The Complex Interplay between Power, Politics, and African Agency

The Complex Interplay between Power, Politics, and African Agency
Author: Serges Djoyou Kamga
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2024-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1666961612

The Complex Interplay between Power, Politics, and African Agency: The Philosophy of Toyin Falola by Serges Djoyou Kamga examines the impact of colonialism by using Toyin Falola’s philosophy as a framework. It delves into the evolution of African political culture under colonial rule. This book offers a unique perspective on the intricate dynamics of African society, providing a deeper understanding of how power and politics have shaped African culture. Kamga emphasizes the complex interplay between these elements and highlights the significance of African voices in determining their own destiny. Using Falola’s works, this book analyzes and critiques the influence of Europe and establishes the ongoing unequal relationship between ex-colonized African countries and their imperialist colonizers. This book is highly recommended for scholars of African studies, political science, and anyone interested in African history and culture.

Politics, Power and Community Development

Politics, Power and Community Development
Author: Meade, Rosie
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2016-01-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1447317408

The increasing impact of neoliberalism across the globe means that a complex interplay of democratic, economic and managerial rationalities now frame the parameters and practices of community development. This book explores how contemporary politics, and the power relations it reflects and projects, is shaping the field today. This first title in the timely Rethinking Community Development series presents unique and critical reflections on policy and practice in Taiwan, Australia, India, South Africa, Burundi, Germany, the USA, Ireland, Malawi, Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazonia and the UK. It addresses the global dominance of neoliberalism, and the extent to which practitioners, activists and programmes can challenge, critique, engage with or resist its influence. Addressing key dilemmas and challenges being navigated by students, academics, professionals and activists, this is a vital intellectual and practical resource.

Regions and Powers

Regions and Powers
Author: Barry Buzan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 598
Release: 2003-12-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521891110

This book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asia, EU Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and South Asia. The main focus is on the post-Cold War period, but the history of each regional security complex is traced back to its beginnings. By relating the regional dynamics of security to current debates about the global power structure, the authors unfold a distinctive interpretation of post-Cold War international security, avoiding both the extreme oversimplifications of the unipolar view, and the extreme deterritorialisations of many globalist visions of a new world disorder. Their framework brings out the radical diversity of security dynamics in different parts of the world.

African Agency in International Politics

African Agency in International Politics
Author: William Brown
Publisher:
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2013
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780203526071

This book analyses the rapidly increasing role of African states, leaders and other political actors in international politics in the 21st Century. In contrast to the conventional approach of studying how external actors impacted on Africa's international relations, this book seeks to open up a new approach, focusing on the impact of African political actors on international politics. It does this by analysing African agency - the degree to which African political actors have room to manoeuvre within the international system and exert influence internationally, and the uses they make of that room for manoeuvre. Bringing together leading scholars from Africa and Europe to explore the role and conception of African Agency, this book addresses a wide range of issues, from relations with western and non-western donors, Africa's role in the UN and World Trade Organisation, negotiations over climate change, trade agreements with the European Union, regional diplomatic strategies, the character and extent of African state agency, and agency within corporate social responsibility initiatives. African Agency in International Politics will be of interest to scholars and students of Africa's international relations, African politics, development, geography, diplomacy, trade, the environment, political science and security studies.

Communities in Action

Communities in Action
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2017-04-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309452961

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Political Power and Corporate Control

Political Power and Corporate Control
Author: Peter A. Gourevitch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2010-06-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1400837014

Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. This book differs sharply from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. It explores in particular the crucial role of pension plans and financial intermediaries in shaping political preferences for different rules of corporate governance. The countries examined sort into two distinct groups: diffuse shareholding by external investors who pick a board that monitors the managers, and concentrated blockholding by insiders who monitor managers directly. Examining the political coalitions that form among or across management, owners, and workers, the authors find that certain coalitions encourage policies that promote diffuse shareholding, while other coalitions yield blockholding-oriented policies. Political institutions influence the probability of one coalition defeating another.

African Agency, Finance and Developmental States

African Agency, Finance and Developmental States
Author: Gorden Moyo
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2021-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030724123

This book is an open invitation to the enterprise of re-imagining an alternative decolonial development project in Africa. It does this by focusing on the triple themes of African agency, development finance, and African developmental states in the context of an emerging multipolar world system. The book must be read as an affirmatively disruptive inquiry into the twin evils of global coloniality and global capitalist economic relations that have kept Africa on the lower rungs of the global pecking order, thereby preventing the rooting of an alternative development paradigm on the continent. As such, the book seeks to contribute towards the project of extricating the financing of development in Africa from the clutches of the Global North and the emerging powers of the Global South. In this way, it is a call for Afro-rebellion against the old and new forms of global coloniality and global capitalism. While the book is of major interest to scholars and students of African Studies, Development Studies, International Development Cooperation, International Relations, International Trade and Investment, Diplomacy, Africa–China Relations, and Political Science, it is equally meant for the general reader as it assumes no prior knowledge in any of the field of enquiry other than interest in the development of the African continent.

Strength Beyond Structure

Strength Beyond Structure
Author: Mirjam De Bruijn
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2007
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004156968

Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological case studies from various parts of Africa, this anthology provides an understanding of the importance of agency in processes of social transformation, especially in the context of crisis and structural constraint.

The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa

The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa
Author: Alex de Waal
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2015-10-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745695612

The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa delves into the business of politics in the turbulent, war-torn countries of north-east Africa. It is a contemporary history of how politicians, generals and insurgents bargain over money and power, and use of war to achieve their goals. Drawing on a thirty-year career in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, including experience as a participant in high-level peace talks, Alex de Waal provides a unique and compelling account of how these countries’ leaders run their governments, conduct their business, fight their wars and, occasionally, make peace. De Waal shows how leaders operate on a business model, securing funds for their ‘political budgets’ which they use to rent the provisional allegiances of army officers, militia commanders, tribal chiefs and party officials at the going rate. This political marketplace is eroding the institutions of government and reversing statebuildingÑand it is fuelled in large part by oil exports, aid funds and western military assistance for counter-terrorism and peacekeeping. The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa is a sharp and disturbing book with profound implications for international relations, development and peacemaking in the Horn of Africa and beyond.

Women's ILO

Women's ILO
Author: Eileen Boris
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2018-02-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004360433

What is the place of women in global labour policies? Women’s ILO: Transnational Networks, Global Labour Standards, and Gender Equity, 1919 to Present gathers new research on a century of ILO engagement with women’s work. It asks: what was the role of women’s networks in shaping ILO policies and what were the gendered meanings of international labour law in a world of uneven and unequal development? Women’s ILO explores issues like equal remuneration, home-based labour, and social welfare internationally and in places such as Argentina, Italy, and Ghana. It scrutinizes the impact of both power relations and global feminisms on the making of global labour policies in a world shaped by colonialism, the Cold War and post-colonial inequality. It further charts the disparate advancement of gender equity, highlighting the significant role of women experts and activists in the process. Contributors are: Paula Lucía Aguilar, Lucia Artner, Eloisa Betti, Chris Bonner, Eileen Boris, Akua O. Britwum, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Dorothea Hoehtker, Pat Horn, Sonya Michel, Silke Neunsinger, Renana Jhabvala, Marieke Louis, Yevette Richards, Mahua Sarkar, Kirsten Scheiwe, Françoise Thébaud, Susan Zimmermann “This is a must-read volume for scholars and students interested in women, labor and international/transnational history.” – Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, University of California, Irvine, USA “This fascinating collection of essays assesses the ILO’s role in securing social justice for women workers around the world and asks how that role might change as the world of work is transformed in the next century.” — Celia Donert, University of Liverpool “This exciting collection provides a long-overdue state of the art on gender politics and the ILO. It will no doubt be the work of reference on the topic for years to come.” – Elisabeth Prügl, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva