Download or read book Informal Institutions and Citizenship in Rural Africa written by Lauren M. MacLean and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines historically how the state role in mediating risk transforms reciprocity and citizenship in similar villages on either side of the Ghana Cote d'Ivoire border.
Download or read book Informal Institutions and Citizenship in Rural Africa written by Lauren M. MacLean and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges previous assumptions about institutions, social capital, and the nature of the African state by investigating the history of political and economic change in villages on either side of the Ghana-Cote d'Ivoire border. Prior to European colonial rule, these Akan villages had very similar political and cultural institutions. By the late 1990s, however, Lauren M. MacLean found puzzling differences in the informal institutions of reciprocity and indigenous notions of citizenship. Drawing on extensive village-based fieldwork and archival research, MacLean argues that divergent histories of state formation not only shape how villagers help each other but also influence how local groups and communities define citizenship and then choose to engage with the state on an everyday basis. She examines the historical construction of the state role in mediating risk at the local level across three policy areas: political administration, social service delivery, and agriculture, highlighting the importance of the colonial and post-colonial state in transforming informal institutions.
Download or read book Informal Institutions and Citizenship in Rural Africa written by Lauren M. MacLean and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-24 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges previous assumptions about institutions, social capital, and the nature of the African state by investigating the history of political and economic change in villages on either side of the Ghana-Cote d'Ivoire border. Prior to European colonial rule, these Akan villages had very similar political and cultural institutions. By the late 1990s, however, Lauren M. MacLean found puzzling differences in the informal institutions of reciprocity and indigenous notions of citizenship. MacLean argues that divergent histories of state formation not only shape how villagers help each other but also influence how local groups and communities define citizenship and then choose to engage with the state on an everyday basis. She examines the historical construction of the state role in mediating risk at the local level across three policy areas: political administration, social service delivery, and agriculture.
Download or read book The Scarce State written by Noah L. Nathan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: States are often minimally present in the rural periphery. Yet a limited presence does not mean a limited impact. Isolated state actions in regions where the state is otherwise scarce can have outsize, long-lasting effects on society. The Scarce State reframes our understanding of the political economy of hinterlands through a multi-method study of Northern Ghana alongside shadow cases from other world regions. Drawing on a historical natural experiment, the book shows how the contemporary economic and political elite emerged in Ghana's hinterland, linking interventions by an ostensibly weak state to new socio-economic inequality and grassroots efforts to reimagine traditional institutions. The book demonstrates how these state-generated societal changes reshaped access to political power, producing dynastic politics, clientelism, and violence. The Scarce State challenges common claims about state-building and state weakness, provides new evidence on the historical origins of inequality, and reconsiders the mechanisms linking historical institutions to contemporary politics.
Download or read book Coups Rivals and the Modern State written by Beth Rabinowitz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using extensive research, this book argues that successful African leaders consolidate their rule by developing strategic rural coalitions.
Download or read book Boundaries Communities and State Making in West Africa written by Paul Nugent and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-06 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By examining three centuries of history, this book shows how vital border regions have been in shaping states and social contracts.
Download or read book The Politics of Non state Social Welfare written by Melani Cammett and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-25 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the world, welfare states are under challenge—or were never developed extensively in the first place—while non-state actors increasingly provide public goods and basic welfare. In many parts of the Middle East and South Asia, sectarian organizations and political parties supply basic services to ordinary people more extensively and effectively than governments. In sub-Saharan Africa, families struggle to pay hospital fees, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launch welfare programs as states cut subsidies and social programs. Likewise, in parts of Latin America, international and domestic NGOs and, increasingly, private firms are key suppliers of social welfare in both urban and rural communities. Even in the United States, where the welfare state is far more developed, secular NGOs and faith-based organizations are critical components of social safety nets. Despite official entitlements to public welfare, citizens in Russia face increasing out-of-pocket expenses as they are effectively compelled to seek social services through the private market In The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare, a multidisciplinary group of contributors use survey data analysis, spatial analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic and archival research to explore the fundamental transformation of the relationship between states and citizens. The book highlights the political consequences of the non-state provision of social welfare, including the ramifications for equitable and sustainable access to social services, accountability for citizens, and state capacity. The authors do not assume that non-state providers will surpass the performance of weak, inefficient, or sometimes corrupt states but instead offer a systematic analysis of a wide spectrum of non-state actors in a variety of contexts around the world, including sectarian political parties, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, family networks, informal brokers, and private firms.
Download or read book Africa s Return Migrants written by Lisa Åkesson and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many African migrants residing abroad nurture a hope to one day return, at least temporarily, to their home country. In the wake of economic crises in the developed world, alongside rapid economic growth in parts of Africa, the impetus to ‘return’ is likely to increase. Such returnees are often portrayed as agents of development, bringing with them capital, knowledge and skills as well as connections and experience gained abroad. Yet, the reality is altogether more complex. In this much-needed volume, based on extensive original fieldwork, the authors reveal that there is all too often a gaping divide between abstract policy assumptions and migrants’ actual practices. In contrast to the prevailing optimism of policies on migration and development, Africa’s Return Migrants demonstrates that the capital obtained abroad is not always advantageous and that it can even hamper successful entrepreneurship and other forms of economic, political and social engagement.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism written by Karl Orfeo Fioretos and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an authoritative and accessible state-of-the-art analysis of the historical institutionalism research tradition in Political Science.
Download or read book How Informal Institutions Matter written by Zeki Sarigil and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In How Informal Institutions Matter, Zeki Sarigil examines the role of informal institutions in sociopolitical life and addresses the following questions: Why and how do informal institutions emerge? To ask this differently, why do agents still create or resort to informal institutions despite the presence of formal institutional rules and regulations? How do informal institutions matter? What roles do they play in sociopolitical life? How can we classify informal institutions? What novel types of informal institutions can we identify and explain? How do informal institutions interact with formal institutions? How do they shape formal institutional rules, mechanisms, and outcomes? Finally, how do existing informal institutions change? What factors might trigger informal institutional change? In order to answer these questions, Sarigil examines several empirical cases of informal institution as derived from various issue areas in the Turkish sociopolitical context (i.e., civil law, conflict resolution, minority rights, and local governance) and from multiple levels (i.e., national and local).
Download or read book Power in Movement written by Sidney G. Tarrow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-04 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social movements have an elusive power but one that is altogether real. From the French and American revolutions to the post-Soviet, ethnic and terrorist movements of today, contentious politics exercises a fleeting but powerful influence on politics, society and international relations. This study surveys the modern history of the modern social movements in the West and their diffusion to the global South through war, colonialism and diffusion, and it puts forward a theory to explain its cyclical surges and declines. It offers an interpretation of the power of movements that emphasizes effects on the lives of militants, policy reforms, political institutions and cultural change. The book focuses on the rise and fall of social movements as part of contentious politics in general and as the outcome of changes in political opportunities and constraints, state strategy, the new media of communication and transnational diffusion.
Download or read book Investing in Authoritarian Rule written by Anuradha Chakravarty and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how Rwanda's mass courts for genocide crimes helped ensure political stability and authoritarian control for Rwandan elites.
Download or read book Theorizing in Comparative Politics written by Goran Hyden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-18 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book moves comparison beyond a narrow focus on democratization to better understand politics in developing regions of the world. Using Africa as empirical reference, it shows the gaps in knowledge left behind by the narrow application of democratic theory in recent decades.
Download or read book Theories of the Policy Process written by Paul A. Sabatier and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theories of the Policy Process provides a forum for experts in the most established and widely used theoretical frameworks in policy process research to present the basic propositions, empirical evidence, latest updates, and promising future research opportunities of each framework. This well-regarded volume covers such enduring classics as Multiple Streams (Herweg et al.), Punctuated Equilibrium (Baumgartner et al.), Advocacy Coalition Framework (Jenkins-Smith et al.), Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (Schlager and Cox), and Policy Diffusion (Berry and Berry), as well as two newer theories-Policy Feedback (Mettler and SoRelle) and Narrative Policy Framework (Shanahan et al.). The fourth edition includes discussion of global and comparative perspectives in each theoretical chapter plus a brand-new chapter that explores how these theories have been adapted for, and employed in, non-American and non-Western contexts. An expanded introduction and revised conclusion fully examines and contextualizes the history, trajectories, and functions of public policy research. Since its first publication in 1999, Theories of the Policy Process has been, and remains, the quintessential gateway to the field of policy process research for students, scholars, and practitioners.
Download or read book Ghana on the Go written by Jennifer Hart and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As early as the 1910s, African drivers in colonial Ghana understood the possibilities that using imported motor transport could further the social and economic agendas of a diverse array of local agents, including chiefs, farmers, traders, fishermen, and urban workers. Jennifer Hart's powerful narrative of auto-mobility shows how drivers built on old trade routes to increase the speed and scale of motorized travel. Hart reveals that new forms of labor migration, economic enterprise, cultural production, and social practice were defined by autonomy and mobility and thus shaped the practices and values that formed the foundations of Ghanaian society today. Focusing on the everyday lives of individuals who participated in this century of social, cultural, and technological change, Hart comes to a more sensitive understanding of the ways in which these individuals made new technology meaningful to their local communities and associated it with their future aspirations.
Download or read book Politics for Profit written by David Szakonyi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Businesspeople run for and win elected office around the world, with roughly one-third of members of parliament and numerous heads of states coming directly from the private sector. Yet we know little about why these politicians choose to leave the private sector and what they actually do while in government. In Politics for Profit, David Szakonyi brings to bear sweeping quantitative and qualitative evidence from Putin-era Russia to shed light on why businesspeople contest elections and what the consequences are for their firms and for society when they win. The book develops an original theory of businessperson candidacy as a type of corporate political activity undertaken in response to both economic competition and weak political parties. Szakonyi's evidence then shows that businesspeople help their firms reap huge gains in revenue and profitability while prioritizing investments in public infrastructure over human capital. The book finally evaluates policies for combatting political corruption.
Download or read book How Insurgency Begins written by Janet I. Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why do rebel groups initially form? Prevailing scholarship has attributed the emergence of armed rebellion to the explosion of pre-mobilized political or ethnic hostilities. However, this book finds both uncertainty and secrecy shrouding the start of insurgency in weak states. Examining why only some incipient armed rebellions succeed in becoming viable challengers to governments, How Insurgency Begins shows that rumors circulating in places where rebel groups form can influence civilians' perceptions of both rebels and the state. By revealing the connections between villagers' trusted network structures and local ethnic demography, Janet I. Lewis shows how ethnic networks facilitate the spread of pro-rebel rumors. This in-depth analysis of conflicts in Uganda and neighbouring states speaks to scholars and policymakers seeking to understand the motives and actions of those initiating armed rebellion, those witnessing the process in their community, and those trying to stop it.
