Providing a comprehensive and cutting edge examination of this important continent, Routledge Handbook of African Politics surveys the key debates and controversies, dealing with each of the major issues to be found in Africas politics today. Structured into 6 broad areas, the handbook features over 30 contributions focused around:The State Identity Conflict Democracy and Electoral Politics Political Economy & Development International Relations Each chapter deals with a specific topic, providing an overview of the main arguments and theories and explaining the empirical evidence that they are based on, drawing on high-profile cases such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, South Africa, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. The Handbook also contains new contributions on a wide range of topical issues, including terrorism, the growing influence of China, civil war, and transitional justice, making it required reading for non-specialists and experts alike. Featuring both established scholars and emerging researchers, this is a vital resource for all students of African Studies, democratization, conflict resolution and Third World politics.
This new Handbook examines the issues, challenges, and debates surrounding the problem of security in Africa. Africa is home to most of the world's current conflicts, and security is a key issue. However, African security can only be understood by employing different levels of analysis: the individual (human security), the state (national/state security), and the region (regional/international security). Each of these levels provides analytical tools for understanding what could be called the "African security predicament" and these debates are animated by the "new security" issues: immigration, small arms transfers, gangs and domestic crime, HIV/AIDS, transnational crime, poverty, and environmental degradation. African security therefore not only presents concrete challenges for international security but provides a real-world context for challenging conventional conceptions of security. Drawing together contributions from a wide range of key thinkers in the field, the Routledge Handbook of African Security engages with these debates, and is organized into four parts: Part I: The African security predicament in the twenty-first century; Part II: Understanding conflict in Africa; Part III: Regionalism and Africa; Part IV: External influences. This Handbook will be of great interest to students of African politics, human security, global security, war and conflict studies, peacebuilding, and IR in general.
This volume explores the issues and debates surrounding the ongoing processes of democratization in sub-Saharan Africa, illuminating the central dynamics characterizing Africa’s democratic experiments, and considering the connections between democratization and economic, social, and cultural developments on the continent. Reflecting the diverse and rich nature of this field of study, the Handbook of Democratization in Africa features more than thirty contributions structured into six thematic sections: The politics and paths of regime development Institutional dynamics Political mobilization and voting dynamics The politics of identity Social forces from below The consequences of democracy. Chapters offer overviews of the key scholarship on particular topics, including central insights from the latest research, and provide suggestions for those interested in further inquiry. The material includes attention to broad cross-continental patterns, for example with respect to public opinion, political violence, or the role of different institutions and actors. It also includes rich case material, drawing on and highlighting the experiences of a diverse collection of countries. Encouraging a comprehensive view of key concerns and enhancing understanding of particular issues, the Handbook of Democratization in Africa represents a critical resource for experts and students of African politics, democratization, and African studies.
This Handbook provides an authoritative and foundational disciplinary overview of African Public Policy and a comprehensive examination of the practicalities of policy analysis, policymaking processes, implementation, and administration in Africa today. The book assembles a multidisciplinary team of distinguished and upcoming Africanist scholars, practitioners, researchers and policy experts working inside and outside Africa to analyse the historical and emerging policy issues in 21st-century Africa. While mostly attentive to comparative public policy in Africa, this book attempts to address some of the following pertinent questions: How can public policy be understood and taught in Africa? How does policymaking occur in unstable political contexts, or in states under pressure? Has the democratisation of governing systems improved policy processes in Africa? How have recent transformations, such as technological proliferation in Africa, impacted public policy processes? What are the underlying challenges and potential policy paths for Africa going forward? The contributions examine an interplay of prevailing institutional, political, structural challenges and opportunities for policy effectiveness to discern striking commonalities and trajectories across different African states. This is a valuable resource for practitioners, politicians, researchers, university students, and academics interested in studying and understanding how African countries are governed.
This book showcases and develops the arguments propounded by African philosophers on political problems, bringing together experts from around the world to chart current and future research trends. It provides insights on the foundations, virtues, vices, controversies, and key topics to be found within African political philosophy.
This volume explores the issues and debates surrounding the ongoing processes of democratization in sub-Saharan Africa, illuminating the central dynamics characterizing Africa's democratic experiments, and considering the connections between democratization and economic, social, and cultural developments on the continent. Reflecting the diverse and rich nature of this field of study, the Handbook of Democratization in Africa features more than thirty contributions structured into six thematic sections: The politics and paths of regime development Institutional dynamics Political mobilization and voting dynamics The politics of identity Social forces from below The consequences of democracy. Chapters offer overviews of the key scholarship on particular topics, including central insights from the latest research, and provide suggestions for those interested in further inquiry. The material includes attention to broad cross-continental patterns, for example with respect to public opinion, political violence, or the role of different institutions and actors. It also includes rich case material, drawing on and highlighting the experiences of a diverse collection of countries. Encouraging a comprehensive view of key concerns and enhancing understanding of particular issues, the Handbook of Democratization in Africa represents a critical resource for experts and students of African politics, democratization, and African studies.
Africa lies at the centre of the international community’s peacebuilding interventions, and the continent’s rich multitude of actors, ideas, relationships, practices, experiences, locations, and contexts in turn shapes the possibilities and practices of contemporary peacebuilding. This timely new handbook surveys and analyses peacebuilding as it operates in this specifically African context. The book begins by outlining the evolution and the various ideologies, conceptualizations, institutions, and practices of African peacebuilding. It identifies critical differences in how African peacebuilders have conceptualized and operationalized peacebuilding. The book then considers how different actors sustain, construct, and use African infrastructure to identify and analyse converging, differing, or competing mandates, approaches, and interests. Finally, it analyses specific thematic issues such as gender, justice, development, democracy, and the politics of knowledge before ending with in-depth analyses of case studies drawn from across the continent. Bringing together an international line-up of expert contributors, this book will be an essential read for students and scholars of African politics, post-conflict reconstruction, security, and peace and conflict studies.
This handbook comprises fresh and incisive research focusing on African media, culture and communication. The chapters from a cross-section of scholars dissect the forces shaping the field within a changing African context. It adds critical corpora of African scholarship and theory that places the everyday worlds, needs and uses of Africans first. The book goes beyond critiques of the marginality of African approaches in media and communication studies to offer scholars the theoretical and empirical toolkit needed to start building critical corpora of African scholarship and theory that places the everyday worlds, needs and uses of Africans first. Decoloniality demands new epistemological interventions in African media, culture and communication, and this book is an important interlocutor in this space. In a globally interconnected world, changing patterns of authority and power pose new challenges to the ways in which media institutions are constituted and managed, as well as how communication and media policy is negotiated and the manner in which citizens engage with increasing media opportunities. The handbook focuses on the interrelationships of the local and the global and the concomitant consequences for media practice, education and citizen engagement in today’s Africa. Altogether, the book foregrounds convivial epistemologies relevant for locating African media and communication in the pluriverse. This handbook is an essential read for critical media, communications, cultural studies and journalism scholars.
The Routledge Handbook of African Law provides a comprehensive, critical overview of the contemporary legal terrain in Africa. The international team of expert contributors adopt an analytical and comparative approach so that readers can see the nexus between different jurisdictions and different legal traditions across the continent. The volume is divided into five parts covering: Legal Pluralism and African Legal Systems The State, Institutions, Constitutionalism, and Democratic Governance Economic Development, Technology, Trade, and Investment Human Rights, Gender-Based Violence, and Access to Justice International Law, Institutions, and International Criminal Law Providing important insights into both the specific contexts of African legal systems and the ways in which these legal traditions intersect with the wider world, this handbook will be an essential resource for academics, researchers, lawyers, and graduate and undergraduate students studying this ever-evolving field.
This handbook presents an extensive new overview of African development - past, present and future. It addresses key core themes and topics that are pertinent to the continent's development - including sections on history, health and food, politics, economics, rural and urban development, and development policy and practice. The volume draws on the expertise of over 60 of the world's leading scholars to provide a detailed and up-to-date analysis of the key opportunities and challenges that confront Africa, and how such issues are being addressed. Arranged by key themes, the handbook provides not only a historical understanding of the past, but also political perspectives on the future. The chapters provide critically informed analyses of their topics by drawing upon the latest conceptual viewpoints and applied experiences in Africa in the form of case studies to offer a comprehensive examination of the opportunities, challenges, key debates and future prospects. This handbook is an invaluable state-of-the-art overview and reference concerning many different aspects of Africa's development, which will be of interest to academics in all fields of African studies, and also academics and students working in cognate disciplines such as development studies, geography, history, politics and economics.
This handbook explores the challenges and opportunities for leadership and conflict response in the context of Africa at several levels. Leadership plays a vital role in affecting conflict response but is frequently only examined at the macro level of state, government, and international organizations. This handbook addresses the need to explore challenges and opportunities for leadership at several levels: macro (global, regional, national), meso (NGOs, religious groups, academics), and micro (civil society organizations, youth groups, women’s organizations). Analysis from multiple levels provides a broader explanation of conflict dynamics and helps to fit localized conflict transformation approaches into wider national or regional structures. The multidisciplinary essays presented in this volume encompass the psychological, political, and structural dimensions of conflict response and demonstrate how its success is fundamentally linked to the style of effectiveness of leadership, among other factors. The volume is divided into four thematic sections: Part I: The theory and dynamics of conflict response and leadership Part II: Macro-level leadership experiences in conflict response Part III: Meso-/micro-level leadership experiences in conflict response Part IV: Recommendations for improved leadership in conflict response This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peace studies, African politics, security studies, and international relations, in general.
