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Political Development and the New Realism in Sub-Saharan Africa (Hardcover)
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Political Development and the New Realism in Sub-Saharan Africa (Hardcover)
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Since the 1950s David Apter and Carl Rosberg have been among the
leading American scholars in African studies. In this volume they,
along with other specialists in the field, explore the new
configurations of African politics. With tentative efforts at a
revival of democracy now taking place, it seems appropriate to
reassess the theoretical debates and empirical themes that have
characterised postwar Sub-Saharan African politics. Focusing on a
""new realism"" which has emerged among Africanists since the
dismantling of colonial rule, the essays are presented as a
corrective both to the initial euphoria informing African studies
and to the later tendency to place blame for all of Africa's
political and economic difficulties on the receding spectre of
colonial oppression. In the introductory chapter, Apter and Rosberg
point out that Sub-Saharan African has been particularly vulnerable
to fluctuating truths and flights of interpretive fancy. No other
continent has attracted such multiple layers of power and prejudice
from the outside. Judgments and speculations about the very nature
of Africanness have been common. Today everything is subject to
controversy - race, ethnicity, language, religion, ideology - and
all the debates are heated up by severe economic decline and the
long-standing, unresolved difficulties of state formation. Crawford
Young (University of Wisconsin) examines the role of nationalism in
the political awakening of the area and looks at ethnicity as a
possible resource rather than an obstacle to state formation. Joel
D. Barkan (University of Iowa) identifies the new and emerging
issues in civil society and the revival of modernisation theory in
a context of accountability, Richard L. Sklar (University of
California, Los Angeles) works through the inadequacies of
conventional notions of markets and of bourgeoisie and proletariat
and shows that neither capitalism nor socialism can be looked to
for definitive solutions. Michael F. Lofchie (University of
California, Los Angeles) examines the reassertion of neoclassical
economic theory and evaluates new policy alternatives designed to
correct distortions in African economies. The analysis by Thomas M.
Callaghy (University of Pennsylvania) advocates a new balance
between the needs of the state for stability and the development
need for a market-driven economy. Colin Leys (Queen's University,
Kingston, Canada) reviews the arguments for dependency and
classical Marxism in the context of Kenya and is concerned with
whether or not, however defined, the Kenyan bourgeoisie can
engender capitalist growth. Michael Chege (Programme Officer in
Governance and International Affairs for the Ford Foundation in
Harare, Zimbabwe) examines the contrasting patterns of capitalist
and socialist orientations in development in both Kenya and
Tanzania under their respective presidents, and Robert M. Jackson
(University of British Columbia, Vancouver) and Carl G. Rosberg
conclude with an examination of how the political dyseconomy of
personal rule, with its tolerance of corruption and clientelism,
has undermined the viability of most new African states.
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