Security in Africa: A Critical Approach to Western Indicators of Threat questions the dominant Western narrative of security threats in Africa. Based on an analysis traditional security studies and Western security policy, it argues that commonly used indicators are based on mainstream security studies and provide only circumscribed analyses of threats to international security. By assessing the origins of this traditional approach to security and problematizing failed states, political instability, Muslim populations, and poverty among others, it makes the case for a critical approach to framing security challenges in Africa.

This edited volume focuses on the democratic performance of regimes in some of the least populous countries on the African continent. Using a framework developed by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, each case study provides in-depth analysis of democratic contestation in the following arenas: electoral, judiciary, legislature, media, and civil society. This volume also examines the key factors that push these regimes in either democratic or authoritarian directions, and how these regimes are likely to evolve in the future.

Once considered nationalists, many insurgent groups are now labeled as terrorists and thought to endanger not just their own people, but the world. As the unprecedented trends in political violence among insurgents have taken shape, and as hundreds of thousands of civilians continue to be displaced, brutalized, and killed, Inside Insurgency provides startling insights that help to explain the nature of insurgent behavior.

Claire Metelits draws from over 100 interviews with insurgent soldiers, commanders, government officials, scholars, and civilians in Sudan, Kenya, Colombia, Turkey, and Iraq, offering a new understanding of insurgent group behavior and providing compelling and intimate portraits of the SPLA, FARC, and PKK. The engaging narratives that emerge from her on-the-ground fieldwork provide incredibly valuable and accurate first-hand documentation of the tactics of some of the world's most notorious insurgent groups. Inside Insurgency offers the reader a timely and intimate understanding of these movements, and explains the changing behavior of insurgent groups toward the civilians they claim to represent.

Once considered nationalists, many insurgent groups are now labeled as terrorists and thought to endanger not just their own people, but the world. As the unprecedented trends in political violence among insurgents have taken shape, and as hundreds of thousands of civilians continue to be displaced, brutalized, and killed, Inside Insurgency provides startling insights that help to explain the nature of insurgent behavior.

Claire Metelits draws from over 100 interviews with insurgent soldiers, commanders, government officials, scholars, and civilians in Sudan, Kenya, Colombia, Turkey, and Iraq, offering a new understanding of insurgent group behavior and providing compelling and intimate portraits of the SPLA, FARC, and PKK. The engaging narratives that emerge from her on-the-ground fieldwork provide incredibly valuable and accurate first-hand documentation of the tactics of some of the world's most notorious insurgent groups. Inside Insurgency offers the reader a timely and intimate understanding of these movements, and explains the changing behavior of insurgent groups toward the civilians they claim to represent.