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Author: Opoku Agyeman Publisher: iUniverse ISBN: 0595130836 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 330
Book Description
A key dimention of global politics is the interaction that takes place between the nation-states as primary actors, and the systemic environment within which the actors operate. How a nation-state relates to the structural realities of the international system depends very much on its relative strength or weakness within the global system. Linkage vulnerability implies that the actors caught in it tend to be severely handicapped in their interactions with the world system; that they tend to have little or no say in configuring the underlying linkages. By any yardstick, Black Africa's relationship to the global system provides the quintessential depiction of linkage vulnerability. The book, which covers the period from the 1960s to the 1990s, portrays the persistence of Africa's vulnerability to global politics across such evocative African places as the Congo(Zaire), Angola, Mozambique, and South Africa; and it encompasses such issues as the lack of tenaciousness of spiritual-dignificatory values, the tenuous commitment to the solutions inherent in Pan-Africanist ideology and stategies, the institutional vacuum engendered by praetorianism, the racism of a near-hegemonic Western power toward Africa, and Western imperialistic terrorism against Africa.
Author: Opoku Agyeman Publisher: iUniverse ISBN: 0595130836 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 330
Book Description
A key dimention of global politics is the interaction that takes place between the nation-states as primary actors, and the systemic environment within which the actors operate. How a nation-state relates to the structural realities of the international system depends very much on its relative strength or weakness within the global system. Linkage vulnerability implies that the actors caught in it tend to be severely handicapped in their interactions with the world system; that they tend to have little or no say in configuring the underlying linkages. By any yardstick, Black Africa's relationship to the global system provides the quintessential depiction of linkage vulnerability. The book, which covers the period from the 1960s to the 1990s, portrays the persistence of Africa's vulnerability to global politics across such evocative African places as the Congo(Zaire), Angola, Mozambique, and South Africa; and it encompasses such issues as the lack of tenaciousness of spiritual-dignificatory values, the tenuous commitment to the solutions inherent in Pan-Africanist ideology and stategies, the institutional vacuum engendered by praetorianism, the racism of a near-hegemonic Western power toward Africa, and Western imperialistic terrorism against Africa.
Author: Olayiwola Abegunrin Publisher: Springer ISBN: 0230623905 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
In the twenty-first century, Africa has become an important source of US energy imports and the world's natural resources. It has also become the epicentre of the world's deadly health epidemic, HIV/AIDS, and one of the battlegrounds in the fight against terrorism. Africa is now a major player in global affairs.
Author: Ian Taylor Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192529242 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 174
Book Description
Africa is a continent of 54 countries and over a billion people. However, despite the rich diversity of the African experience, it is striking that continuations and themes seem to be reflected across the continent, particularly south of the Sahara. Questions of underdevelopment, outside exploitation, and misrule are characteristic of many - if not most-states in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this Very Short Introduction Ian Taylor explores how politics is practiced on the African continent, considering the nature of the state in Sub-Saharan Africa and why its state structures are generally weaker than elsewhere in the world. Exploring the historical and contemporary factors which account for Africa's underdevelopment, he also analyses why some African countries suffer from high levels of political violence while others are spared. Unveilling the ways in which African state and society actually function beyond the formal institutional façade, Taylor discusses how external factors - both inherited and contemporary - act upon the continent. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Author: Opoku Agyeman Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 0739195220 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 189
Book Description
This book is about imperialism-driven globalization, its historic impact on Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and, over time, the varied responses of the national political units and regional entities in these continents to the challenges of building countervailing power and laying foundations for independent development. Where genuine recovery and empowerment have emerged, this has been the result not only of the pursuit of “dignitalist” political and economic values that emphasize robust and sustained productivity geared toward uplifting the living standards and dignity of all the members of the national society, but also of the creation of indigenous institutions whose relations with the external world are defined by equality rather than dependence and subordination. Opoku Agyeman argues that “dignification” is the fundamentally necessary response to imperialism’s inevitable afflictions of national/racial humiliation. It is the most crucial ingredient in the complex of motivations that propel formerly weak nation-states and regional communities to rise up and defend the honor of their people. As Mao Zedong told the world in 1949: “Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation. We have stood up.” This study argues emphatically that it is a country’s or region’s developed or developing capabilities, not its historic and continuing victimization or habitual dependence on “charitable aid” and other “altruistic” interventions from the “international community,” that determines its success in escaping the scourge of powerlessness and underdevelopment. It further maintains that a people who have been brought low through brutal, dehumanizing imperialism cannot bypass the need for redemptive empowerment if they wish to regain honor and a proper place in the world. Finally, it takes issue with Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, and others like them whose moralistic critiques of the rapacity of imperialistic globalization carry the unfortunate implication that it is possible for a fair and just world social order to come out of incremental reforms of philanthropically-motivated developed, powerful countries, in the structure and operations of global capitalism.
Author: Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasonga Publisher: Zed Books Ltd. ISBN: 1848137222 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 329
Book Description
Democratic institutional forms and processes are increasingly widespread in Africa as dictatorial regimes have been forced to give way as a result of popular mobilization and external donor pressure. However the premises of the African scholars whose empirical research and analytical explorations are included in this volume are that democratic form and democratic substance are two different things; Western-derived institutional forms are neither necessarily the most appropriate nor the most practical in the current African context; and rooting democratic norms in the political cultures of African polities raises socio-cultural issues with which political scientists must engage. This book explores various critical questions in the context of particular elections and particular countries as diverse as Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, the Congo, Cameroon and the Central African Republic. They include the continuing impact of police state apparatuses following democratic transition; factors influencing African voters' attitudes and behaviour; the impact of incumbency on electoral competition; women's electoral participation; the phenomenon of often very limited party programmatic choice in the context of huge social diversity and multi-party competition; and the controversial issues around the transplantation of liberal democratic institutions. Underlying these issues is the fundamental question of whether democratic processes as currently practised in Africa are really making any significant difference to the African struggle for economic, social and cultural progress. This volume is valuable for the original perspectives of its African contributors; the issues it explores; and the concrete democratic experiences it analyses; and the challenges it makes to the existing concepts, paradigms and practices of liberal democracy.
Author: E. Ike Udogu Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 149850776X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 214
Book Description
This book frames the debates around the pressing desire for some form of unification that found expression in the pan-Africanist movement and formation of the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1963 following the advent of home-rule for many former colonies of the Western powers. Discussions in this volume address the following fundamental issues: nationalism and political integration and how the contradictions between both philosophies can be resolved; the amelioration of corruption in order to attract internal and external investments critical for developing the vast natural resources housed in the continent; the need for Africa’s adaptation to the ideology and practice of capitalism and liberal globalization to suit the character of African states in a projected federal United States of Africa; solutions to ethnic conflicts that are bound to happen over clashes of competing group interests; the indispensability and promotion of information communication technologies and urgent need to strengthen a network of regional electric power grids that would provide constant energy to the Union and lead to improvement in communication and economic growth; and recommendation of social democracy as the genre of democracy suitable for a proposed United States of Africa.
Author: Lumumba-Kasongo, Tukumbi Publisher: CODESRIA ISBN: 2869787200 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 392
Book Description
The Great Lakes region of Africa is characterized by protest politics, partial democratization, political illegitimacy and unstable economic growth. Many of the countries that are members of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) which are: Burundi, Angola, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia, have experienced political violence and bloodshed at one time or another. While a few states have been advancing electoral democracy, environmental protection and peaceful state building, the overall intensity of violence in the region has led to civil wars, invasion, genocide, dictatorships, political instability, and underdevelopment. Efforts to establish sustainable peace, meaningful socio-economic development and participatory democracy have not been quite successful. Using various methodologies and paradigms, this book interrogates the complexity of the causes of these conflicts; and examines their impact and implications for socio-economic development of the region. The non-consensual actions related to these conflicts and imperatives of power struggles supported by the agents of ‘savage’ capitalism have paralysed efforts toward progress. The book therefore recommends new policy frameworks within regionalist lenses and neo-realist politics to bring about sustainable peace in the region.
Author: Michael Cross Publisher: Springer ISBN: 9463008454 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 202
Book Description
While African universities retain their core function as primary institutions for advancement of knowledge, they have undergone fundamental changes in this regard. These changes have been triggered by a multiplicity of factors, including the need to address past economic and social imbalances, higher education expansion alongside demographic and economic growth concerns, and student throughput and success with the realization that greater participation has not meant greater equity. Constraining these changes is largely the failure to recognize the encroachment of the profit motive into the academy, or a shift from a public good knowledge/learning regime to a neo-liberal knowledge/learning regime. Neo-liberalism, with its emphasis on the economic and market function of the university, rather than the social function, is increasingly destabilizing higher education particularly in the domain of knowledge, making it increasingly unresponsive to local social and cultural needs. Corporate organizational practices, commodification and commercialization of knowledge, dictated by market ethics, dominate university practices in Africa with negative impact on professional values, norms and beliefs. Under such circumstances, African humanist progressive virtues (e.g. social solidarity, compassion, positive human relations and citizenship), democratic principles (equity and social justice) and the commitment to decolonization ideals guided by altruism and common good, are under serious threat. The book goes a long way in unraveling how African universities can respond to these challenges at the levels of institutional management, academic scholarship, the structure of knowledge production and distribution, institutional culture, policy and curriculum.
Author: John James Quinn Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 0739196456 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 395
Book Description
Global Geopolitical Power and African Political and Economic Institutions: When Elephants Fight describes the emergence and nature of the prevailing African political and economic institutions in two periods. In the first, most countries adopted political and economic institutions that funneled significant levels of political and economic power to the political elites, usually through one- or no-party (military) political systems, inward-oriented development policies, and/ or state-led—and often state-owned—industrialization. In the second period, most countries adopted institutions that diluted the overarching political and economic power of ruling elites through the adoption of de jure multiparty electoral systems, more outward-oriented trade policies, and the privatization of many state owned or controlled sectors, though significant political and economic power remains in their hands. The choices made in each period were consistent with prevailing ideas on governance and development, the self-interests of political elites, and the perceived availability of support or autonomy vis-à-vis domestic, regional, and international sources of power at the time. This book illustrates how these two region-wide shifts in prevailing political and economic institutions and practices of Africa can be linked to two prior global geopolitical realignments: the end of WWII with the ensuing American and Soviet led bipolar system, and the end of the Cold War with American primacy. Each period featured changed or newly empowered international and regional leaders with competing national priorities within new intellectual and geopolitical climates, altering the opportunities and constraints for African leaders in instituting or maintaining particular political and economic institutions or practices. The economic and political institutions of Africa that emerged did so as a result of a complex mix of contending domestic, regional, and international forces (material and intellectual)—all which were themselves greatly transformed in the wake of these two global geopolitical realignments.
Author: Opoku Agyeman
Author: Opoku Agyeman
Author: Olayiwola Abegunrin
Author: Ian Taylor
Author: Opoku Agyeman
Author: Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasonga
Author: E. Ike Udogu
Author: Lumumba-Kasongo, Tukumbi
Author: T. Assie-Lumumba
Author: Michael Cross
Author: John James Quinn