Democracy, Good Governance and Development in Africa

Democracy, Good Governance and Development in Africa
Author: Mawere, Munyaradzi
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2015-10-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9956763004

Questions surrounding democracy, governance, and development especially in the view of Africa have provoked acrimonious debates in the past few years. It remains a perennial question why some decades after political independence in Africa the continent continues experiencing bad governance, lagging behind socioeconomically, and its democracy questionable. We admit that a plethora of theories and reasons, including iniquitous and malicious ones, have been conjured in an attempt to explain and answer the questions as to why Africa seems to be lagging behind other continents in issues pertaining to good governance, democracy and socio-economic development. Yet, none of the theories and reasons proffered so far seems to have provided enduring solutions to Africa’s diverse complex problems and predicaments. This book dissects and critically examines the matrix of Africa’s multifaceted problems on governance, democracy and development in an attempt to proffer enduring solutions to the continent’s long-standing political and socio-economic dilemmas and setbacks.

The Struggle for Meaning

The Struggle for Meaning
Author: Paulin J. Hountondji
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2002
Genre: Africa
ISBN: 0896802256

"While the book's immediate concern is with Africa, the theoretical nature of its analyses and its bearing on postmodern theories of the "Other" will make this translation of great interest to many disciplines especially ethnic gender and multicultural studies."--BOOK JACKET.

Why Do Elections Matter in Africa?

Why Do Elections Matter in Africa?
Author: Nic Cheeseman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2021-02-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 110841723X

A radical new approach to understanding Africa's elections: explaining why politicians, bureaucrats and voters so frequently break electoral rules.

Contemporary African Social and Political Philosophy

Contemporary African Social and Political Philosophy
Author: Albert Kasanda
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2018-05-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351209906

This book explores what constitutes contemporary African social and political philosophy with regard to its meaning, aims, sources, and relevance for today’s Africa. Kasanda denounces conventional approaches considering these either as a subcategory of general philosophy or as the ideological attempts of individual African leaders and professional philosophers, such as Nkrumah, Nyerere, Senghor, Fanon, Hountondji and Towa. On the contrary, Kasanda defines contemporary African social and political philosophy as an inclusive reflection of African communities with regard to power and equitable modes of social and political organization in order to promote human excellence for everyone. This perspective also includes the criticism of social and political concepts in use within African communities. The author postulates that contemporary African social and political philosophy relies on the legacy of precolonial African societies, as well as on the contribution of the diaspora throughout the world. Contemporary African social and political philosophy is rooted in the daily lives of African people, and it expresses itself through multiple modalities including, for example, art, religion, literature, music and the policy of urbanization of African cities. This book sheds new light on debates concerning topics such as ethnophilosophy, negritude, pan-Africanism, democracy, African civil society, African cultures, and globalization. It aims to ward off the lethargy that strikes African social and political philosophy, taking a renewed and critical approach.

Freedom as Marronage

Freedom as Marronage
Author: Neil Roberts
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2015-02-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 022620104X

" Freedom as Marronage" deepens our understanding of political freedom not only by situating slavery as freedom s opposite condition, but also by investigating the experiential significance of the equally important liminal and transitional social space "between" slavery and freedom. Roberts examines a specific form of flight from slavery"marronage"that was fundamental to the experience of Haitian slavery, but is integral to understanding the Haitian Revolution and has widespread application to European, New World, and black Diasporic societies. He pays close attention to the experience of the process by which people emerge "from "slavery "to "freedom, contending that freedom as marronage presents a useful conceptual device for those interested in understanding both normative ideals of political freedom and the origin of those ideals. Roberts investigates the dual anti-colonial and anti-slavery Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and especially the ideas of German-Jewish thinker Hannah Arendt, Irish political theorist Philip Pettit, American fugitive-turned ex-slave Frederick Douglass, and the Martinican philosopher Edouard Glissant in developing a theory of freedom that offers a compelling interpretive lens to understand the quandaries of slavery, freedom, and political language that still confront us today."

Democracy's Reconstruction

Democracy's Reconstruction
Author: Katharine Lawrence Balfour
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2011-03-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 019537729X

In Democracy's Reconstruction, the latest addition to Cathy Cohen and Fredrick Harris's Transgressing Boundaries series, noted political theorist Lawrie Balfour challenges a longstanding tendency in political theory: the disciplinary division that separates political theory proper from the study of black politics. Political theory rarely engages with black political thinkers, despite the fact that the problem of racial inequality is central to the entire enterprise of American political theory. To address this lacuna, she focuses on the political thought of W.E.B. Du Bois, particularly his longstanding concern with the relationship between slavery's legacy and the prospects for democracy in the era he lived in. Balfour utilizes Du Bois as an intellectual resource, applying his method of addressing contemporary problems via the historical prism of slavery to address some of the fundamental racial divides and inequalities in contemporary America. By establishing his theoretical method to study these historical connections, she positions Du Bois's work in the political theory canon--similar to the status it already has in history, sociology, philosophy, and literature.

Democracy as Death

Democracy as Death
Author: Jason Hickel
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2015-02-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520284224

The revolution that brought the African National Congress (ANC) to power in South Africa was fractured by internal conflict.Ê Migrant workers from rural Zululand rejected many of the egalitarian values and policies fundamental to the ANCÕs liberal democratic platform and organized themselves in an attempt to sabotage the movement. This anti-democracy stance, which persists today as a direct critique of ÒfreedomÓ in neoliberal South Africa, hinges on an idealized vision of the rural home and a hierarchical social order crafted in part by the technologies of colonial governance over the past century.Ê In analyzing this conflict, Jason Hickel contributes to broad theoretical debates about liberalism and democratization in the postcolonial world. Democracy as Death interrogates the Western ideals of individual freedom and agency from the perspective of those who oppose such ideals, and questions the assumptions underpinning theories of anti-liberal movements. The book argues that both democracy and the political science that attempts to explain resistance to it presuppose a model of personhood native to Western capitalism, which may not operate cross-culturally.

Philosophy and Democracy in the World

Philosophy and Democracy in the World
Author: Roger-Pol Droit
Publisher: UNESCO
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1995
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

A worldwide survey on the place that philosophy occupies in education and culture, based on a large number of documents from dozens of countries and proposals put forward in various international fora. Its main conclusion: although the teaching of philosophy is highly praised in principle, it is neglected in practice. But in an increasingly interdependent and fragmented world, a sound philosophical education is inseparably linked to the issue of freedom. Publie egalement en franais: Philosophie et democratie dans le monde Publicado tambien en espanol: Filosofia y democracia en el mundo

African American Political Thought

African American Political Thought
Author: Melvin L. Rogers
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 771
Release: 2021-05-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 022672607X

African American Political Thought offers an unprecedented philosophical history of thinkers from the African American community and African diaspora who have addressed the central issues of political life: democracy, race, violence, liberation, solidarity, and mass political action. Melvin L. Rogers and Jack Turner have brought together leading scholars to reflect on individual intellectuals from the past four centuries, developing their list with an expansive approach to political expression. The collected essays consider such figures as Martin Delany, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Audre Lorde, whose works are addressed by scholars such as Farah Jasmin Griffin, Robert Gooding-Williams, Michael Dawson, Nick Bromell, Neil Roberts, and Lawrie Balfour. While African American political thought is inextricable from the historical movement of American political thought, this volume stresses the individuality of Black thinkers, the transnational and diasporic consciousness, and how individual speakers and writers draw on various traditions simultaneously to broaden our conception of African American political ideas. This landmark volume gives us the opportunity to tap into the myriad and nuanced political theories central to Black life. In doing so, African American Political Thought: A Collected History transforms how we understand the past and future of political thinking in the West.

Consensus as Democracy in Africa

Consensus as Democracy in Africa
Author: Bernard Matolino
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2018-12-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 192003336X

Some philosophers on the African continent and beyond are convinced that consensus, as a polity, represents the best chance for Africa to fully democratise. In Consensus as Democracy in Africa, Bernard Matolino challenges the basic assumptions built into consensus as a social and political theory. Central to his challenge to the claimed viability of consensus as a democratic system are three major questions: Is consensus genuinely superior to its majoritarian counterpart? Is consensus itself truly a democratic system? Is consensus sufficiently different from the one-party system? In taking up these issues and others closely associated with them, Matolino shows that consensus as a system of democracy encounters several challenges that make its viability highly doubtful. Matolino then attempts a combination of an understanding of an authentic mode of democracy with African reality to work out what a more desirable polity would be for the continent.