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- Description:
- The paper examines how market reforms are reconstituting the notion of social welfare services in Africa within the context of the rural-urban divide. Market reforms in the social welfare sector seek to reverse this divide and negotiate a new consensus in the rural-urban equation. Priority and funding re-adjustment by the state, decentralisation, deregulation, and commercialisation are new elements in the provision of social welfare services in Africa. The objectives, among others, are to facilitate equity and access to those services, especially by the rural population. But the extent to which those objectives have been realised remain questionable.
- Date Issued:
- 2000-06-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science
- Description:
- The paper examines two models in conflict management and prevention: multinational regional forces represented by the ECOMOG, and private security firms represented by the Executive Outcomes. It argues, on the one hand, that the ECOMOG experience proves that greater political acceptance, knowledge of the conflict, etc., are not automatic advantages for a regional multinational force. On the other hand, the Executive Outcomes' professionalism and quick successes contrast sharply with ECOMOG's prolongation of the Liberian conflict: EO could provide stability in Angola and Sierra Leone by swiftly repulsing two threatening insurgencies. The paper concludes that the proliferation of private security firms is a reflection of the endemic instability on the African continent; an indication that they provide a service which most African national armies and multinational forces are unable to provide: and that this trend might continue until Africa gains the resources and the political will to cope with its internal conflicts.
- Date Issued:
- 1998-06-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science
- Date Issued:
- 2001-12-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science
- Description:
- Despite improvements in some social sectors in some countries, conditions in African countries worsened over the last two decades of the 20th century. As corporate globalization continues to make in roads into national policies and politics, further weakening the ability of African countries to act, there is a need to explore other alternatives for development in Africa. Although this article is essentially an effort to articulate a theoretical deconstruction and reconstruction of the African State, in its content, it is based on numerous empirical case studies and research projects developed by the author over the years on Africa's international relations, political economy, development, and world politics. Reconceptualizing the African state is a must because, firstly, about four decades of preoccupation with development have yielded only very meager returns. It has proven a mistake to attempt to analyze something that has not yet been seriously on the agenda, dealing mainly with symptoms related to behaviors of the state instead of its substance. Secondly, all the available evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development. Thirdly, despite the explosion of the number of actors in the global system and the deliberate efforts of mega financial, multinational and multilateral institutions to African States, and also despite the fact that the African systems of delivering services or performance at the national level are highly problematic, the African State is still the most visible actor in world politics. Finally, the fate of Africa's peoples and cultures has been historically defined by the dynamics of the state, especially its role in international political economy and in making alliances for its own immortality. Colonial Africa was created essentially as states and not as nations, and neo-colonial political elites inherited African States as the central agencies defining the parameters of economy, culture, and the people or citizens.The typologies used here are shaped by an historical structuralist approach that stipulates that systems, states, corporations or social institutions do not function randomly. The system is not just the sum of its elements. It is more than what is tangible. This holistic approach puts the emphasis on change. The African State in its current form is not an agent of positive social change because this state was created to advance the interests of metropolitan capitalism. Development has not started in Africa for many reasons, despite the goodwill of many Africans and African social movements. African people need to reinvent new state forms that can effectively address issues related to poverty, gender inequalities, etc. Despite corporate globalization and the struggles to dismantle welfare states, African people can learn a great deal from the policy and politics of such states.
- Date Issued:
- 2002-06-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science
- Date Issued:
- 1996-06-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science
- Description:
- The political economy of Africa is at the crossroads. The centrally controlled economies are giving way to global liberalism. Yet many of the continent's economies are still suffering from the residual effects of centralism, while poorly adjusting to the new dispensation. In the meantime, regionalism as a development strategy seems to be getting a new lease of life in the general development discourse in Africa while assuming varying forms. Furthermore, under globalization, Africa maybe on the verge of becoming an important player as an emerging market. Such forms of development are creating a dynamism in the new political economy of the continent, which may drive the African renaissance.
- Date Issued:
- 2000-06-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science
- Description:
- This paper seeks first to underscore the limitations of Western models of civil control which African countries employ to create stable civil-military relations. Second, it uses the recent experience of Southern African civil-military relations to illustrate the extent to which effective civil control over the military has been secured through a combination of objective and subjective mecahnisms. And finally, it suggests some revisions in the conceptual architecture of late modern civil-military relations theory so as to ensure that discipline is more consistent with the exigencies of the African political landscape.
- Date Issued:
- 1998-06-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science
- Description:
- This essay attempts to analyse the role and organisation of the North American delegation at the Seventh Pan African Congress held in Kampala, Uganda, from April 3-8, 1994 within the context of current political movements in the United States. Particular attention will be paid to more recent events taking place in the United States, such as the Million Man March, to elucidate the current crisis in African-American leadership. I will argue that this crisis has very real implications with regard to fostering solidarity and redefining a Pan Africanism that is shaped by the needs and aspirations of the producers who make up the overwhelming majority of the African diaspora and the continent.
- Date Issued:
- 1996-06-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science
- Description:
- This paper addresses the concept of policy dialogue as it applies to issues of gender equity and participation. It discusses the basic elements of the concept, explores five models of policy dialogue as well as constraints to the institutionalisation of policy dialogue for gendered development. It argues that the constraints emanate from the hegemony of the neo-liberal discourse on development; the effect of globalisation on the balance of power among key institutions in international, national and local arenas; the rigidities within national bureaucratic cultures; and the unequal patterns of development as well as contradictions within gender constituencies.
- Date Issued:
- 1997-12-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science
- Description:
- The purpose of this essay is to suggest an empirically based model to be used as a framework for analysis in studying contemporary political transitions in Africa. The discussion is founded on the leading assumption that the factors which catalyse regime transformation are fundamentally the same irrespective of the direction of change: social crisis intersects with structural conditions and particular patterns of human relationships resulting in a type of change which is conditioned by political culture and the weight of history. Democratisation is only one form of regime change. The paper concludes that while there may be ample evidence that significant political liberalisation has taken place, it is not appropriate to celebrate the "flowering of democracy" per se for the process is often in the direction of "pacted democracy" as opposed to "liberal democracy".
- Date Issued:
- 1996-12-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- African Journal of Political Science