Download or read book Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa written by Wale Adebanwi and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-05-24 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa examines the ways that accountability offers an effective interpretive lens to the social, cultural, and institutional struggles of both the elites and ordinary citizens in Africa. Each chapter investigates questions of power, its public deliberation, and its negotiation in Africa by studying elites through the framework of accountability. The book enters conversations about political subjectivity and agency, especially from ongoing struggles around identities and belonging, as well as representation and legitimacy. Who speaks to whom? And on whose behalf do they speak? The contributors to this volume offer careful analyses of how such concerns are embedded in wider forms of cultural, social, and institutional discussions about transparency, collective responsibility, community, and public decision-making processes. These concerns affect prospects for democratic oversight, as well as questions of alienation, exclusivity, privilege and democratic deficit. The book situates our understanding of the emergence, meaning, and conceptual relevance of elite accountability, to study political practices in Africa. It then juxtaposes this contextualization of accountability in relation to the practices of African elites. Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa offers fresh, dynamic, and multifarious accounts of elites and their practices of accountability and locally plausible self-legitimation, as well as illuminating accounts of contemporary African elites in relation to their socially and historicallysituated outcomes of contingency, composition, negotiation, and compromise.
Download or read book African Political Elites written by F. O. C. Nwonwu and published by Africa Inst of South Africa. This book was released on 2008 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Political Elites looks at the five African countries that acted as the vanguards in creating the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) initiative: Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Egypt and Algeria. The leadership structures, trends in political democratisation, and prospects of continued democratic stability are examined from the perspectives of the five countries. The implications of the new political dispensation for Africa in the context of the African Union (AU), and African development through NEPAD, make up the central theme of the book. The fact that the selected countries have emerged from diverse eras of political misrule including long periods of military dictatorship, apartheid hegemony, and civilian autocracy is of significance in the new political order. The book documents the views of a wide range of stakeholders including politicians, academics, business leaders and the media on the ethos of African political elites and the future of NEPAD as Africa's flagship in development. The authors have divergent opinions about Africa's political achievements; but the optimists submit that the breaking away from the undemocratic and dictatorial past must be seen as denoting some measure of success. Others consider African political elites and NEPAD as too reticent and lacking the political will and drive to liberate Africa from the current political quagmire. Serving and aspiring political elites in Africa should see themselves through the mirror of this book and apply their minds to the constructive views expressed herein. This book is recommended as essential reading for students and academics interested in African democratic evolution and the role of elites as architects of Africa's political and democratic trajectory.
Download or read book African Political Elites written by F. (Francis); Kotze Nwonwu (D. (Dirk)) and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa written by Wale Adebanwi and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-05-24 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studying elites through the framework of accountability
Download or read book Inequality in Africa written by E. Wayne Nafziger and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1988-08-25 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because of the population growth in Africa, maintaining past trends means degrading human dignity for the majority, with a rural population surviving on intolerable toil, disastrous land scarcity, and worsening urban crisis, with more shanty towns, congested roads, unemployed, beggars, crime, and misery alongside the few unashamedly demonstrating greater conspicuous consumption, shopping at national department stores fill with luxury imports.
Download or read book The African Exception written by Ulf Engel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governance has become an important concept in the politics of African development. It is therefore a crucial concept for social science analyses focusing on Africa. In public discourse Africa's future is being shaped by a combination of external interventions backed by African elites who cooperate with the donors, whose understanding of the importance of 'good governance' they share. This groundbreaking book disentangles the analytical aspects of governance from its political and normative connotations. The 'African exception' - the difference in 'development' between Africa and other regions of the South - can be understood by analysis focusing upon the specific forms of governance played out in politics and economics. The perspective of neo-patrimonialism is crucial but not sufficient here. The first section of the book explores African governance in two functional spheres: the political realm and the economic. Section two looks at new areas of governance in Africa: violent social spaces, HIV/AIDS and entrepreneurial urban governance.
Download or read book Global Geopolitical Power and African Political and Economic Institutions written by John James Quinn and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-12-30 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global Geopolitical Power and African Political and Economic Institutions: When Elephants Fight describes the emergence and nature of the prevailing African political and economic institutions in two periods. In the first, most countries adopted political and economic institutions that funneled significant levels of political and economic power to the political elites, usually through one- or no-party (military) political systems, inward-oriented development policies, and/ or state-led—and often state-owned—industrialization. In the second period, most countries adopted institutions that diluted the overarching political and economic power of ruling elites through the adoption of de jure multiparty electoral systems, more outward-oriented trade policies, and the privatization of many state owned or controlled sectors, though significant political and economic power remains in their hands. The choices made in each period were consistent with prevailing ideas on governance and development, the self-interests of political elites, and the perceived availability of support or autonomy vis-à-vis domestic, regional, and international sources of power at the time. This book illustrates how these two region-wide shifts in prevailing political and economic institutions and practices of Africa can be linked to two prior global geopolitical realignments: the end of WWII with the ensuing American and Soviet led bipolar system, and the end of the Cold War with American primacy. Each period featured changed or newly empowered international and regional leaders with competing national priorities within new intellectual and geopolitical climates, altering the opportunities and constraints for African leaders in instituting or maintaining particular political and economic institutions or practices. The economic and political institutions of Africa that emerged did so as a result of a complex mix of contending domestic, regional, and international forces (material and intellectual)—all which were themselves greatly transformed in the wake of these two global geopolitical realignments.
Download or read book The Politics of Elite Corruption in Africa written by Roger Tangri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-21 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, foreign business bribery, illegal political funding, and electoral malpractice. The book examines why anti-corruption institutions and international donors have been constrained in confronting this executive abuse of power, and discusses the wider relevance of Uganda’s experience for understanding elite corruption and anti-corruption efforts in other African countries. The Politics of Elite Corruption in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, African political economy, development studies, corruption and government.
Download or read book Africa s Big Men written by Kenneth Kalu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book spotlights, analyzes and explains varying forms and patterns of state-society relations on the African continent, taking as point of departure the complexities created by the emergence, proliferation and complicated interactions of so-called ‘big men’ across Africa's fifty-four states. The contributors interrogate the evolution of Africa’s big men; the role of the big men in Africa’s political and economic development; and the relationship between the state, the big men and the citizens. Throughout the chapters the contributors engage with a number of questions from different disciplinary and methodological orientations. How did these states evolve to exhibit various deformities in their composition, functioning and in their relations with the societies that they govern? What roles did Atlantic and other slavery and European colonialism play in creating states that are unable to display the right and good relationships with citizens in civil society? Why did these forms of predatory state-society relations continue to thrive in Africa after the end of Atlantic slave trade and subsequent colonialism? Why did the emerging African leaders at independence fail to effectively dismantle the structures of exploitation and expropriation that were the defining features of slavery and colonialism? Who are Africa’s ‘big men’, and what are their trajectories? This book is essential reading for all students and scholars of African politics, public policy and administration, political economy, and democratisation.
Download or read book Modern African Elite of South Africa written by Lynette Dreyer and published by Springer. This book was released on 1989-06-18 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A profile of the lives of 60 eminent Black Africans who have reached the top of their professions and social hierarchy in South African society despite the political system. It argues that White fears of a Black government destroying the economy of South Africa are unfounded.
Download or read book University Students and African Politics written by William John Hanna and published by Africana Pub.. This book was released on 1975 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Etude du rôle joué par les étudiants africains dans les politiques nationales : Le cas de la Côte d'Ivoire, la Rhodésie, l'Ouganda, le Ghana, la Tanzanie, le Kenya. Attitudes et aspirations des étudiants.
Download or read book Africa written by Peter Lewis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the historical construction of African states, the modes of political control in the region, and the character of political elites. It examines the nature of political legitimacy and the avenues of participation or withdrawal pursued by various popular sectors.
Download or read book Africa Under Neoliberalism written by Nana Poku and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period since the 1980s has seen sustained pressure on Africa’s political elite to anchor the continent’s development strategies in neoliberalism in exchange for vitally needed development assistance. Rafts of policies and programmes have come to underpin the relationship between continental governments and the donor communities of the West and particularly their institutions of global governance – the International Financial Institutions. Over time, these policies and programmes have sought to transform the authority and capacity of the state to effect social, political and economic change, while opening up the domestic space for transnational capital and ideas. The outcome is a continent now more open to international capital, export-oriented and liberal in its political governance. Has neoliberalism finally arrested under development in Africa? Bringing together leading researchers and analysts to examine key questions from a multidisciplinary perspective, this book involves a fundamental departure from orthodox analysis which often predicates colonialism as the referent object. Here, three decades of neoliberalism with its complex social and economic philosophy are given primacy. With the changed focus, an elucidation of the relationship between global development and local changes is examined through a myriad of pressing contemporary issues to offer a critical multi-disciplinary appraisal of challenge and change in Africa over the past three decades.
Download or read book Four African Political Systems written by Christian P. Potholm and published by Prentice Hall. This book was released on 1970 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Politics of Distinction written by Mattia Fumanti and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Focusing on how generational relations between elites have both shaped, and are shaped by, the transitions from apartheid and civil war to independence and post-independence, this book illuminates public debates on the power of education, the aspirations of youth, the role of the state and citizen, delivery of good governance and the place of ethnic and settler minorities in post-apartheid southern Africa"--Back cover.
Download or read book Africa s Social Cleavages and Democratization written by Douglas Kimemia and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-12-17 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africa’s Social Cleavages and Democratization offers a comparative approach to African countries by providing an in-depth analysis of the impact of ethnicity and religion on both multiparty and post-multiparty eras. By applying different theoretical frameworks, Douglas Kimemia explores and analyzes how social cleavages have affected the growth of democracy in Africa. It is crucial to assess the relationship between democratic development and the impact of social cleavages, because multiparty politics have increased political competition, participation, transparency, and civic engagement in Africa. However, social divisions have significantly slowed the maturing of democracy, as these social cleavages have become polarizing factors, which are used by political elites for their own self-interest. As a result, politics of identity caused by competition of natural resources have led to increased conflicts and political instability in Africa. The social cleavages have also led to polarized party systems and caused adverse effects on democracy due to the highly polarized societies and political competition. Despite the many positive impacts, multiparty politics have increased the consciousness of ethnic and religious identities, leading to unhealthy political competition as evidenced by highly fragmented societies prone to conflicts and violence. Kimemia comprehensively examines different governing, electoral, and party systems in order to determine the different incentives and how social divisions shape them. This analysis helps to distinguish more permanent political structures from the merely epiphenomenal within the African political scene.
Download or read book African Institutions written by Ali A. Mazrui and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-11-12 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every political system, either developed or adopted, has an impact on the structure of society and the level of development. This book analyzes the evolution and nature of political institutions and their effect on Africa’s development. The challenges Africa face in developing viable institutions are not limited to the adoption of foreign institutions, but are also rooted in domestic norms that define society itself. Sometimes, these challenges have to do with the incompatibility between foreign and domestic institutions. The fundamental issue then is to understand the African societies, cultures, and other dynamics that have ensured stability in the past and that need to be recognized when adopting contemporary foreign institutions. This comprehensive text examines three key issue areas in Africa: politics, society, and economy. It demonstrates how the lack of consideration for domestic norms and societal realities explain the weaker institutions and lack of development on the African continent. The chapters examine critical issues such as gender, ethnicity and constitution development, legitimacy and the state, the correlation between abundant resources and instability, the dilemmas of political dynasties, international economic regimes and Africa’s economy, and more. Featuring many case studies, including Kenya, South Africa, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Morocco, Togo, DRC, Ethiopia, Rwanda, the book provides some explanation of underdevelopment in Africa, linking the historical and colonial realities that hinder democratic consolidation to contemporary African politics, society and economy.
