Ethnicity, Politics, and Society in Northeast Africa


Book Description

This book deals with the dimensions of ethnicity and ethnic interaction in Northeast Africa. It proposes a mechanism to establish a condition of peaceful co-existence among ethnic groups in the region. Contents: List of Tables and Diagrams; Foreword; Preface; Acknowledgements; Language and Ethnicity; Religion and Ethnicity; Territory and Ethnicity; Conflict History; Conflict Management Systems; Peace, Democracy, and Regulation of Conflict; References; Index.




Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa


Book Description

The politics of identity and ethnicity will remain a fundamental characteristic of African modernity. For this reason, historians and anthropologists have joined political scientists in a discussion about the ways in which democracy can develop in multicultural societies. In Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa, the contributors address why ethnicity represents a political problem, how the problem manifests itself, and which institutional models offer ways of ameliorating the challenges that ethnicity poses to democratic nation-building.







Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa


Book Description

This book models the trade-off that rulers of weak, ethnically-divided states face between coups and civil war. Drawing evidence from extensive field research in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo combined with statistical analysis of most African countries, it develops a framework to understand the causes of state failure.




Ethnicity, Citizenship and State in Eastern Africa


Book Description

This volume, from an Africa perspective, examines the relationship between ethnicity and citizenship within the framework of nation-state. Its objective and scope engage relational aspects of political integration, awaken public conscience, and motivate civic engagement. It provides a platform that could be considered prerequisite for political transformation. Such a framework is indispensable not only for challenging the politics of exclusion and marginalization, but also for reconstructing fractured social relationships. The test of its validity and relevancy is not whether it accounts for particular traditions, but whether it provides a framework through which we can comprehend the dynamics of ethnic identities as an avenue for promoting participatory governance and democratic accountability. An interdisciplinary study of this kind brings forth practical and theoretical contributions to the evolving concepts of ethnicity and citizenship.







Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa


Book Description

This book presents a theory to account for why and when politics revolves around one axis of social cleavage instead of another. It does so by examining the case of Zambia, where people identify themselves either as members of one of the country's seventy-three tribes or as members of one of its four principal language groups. The book accounts for the conditions under which Zambian political competition revolves around tribal differences and under which it revolves around language group differences. Drawing on a simple model of identity choice, it shows that the answer depends on whether the country operates under single-party or multi-party rule. During periods of single-party rule, tribal identities serve as the axis of electoral mobilization and self-identification; during periods of multi-party rule, broader language group identities play this role. The book thus demonstrates how formal institutional rules determine the kinds of social cleavages that matter in politics.




Changing Identifications and Alliances in North-East Africa


Book Description

Forms of group identity play a prominent role in everyday lives and politics in northeast Africa. Case studies from Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya illustrate the way that identities are formed and change over time, and how local, national, and international politics are interwoven. Specific attention is paid to the impact of modern weaponry, new technologies, religious conversion, food and land shortages, international borders, civil war, and displacement on group identities. Drawing on the expertise of anthropologists, historians and geographers, these volumes provide a significant account of a society profoundly shaped by identity politics and contribute to a better understanding of the nature of conflict and war, and forms of alliance and peacemaking, thus providing a comprehensive portrait of this troubled region.




The Issue of Political Ethnicity in Africa


Book Description

This title was first published in 2001. The central characteristics of political ethnicity and its dysfunctional attributes in African politics is vexing to Africa's policy makers. Moreover, as a conflictive ideology in national and international politics, many political actors would rather avoid it. In the past, nationalists have blamed ethnic chauvinists for fanning the embers of ethnicity, but today they realize they may have underestimated its prominence in African politics.




Ethnic Politics in Kenya and Nigeria


Book Description

This book is more than just a study of ethnic politics in Kenya and Nigeria. The two countries are a microcosm of the entire continent: the problems it faces, its successes and failures, and the hope and despair of hundreds of millions of its people whose aspirations have been frustrated by decades of corrupt leadership that has skilfully exploited one of Africa's biggest weaknesses -- tribalism. But the people themselves are also responsible for that. They have allowed tribalism to flourish and destroy the countries. And they have allowed unscrupulous politicians to use and abuse them -- without storming the Bastille. What they are not responsible for is dictatorship African leaders instituted to perpetuate themselves in office by exploiting tribalism. These despots have been so good at it, and have done it for so long since independence, that many African countries are now on the brink of collapse, with the people at war against themselves.