Deadly elections: post-election violence in Nigeria

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Angerbrandt
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
The State ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Local Dynamics ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Election Violence ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractTwo decades after the ‘third wave of democratization’, extensive violence continues to follow elections in sub-Saharan Africa. Whereas national processes connected to pre-election violence have received increased scholarly attention, little is known of local dynamics of violence after elections. This article examines the 2011 Nigerian post-election violence with regard to the ways in which national electoral processes interweave with local social and political disputes. The most affected state, Kaduna State, has a history of violent local relations connected to which group should control politics and the state. It is argued that electoral polarisation aggravated national ethno-religious divisions that corresponded to the dividing line of the conflict in Kaduna. A rapid escalation of violence was facilitated by local social networks nurtured by ethno-religious grievances.

scholarly journals Protest, Internet Activism, and Sociopolitical Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

2020 ◽  
pp. 000276422097506
Author(s):  
Oscar Mateos ◽  
Carlos Bajo Erro
Keyword(s):  
Field Work ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Sociopolitical Change ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Protests ◽  
Street Protest ◽  
Internet Activism ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
Sub Saharan

Sub-Saharan Africa has been the scene of a sizeable wave of social and political protests in recent years. These protests have many aspects in common, while at the same time there is a certain historic continuity connecting them to previous protests, with which they also have much in common. What makes them new, however, is a hybrid nature that combines street protest and online action, making them similar to protests occurring in other parts of the world during the same period. Based on a literature review and field work on three countries, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this article addresses some of the main features of what some authors have called the “third wave of African protests.” The study points out how the digital environment is galvanizing a new process of popular opposition and enabling both greater autonomy for actors promoting the protests and greater interaction at the regional level. With the sociopolitical impact in the short and medium term still uncertain, the third wave of African protests is giving birth to a new political and democratic culture in the region as a whole.

Including chiefs, maintaining peace? Examining the effects of state–traditional governance interaction on civil peace in sub-Saharan Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katariina Mustasilta
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
The State ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Traditional Authorities ◽  
Traditional Governance

The continued influence of traditional governance in sub-Saharan Africa has sparked increasing attention among scholars exploring the role of non-state and quasi-state forms of governance in the modern state. However, little attention has been given to cross-country and over-time variation in the interaction between state and traditional governance structures, particularly in regard to its implications for intrastate peace. This study examines the conditions under which traditional governance contributes to state capacity to maintain peace. The article argues that the type of institutional interaction between the state and traditional authority structures influences a country’s overall governance dynamics and its capacity to maintain peace. By combining new data on state–traditional authorities’ interaction in sub-Saharan Africa from 1989 to 2012 with intrastate armed conflict data, I conduct a systematic comparative analysis of whether concordant state–traditional authorities’ interaction strengthens peace. The empirical results support the argument that integrating traditional authorities into the public administration lowers the risk of armed conflict in comparison to when they remain unrecognized by the state. Moreover, the analysis suggests that the added value of this type of interaction is conditional on the colonial history of a country.

Democracy and Reconfigured Power in Africa

2011 ◽  
Vol 110 (739) ◽  
pp. 324-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sub Saharan

The third wave of democracy did sweep across much of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s, but has now subsided, except for ripples and eddies.

Christianity in the Twentieth Century

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Regional Survey ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Different Parts

This book charts the transformation of one of the world's great religions during an age marked by world wars, genocide, nationalism, decolonization, and powerful ideological currents, many of them hostile to Christianity. The book traces how Christianity evolved from a religion defined by the culture and politics of Europe to the expanding polycentric and multicultural faith it is today—one whose growing popular support is strongest in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, China, and other parts of Asia. The book sheds critical light on themes of central importance for understanding the global contours of modern Christianity, illustrating each one with contrasting case studies, usually taken from different parts of the world. Unlike other books on world Christianity, this one is not a regional survey or chronological narrative, nor does it focus on theology or ecclesiastical institutions. The book provides a history of Christianity as a popular faith experienced and lived by its adherents, telling a compelling and multifaceted story of Christendom's fortunes in Europe, North America, and across the rest of the globe. It demonstrates how Christianity has had less to fear from the onslaughts of secularism than from the readiness of Christians themselves to accommodate their faith to ideologies that privilege racial identity or radical individualism.

Subaltern Migrations and the State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Zehmisch
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
The State ◽  
Penal Colony ◽  
The Third ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Subaltern Agency ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Reports

This chapter considers the history of Andaman migration from the institutionalization of a penal colony in 1858 to the present. It unpicks the dynamic relationship between the state and the population by investigating genealogies of power and knowledge. Apart from elaborating on subaltern domination, the chapter also reconstructs subaltern agency in historical processes by re-reading scholarly literature, administrative publications, and media reports as well as by interpreting fieldwork data and oral history accounts. The first part of the chapter defines migration and shows how it applies to the Andamans. The second part concentrates on colonial policies of subaltern population transfer to the islands and on the effects of social engineering processes. The third part analyses the institutionalization of the postcolonial regime in the islands and elaborates on the various types of migration since Indian Independence. The final section considers contemporary political negotiations of migration in the islands.

Forced Labour in the “Gorgulho Years”: Understanding Reform and Repression in Rural São Tomé e Príncipe, 1945–1953

Itinerario ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Keese
Keyword(s):  
Economic Change ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Policies ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Incomplete Images ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Sao Tome E Principe

The crossroads of nationalist historiographies in sub-Saharan Africa and of the history of developmentalist attempts that characterise the European late colonial states, have left us with very incomplete images of important trajectories. In the seemingly more “liberal” large colonial empires—notably the French and British—sails were set by 1945 towards a policy of investment and economic change. Some of the scholarly debates question whether this investment was genuine or just a last resort to avoid (rapid) decolonisation; others put the emphasis on inadequate routines of development implemented in these territories, many of which have apparently been continued since decolonisation.In this context, we encounter a clear lack of understanding about how decisions made by individual actors on the administrative level interacted with the larger panorama of social conditions in colonial territories, and of the consequences that these interactions had for the paths towards decolonisation. For a smaller empire such as the Belgian colony of Congo-Léopoldville, these processes are still more obscure; and for the colonies ruled by authoritarian metropoles, as in the cases of territories under Spanish and Portuguese rule, stagnation and absence of change are often taken for granted. In other words, these territories, which were under the rule of metropoles regarded as rather weak in economic terms, are treated as unrepresentative of the broader, European movement towards change in colonial policies. However, the conditions of change towards economic and social modernisation in this latter group of empires, even when inhibited by lack of funding and weak professionalisation of the administration, are frequently very telling for the broader range of challenges that the late colonial states faced.

Women in Gabon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire H. Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Central Africa ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Women ◽  
Female Population ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Tropical Woods ◽  
New Research ◽  
Export Revenue

Gabon, a small oil-rich country straddling the equator on the west coast of Africa, is the wealthiest of France’s former colonies. An early period of colonization in the 19th century resulted in disease, famine, and economic failure. The creation of French Equatorial Africa in 1910 marked the beginning of the sustained lucrative exploitation of Gabon’s natural resources. Gabon began off-shore oil production while still a colony of France. Uranium was also discovered in the last decade of the French Equatorial African empire. Coupled with rich reserves in tropical woods, Gabon has achieved, since independence in 1960, a higher level of export revenue per capita of population than any other country in sub-Saharan Africa in the postcolonial era. However, significant inequality has characterized access to wealth through paid employment throughout the recorded history of monetized labor. While fortunes have been amassed by a minute proportion of the female population of Gabon associated with the ruling regime, and a professional female middle-class has emerged, inequalities of opportunity and reward continue to mark women’s experience of life in this little-known country of West Central Africa. The key challenge facing scholars researching the history of women in Gabon remains the relative lack of historical resources. While significant strides have been made over the past decade, research on women’s history in Francophone Africa published in English or French remains embryonic. French research on African women began to make a mark in the last decade of colonization, notably with the work of Denise Paulme, but then remained a neglected area for decades. The publication in 1994 of Les Africaines by French historian Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch was hailed at the time as a pioneering work in French historiography. But even this new research contained no analysis of and only a passing reference to women in Gabon.

Democratic demands and social policies: the politics of health reform in Ghana

2011 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Carbone
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Health Reform ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
International Policy ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTIt is commonly assumed that the advent of democracy tends to bring about social welfare improvements. Few studies, however, have examined empirically the impact of third-wave democratisation processes on social policies in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Through a diachronic comparison, this paper examines the effects of Ghana's democratisation process on the evolution of its health policy. It shows that the emergence of democratic competition played an important role in the recent adoption of a crucial health reform. A policy feedback effect on politics and a process of international policy diffusion were additional but secondary factors.

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