Democracy and the Question of Its Feasibility in Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mamoudou Gazibo
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Constitutional Courts ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Level Of Economic Development ◽  
History Of

Until the end of the 1980s, most observers believed that democratic prospects in Africa were limited, given the low level of economic development, the absence of strong nation-states, and the inexistence of a long history of social and political pluralism. However, beginning in 1989, a wave of popular protests demanding democratic reforms swept the continent. Within a couple of years, virtually all the countries liberalized their political systems. Since then, Africans have shown consistently that they strongly prefer and support democratic rule. At the same time, democratic institutions such as electoral commissions and constitutional courts have taken root on the continent. These developments suggest that the question of the feasibility of democracy in Africa is no longer relevant. Nonetheless, the existence of democratic demands, support, and institutions does not mean that democracy is easy to establish and consolidate. In many African countries, democratic gains are reversible and face several hindering factors, including state weakness, autocratic mindset, unstable and divided civic and political organizations, and widespread identity politics. This is why the level and quality of democracy on the African continent vary dramatically from country to country and from one region to another.

The Middle Eastern Shift and Provincializing Zionism

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 577-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orit Bashkin
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Middle East Studies

Scholars working on Jewish communities in the Middle East are in the midst of an important historiographical moment, in which the major categories, historical narratives, and key assumptions within the field are undergoing radical changes. A cluster of books and articles written by scholars trained in history, anthropology, and area studies departments, and published in Middle East studies rather than Jewish studies book series and journals, suggests that the study of Middle Eastern Jewish communities in the American academy is undergoing a change which might be termed “the Middle Eastern turn.” For such scholars, the history of Jews in Muslim lands, as modern subjects and citizens, is typified by a multiplicity of categories related to their identities—Ottoman, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Arab-Jewish, and local-patriotic—which they explore by looking at the political organizations and social and cultural institutions that enabled the integration of modern Jews into new imperial and national frameworks. This new scholarly wave is transnational, as it illustrates the importance of Jewish networks and Jewish languages in the Middle East, and likewise seeks to draw comparisons between Jews and other transregional and religious minorities, such as Armenians and Greek Orthodox Christians. It is interdisciplinary, as it attempts to incorporate the insights of sociologists, anthropologists, and literary scholars. Finally, it is postcolonial, in its critiques of national elites, national narratives, and nationalist histories. These new accounts uncover how processes which affected the entire Middle East, like Ottoman and Egyptian reform politics and the rise of nation-states, shaped modern Jewish lives.

scholarly journals The Effect of Institutional Quality on the Balance of Payments in African Countries. A Comparative Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Ashraf Helmy
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Balance Of Payments ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Distributed Lag ◽  
Autoregressive Distributed Lag ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Level Of Economic Development ◽  
International Transactions

This study tries to examine the effect of the quality of the institutional framework on the accounts of the balance of payments in a sample of African countries (28 countries) and a sample of countries occupying advanced positions in international economics (15 countries) to determine different indicators of the institutional framework that affect the balances of the current and financial accounts of the balance of payments in the two sample countries through the period 2002-2019. The study applied the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, Akaike info criterion (AIC), to determine the short- and long-run relationships. The empirical findings illustrate that the institutional indicators that support the current accounts of the balance of payments, in the long run, are not the same that support the financial accounts of the balance of payments of African countries. In addition, the effect of institutional indicators on international transactions is related to the level of economic development, where the effect of institutional indicators on countries with relatively low levels of economic development is more powerful than their effects on countries with advanced levels of development. Thus, the low quality of the institutional framework is considered an important impediment to the development of international transactions in African countries.

Ethnic Party Bans In Africa: A Research Agenda

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 617-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Basedau ◽  
Matthijs Bogaards ◽  
Christof Hartmann ◽  
Peter Niesen
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Level Playing Field ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Associations

The wave of democratization that has engulfed African countries since the 1980s has been characterized by the establishment of or return to multi-party politics. This has mostly happened in political systems with a long history of de facto and de jure constraints on the ability of political parties to function effectively. While few countries today (examples include Eritrea and Swaziland) continue to deny the principle and legitimacy of a pluralistic organization of political associations and parties, many political parties in “new democracies” still face insurmountable obstacles in creating a level playing field and have to cope with legal and administrative provisions that severely restrict their free operation.

International Law in Portuguese

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Current Prevalence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Concepts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Domestic Law

Despite the current prevalence of English as a lingua franca in international law, many international lawyers in countries such as Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, and Angola have written a number of works in Portuguese. While more than ever, scholars from Portuguese-speaking countries have contributed to international legal journals and edited volumes in English, international legal scholars still insist on writing in Portuguese for several reasons. Portugal and Brazil have a long history of engagement with international legal concepts, institutions, and rules, which also stems from their long and well-established diplomatic traditions. For centuries, Portuguese international lawyers, followed by those in Brazil, have dealt with international legal issues and reflected upon them in the Portuguese language. In addition, states where Portuguese is spoken that emerged after the decolonization movement have made the language relevant, especially in several African countries. Factors related to the editorial market are also noteworthy. Portuguese-speaking countries have populations that total nearly 300 million. A stable demand exists for works written in Portuguese: a significant number of international law textbooks are written in the language. One cannot underestimate the deliberate interest shown by some scholars in writing in Portuguese to stimulate a necessary polyphony in the international legal discipline and, in many cases, to give form to acts of resistance to what is seen as the prevalence of English in the current international law literature. International law literature written in Portuguese has shown a slight preference for specific topics, such as the law of the sea, sources, the relationship between international and domestic law, and human rights. The oceans have been economically and strategically crucial for Portugal and its former colonies for centuries. Preference given to sources is due also perhaps to the strong relevance that Romano-Germanic legal systems attach to formal legal sources. As seen in different parts of the world, the growing call for domestic actors, including courts, to interpret and apply international law helps to explain the increasing volume of work on the relationship between international and domestic law and human rights. This article has three main parts. The first part deals with Textbooks, Treatises, and Encyclopedias. The second concerns specific chapters of international law in which relevant literature written in Portuguese is identifiable. Although this article is mainly focused on books, the last section is devoted to the most pertinent international legal Journals and Blogs published in Portuguese. Most of the works are written by Brazilian scholars. However, this choice detracts in no way from the quality of scholarship in other Portuguese-speaking countries; rather, it derives from an attempt to present a wide variety of works, in different subfields of the discipline, in the Portuguese language. The higher number of books and journals published in Brazil derives from that country’s population of over 200 million and, consequently, to the presence of a large legal community there. Additionally, the existence of hundreds of law schools in that country and the fact that international law is a mandatory subject in their curricula are relevant factors.

scholarly journals Determinants of Judicial Independence: Lessons from Three ‘Cases’ of Constitutional Courts in Peru (1982–2007)

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
EDUARDO DARGENT
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Judicial Independence ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Constitutional Courts ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Tribunal ◽  
Institutional Actor

AbstractThe Peruvian Constitutional Tribunal (CT) is currently an independent institutional actor in Peru's politics. By comparing and contrasting the recent history of the CT and two previous ‘cases’ of ‘failed’ constitutional courts – the CT's role during the Fujimori regime and its predecessor, the Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees – the article tests several theories that aim to explain the emergence of independent courts in democracies. The three cases provide evidence in support of theories that highlight the importance of political pluralism as a necessary condition for the emergence of independent courts, but the cases also show that an institutional design that ‘mirrors’ this pluralism is crucial to attain this outcome. The importance of these political and institutional factors suggests that it is too soon to be optimistic about the likelihood that the present CT can maintain its independence in the future.

scholarly journals The Pitfalls of Ethnolinguistic-Based Federal Experiment in Ethiopia

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-672
Author(s):  
Bewuketu Dires Gardachew ◽  
Gebeyehu Mengesha Kefale ◽  
Getahun Antigegn Kumie
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethnic Federalism ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
History Of ◽  
Centripetal Forces

In 1991, when Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) became a leading party within the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), Ethiopia introduced a system of ethnic-based federalism, which had never been practiced in the political history of the state before. The recognition of Ethiopian ethnic diversity became one of the country’s fundamental principles, with the federal system largely consisting of ethnic-based territorial units. Since its inception, Ethiopia's ethnic federalism has been the subject of heated debate among various political organizations in the country, as well as among observers and scholars both in and outside the country. The key objective of this paper is to appraise the pitfalls of ethnic-based federalism in Ethiopia, which has been functioning in the country for more than two and half decades. The authors believe ethnic-based federalism to be a political arrangement that succeeds to maintain balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces. They see it as an appropriate and viable strategy for a sustainable nation-building effort in the context of Ethiopia’s ethnic diversity. At the same time, the authors observe that in the case with ethnicity-based political arrangements, unless they are implemented with maximum care, the risk outweighs the benefit. When a state like Ethiopia, which had been highly centralized for many years, is trying to experiment with a seemingly federal arrangement, the equilibrium of diversity and unity should be maintained. If the political environment focuses primarily on diversity and ignores shared values and common identity, it leaves room for the elites to manipulate the differences and pursue their own parochial political interests, which would eventually serve against the public benefit. The pioneers of Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism believe that the contemporary ethnolinguistic-based federal arrangement is a panacea for problems related to identity politics. However, the authors argue that, from a practical perspective, for the past two and half decades (probably in the future too, unless re-designed) ethnic federalism in Ethiopia has been highly politicized (manipulated by political dealers promoting their own selfish interests).

Probiotics in gastroenterology – from a different angle

2013 ◽  
Vol 154 (8) ◽  
pp. 294-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
György Miklós Buzás
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Beneficial Effect ◽  
Analytical Data ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Gastrointestinal Diseases ◽  
Convincing Evidence ◽  
Probiotic Treatment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Irritable Bowel

After a short overview of the history of probiotics, the author presents the development of human intestinal microflora based on the newest genetic data and the microbiological features of main probiotics. The indications of probiotic administration have been defined and extended in recent years. The author reviews significant results of probiotic treatment in some gastrointestinal diseases based on meta-analytical data. Probiotics are useful in preventing and treating diarrhoea caused by antibiotics and Clostridium difficile caused diarrhoea. In the treatment of Helicobacter pylori infection, preparations containing certain Lactobacillus,Bifidobacterium strains or Saccaromyces boulardii could enhance by 5–10% the rate of successful eradication and reduce the incidence and severity of the side effects. Some symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and thus the quality of life can be improved by probiotics. Their beneficial effect in ulcerative colitis was proven, while in Crohn’s disease has not yet been defined. The use of probiotics is not included in guidelines, with the exception of the Maastricht IV/Florence consensus. For each disease it is advisable to use probiotics containing strains only with proven beneficial effect. The efficiency of preparations containing mixed strains has not yet been properly investigated. The author reviews the rare but potentially serious side effects of probiotics. In Hungary, there are many probiotic preparations available which can be purchased in pharmacies without prescription: their use is more empirical than evidence-based. The European Food Safety Authority has recently rejected claims for probiotics to be classed as medicines given the lack of convincing evidence on the effects of probiotics on human health and well-being. Clearly, further research is needed to collect evidence which could be incorporated into the international guidelines. Orv. Hetil., 2013, 154, 294–304.

EXPLORING HEALTHCARE ARCHITECTURE THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF FILM: Motives and Techniques

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Stephen Verderber
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
The Real ◽  
Healthcare Settings ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Behavior Setting ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
History Of

The interdisciplinary field of person-environment relations has, from its origins, addressed the transactional relationship between human behavior and the built environment. This body of knowledge has been based upon qualitative and quantitative assessment of phenomena in the “real world.” This knowledge base has been instrumental in advancing the quality of real, physical environments globally at various scales of inquiry and with myriad user/client constituencies. By contrast, scant attention has been devoted to using simulation as a means to examine and represent person-environment transactions and how what is learned can be applied. The present discussion posits that press-competency theory, with related aspects drawn from functionalist-evolutionary theory, can together function to help us learn of how the medium of film can yield further insights to person-environment (P-E) transactions in the real world. Sampling, combined with extemporary behavior setting analysis, provide the basis for this analysis of healthcare settings as expressed throughout the history of cinema. This method can be of significant aid in examining P-E transactions across diverse historical periods, building types and places, healthcare and otherwise, otherwise logistically, geographically, or temporally unattainable in real time and space.

Political Stability in West African States: Problems and Solutions. (Case Studies of Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal)

2018 ◽  
pp. 75-88
Author(s):  
Lyubov Sadovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Cote D'ivoire ◽  
Côte D’Ivoire ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
West African ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Cote D’Ivoire ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Côte D'ivoire

The article presents a new view on the problems of political stability in West African countries. For the first time was carried out a comparative analysis of the sustainability of the political systems of the two Francophone fastest growing countries in West Africa, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. The author analyzes the factors negatively influencing political stability social order, and those that reduce conflict potencial in these States. Internal and external threats to the political systems of Senegal and Сôte d’Ivoire are examined. The response of both countries to internal and external challenges is shown. The study proves that while external threats indanger Senegal’s political stability, such as the penetration of religious extremism, the crisis in Casamance, maritime piracy, drug traffic, for Côte d’Ivoire, on the contrary, main risks are internal: electoral, socio-political crises, the split of elites, arms smuggling, banditry. The study demonstrates that the level of social governance in Senegal is higher than in other West African countries, including Сôte d’Ivoire, due to the dualism of the political system: the coexistence of Western-style political institutions with local faiths (tariqas), as well as policy pursued by President M. Sall. aimed at achieving mutual compromise that ensure the peaceful settlement of conflicts and contradictions. The author concludes that a new approach to the development of a security strategy is required.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document