Abstract
Political processes—the ways in which political rules, norms, methods, and modes of interaction are established, maintained, and change—have evolved in Africa in an historical environment of economic adversity and external dependence and in a structural context of fragility and diffusion. Patterns of political conduct determine priorities, preoccupations, and possibilities. Development strategies and foreign policies (the substance of politics) are therefore the concrete outcome of how politics are conceived, practiced, and transformed. The dynamics of politics in Africa is about the procedures and mechanisms by which state agencies and social groups cooperate, conflict, intertwine, and consequently act.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
This may be the most fundamental problem facing Third World leaders. See Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics: An Introduction (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 43–44.
Also see Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
Jean-François Bayait, “Civil Society in Africa,” in Patrick Chabal, ed., Political Domination in Africa: Reflections on the Limits of Power (London: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 124.
Roger Charlton, “Dehomogenising the Study of African Politics—The Case of Inter-State Influence on Regime Formation and Change,” Plural Societies 14, no. 1/2 (1983): 32–48.
Roger Tangri, Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa (London: James Curry, 1985);
Ruth Berins Collier, Regimes in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982);
and Dirk Berg-Schlosser, “African Political Systems: Typology and Performance,” Comparative Political Studies 17, no. 1 (1984): 121–151, are some examples of these various approaches.
Richard Hodder-Williams, An Introduction to the Politics of Tropical Africa (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984), pp. 113–146, suggests such a line of analysis.
Robert H. Jackson, “Planning, Politics and Administration,” in Goran Hyden, Robert Jackson, and John Okumu, eds., Development Administration: The Kenyan Experience (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 177–178.
Victor T. Le Vine, “Cameroonian Politics: Scholarship and Partisanship,” Africa Today 29, no. 4 (1982): 58.
Also see Mordechai Tamarkin, “The Roots of Political Stability in Kenya,” African Affairs 77, no. 308 (1978): 297–320.
Richard Sklar, “Democracy in Africa” (UCLA: Special Publication of the African Studies Center, 1982),
and Ali A. Mazrui, “The Cultural Fate of African Legislatures: Rise, Decline and Prospects for Revival,” Présence Africaine 112 (1979): 26–27.
See Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988),
and John A. Wiseman, Democracy in Black Africa: Survival and Revival (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1990).
Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, “Personal Rule: Theory and Practice in Africa,” Comparative Politics 16, no. 4 (1984): 421–442.
John J. Okumu, “Party and Party-State Relations,” in Joel D. Barkan with John J. Okumu, eds., Politics and Public Policy in Kenya and Tanzania (New York: Praeger, 1979), pp. 52–53.
Ekkart Zimmerman, “Macro-Comparative Research on Political Protest,” in Ted Robert Gurr, ed., Handbook of Political Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1980), p. 210.
Lapido Adamolekun, Sekou Touré’s Guinea: An Experiment in Nation-Building (London: Methuen, 1976), p. 77,
and Isaa Shivji, “Tanzania—The Silent Class Struggle,” in Lionel Cliffe and John Saul, eds., Socialism in Tanzania II (Nairobi: EAPH, 1973), p. 327.
Aguibou Y. Yansane, Decolonization in West African States with French Colonial Legacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing Co., 1984), pp. 140–141.
These estimates were made by Reginald Green and referred to in Crawford Young, Ideology and Development in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 106.
See David and Marina Ottaway, Afrocommunism (New York: Africana Publishing Co., 1981),
and Edmond J. Keller and Donald Rothchild, eds., Afro-Marxist Regimes (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1987).
See Donald Rothchild and Caroline Hartzeil, “Great- and Medium-Power Mediations: Angola,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 518 (November 1991): 39–57, and Terrence Lyons, “The Transition in Ethiopia,” CSIS Africa Notes, no. 127 (August 27, 1991): 4–7.
See Samuel Decalo, Psychoses of Power: African Personal Dictatorships (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989).
Zaya Yeebo, “Ghana Defence Committees and the Class Struggle,” Review of African Political Economy 32 (1985): 64–72;
Adotey Bing, “Popular Participation Versus People’s Power: Notes on Politics and Power Struggles in Ghana,” Review of African Political Economy 31 (1984): 91–104.
Richard Sandbrook, The Politics of Africa’s Economic Stagnation (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 41.
Copyright information
© 1992 Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chazan, N., Mortimer, R., Ravenhill, J., Rothchild, D. (1992). Regimes in Independent Africa. In: Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12976-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12976-8_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-57814-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-12976-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)