go beyond this. Based on qualitative, country-based fieldwork in Eastern and Southern Africa, Antoinette Handley examines how African businesses can be key responders to wider social and political crises, often responding well in advance of the state. She reveals the surprising ways in which business responses can be focused, not on short-term profits, but instead on ways that assist society in resolving that crisis in the long term. Taking African businesses in Kenya, Uganda, Botswana and South Africa as case studies, this detailed exploration of the private sector response to crises, including HIV/AIDS and political violence crises, introduces the concept of relative business autonomy, exploring the conditions under which it can emerge and develop, when and how it may decline, and how it might contribute to a higher level of overall societal resilience.
