Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa, Naomi Chazan et al., Lynne
Rienner Publishers, Boulder, Colorado, 1992

1 "The Diversity of African Politics: Trends and Approaches" (5-33):
Africa is diverse and complex; it has drawn three main approaches to
its study: modernization, dependency and statist. We propose a
political interactive view.

Diverse Africa became even more varied following independence.
Independence generally witnessed increased education and health care,
debt, economic disparity, conflict and military involvement in
politics. Significant external dependency continued.

African analysts saw modernization (common identity creation, authority
acceptance, constructive public input, state wide government presence,
balanced public demands and public responsibility and integration of
varied interests), dependency (imposed by prevailing capitalist
structures) and statist (power holders creating domination structures)
paradigms. This text suggests a fourth the political interactive
approach.

African states face environmental (unpredictable rainfall, tropical
diseases, poor soil) and historical (artificial boundaries, multiple
societies, weak economy, dependency, fragile institutions, small
foreign educated elite and collective memory of humiliation)
constraints.

I "The Structure of Politics"

2 "State Institutions and the Organization of the Public Arena" (37-72)
A fairly agreed upon definition of the state is: '"the organized
aggregate of relatively permanent institutions of governance.'" The
state decides, enforces and mediates.

(To be continued)...


Solarguard Africa 



Solarguard Homepage