The local state in post-war Mozambique: political practice and ideas about authority

Africa ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn Alexander

The article explores the ways in which post-independence political practices in Mozambique's rural areas have shaped attitudes towards official authority, and considers the legacy of those attitudes for the recently promulgated Municipalities Law. The law will transfer a range of state functions to elected district institutions, and grant a greater role to ‘traditional authorities’ (chiefs). Mozambican officials and academics see the law—and decentralisation more widely—as a means of making the state more efficient and more responsive to local needs. However, drawing on case study material from Manica Province, the article argues that neither the Frelimo party-state, nor the opposition military movement Renamo, inculcated a political practice which prepared the way for democratic demands. Nor are chiefs likely to represent community interests effectively. In Manica's rural areas ‘local leaders’ such as businessmen, political party leaders, chiefs and church leaders strongly associate official authority with a level of wealth and education that they do not possess, and which consequently exclude them from holding such positions. They also see elections as potentially destabilising. While there is a strong popular desire for chiefs to resume various roles, officials (and chiefs themselves) usually see their future in terms of a late colonial model, i.e. as an extension of administrative authority. Academic literature on democratisation and civil society often posits an opposition between state and civil society, and democratic aspirations within civil society. However, local attitudes towards authority in Manica Province were strongly based in the history of political practice, and are not necessarily sympathetic to democratic ideals. Nor is there a clear opposition between what has often been called ‘civil society’ and the state: individuals moved in and out of association with official authority; leaders of ‘civil society’ often sought to become part of, not to oppose, the state.

2021 ◽  

This volume examines Arnold Gehlen’s theory of the state from his philosophy of the state in the 1920s via his political and cultural anthropology to his impressive critique of the post-war welfare state. The systematic analyses the book contains by leading scholars in the social sciences and the humanities examine the interplay between the theory and history of the state with reference to the broader context of the history of ideas. Students and researchers as well as other readers interested in this subject will find this book offers an informative overview of how one of the most wide-ranging and profound thinkers of the twentieth century understands the state. With contributions by Oliver Agard, Heike Delitz, Joachim Fischer, Andreas Höntsch, Tim Huyeng, Rastko Jovanov, Frank Kannetzky, Christine Magerski, Zeljko Radinkovic, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Christian Steuerwald.


Author(s):  
Rafael Sanzio Araújo dos Anjos

The LDB (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases) of 1996 does not mention the Quilombolas Communities. We know that in some aspects the problems with the access to schools are similar to the problems faced in the riverine communities, in the rural zone, and in the indigenous population, for example. Both specified on the law. Which would be the followed orientation when we talk about quilombos?- It is important not to lose sight that exists in space and in the Brazilian population a large territory and people not part of the “Official Brazil”. In this context, we can insert the quilombolas populations, which were excluded secularly of the country and of the priority actions in the decision-making sector. Prejudice and exclusion mark the history of Africa in Brazil and the quilombos, which are considered “the past of Colonial Brazil”, had recently started to have attention of the State and one of them is in the Transitory Devices of the Federal Constituion of 1988. 


2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Maurício Fernandes Pereira ◽  
Karla Simoni Oening

This research analyzes the process of strategy formation in the Foundation of Support to the Scientific and Technological Research of the State of Santa Catarina - FAPESC, a body of the government’s direct administration structure in the State of Santa Catarina, with the purpose of understanding how its construction occurs: if in a deliberate way, anticipated and rational; or, as an emergency, in consequence of the interactions of the agents present in the organizations’ routine. By way of a case study of longitudinal, historical and biographical character, and based in the procedures proposed by the Direct Research (MINTZBERG, 1979; MINTZBERG; McHUGH, 1985), the history of the institution was retrieved in the period comprised between the years of 1990 and 2005. The data has disclosed that, in adapting itself strategically, beyond the predominance of a planned and sistemic strategic behavior, the institution suffered an intense influence from the governmental politics of the State and this, associated with the low power to influence the environment with high environmental determinism, reduced the importance of the management scienter in the success of the company indicating that mechanisms of environmental selection operate to the detriment of the adaptation. Key words: Strategy. Change and adaptation. Formation of the strategy.


2006 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard T. Antoun

In the Middle East over the past half-century, three religious processes have grown together. One, the growth of fundamentalism, has received worldwide attention both by academics and journalists. The others, the bureaucratization of religion and the state co-optation of religion, of equal duration but no less importance, have received much less attention. The bureaucratization of religion focuses on the hierarchicalization of religious specialists and state co-optation of religion focuses on their neutralization as political opponents. Few commentators link the three processes. In Jordan, fundamentalism, the bureaucratization of religion (BOR), and state co-optation of religion (SCR) have become entwined sometimes in mutually supportive and sometimes in antagonistic relations. The following case study will describe and analyze the implications of this mutual entanglement for the relations of state and civil society and for the human beings simultaneously bureaucratized and “fundamentalized.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-295
Author(s):  
Vishwambhar Prasad Sati

This study examines the types, reasons, and consequences of out-migration in the Uttarakhand Himalaya. Data were collected from secondary sources, mainly from an interim report on the status of migration in revenue villages of Uttarakhand, published by the ‘Rural Development and Migration Commission, Pauri Garhwal, Uttarakhand’ in 2018. The district-wise analysis was carried out on the types of migration, reasons for migration, age-wise migration, the destination of migrants, and migration’s consequences in terms of depopulation in rural areas. Further, a case study of a village was carried out. The study reveals that in three districts – Pauri, Tehri, and Almora, more than 10% population out-migrated after 2011. Similarly, an exodus migration took place from more than 10% of villages of the same districts. This study further shows that migration is mainly internal – from the mountainous districts to urban centers, within the districts or within the state. About 734 villages are depopulated, and in 367 villages, the population has decreased by more than 50%. Unemployment is the major problem in rural areas as more than 50% of out-migration occurred for employment. 


2019 ◽  
pp. 244-263
Author(s):  
David Phillips

This chapter examines the work of E.R. Dodds during preparations for the post-war occupation of Germany. In 1940, Dodds joined Arnold Toynbee’s ‘Foreign Research and Press Service’, which had moved to Oxford, and he began to work on the history of education in Germany. Arnold’s group eventually became the Foreign Office Research Department (FORD), and Dodds produced for it lengthy memoranda to inform others working on the subject. He also lectured at many meetings and published a pamphlet, Minds in the Making, a study of the hollowness and barbarity of Nazi ideology and its effects on education. For FORD he also chaired committees on re-education and on textbook production. In 1947, he led a delegation to Germany of the Association of University Teachers, which produced a damning report on the state of German universities. He proved to be one of the most significant people involved in shaping educational policy as it developed in the British Zone of Germany.


2019 ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Friedman

This chapter discusses the history of American frontier law. The new nation faced the problem of how to deal with the western lands. Some of the states had huge, vague, and vast claims to chunks of western land, stretching out far beyond the pale of settlement; other states did not. The Ordinance of 1787 dealt with the issue of governance and the future of the western lands. It set basic law for a huge area of forest and plain that became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The Ordinance of 1790 extended the influence of the Northwest Ordinance into what became the state of Tennessee.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katariina Mustasilta

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.


2008 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris DeWiel

The idea of civil society has undergone a renaissance in recent years, but missing from this literature is an explanation for its historical transformation in meaning. Originally civil society was synonymous with political society, but the common modem meaning emphasizes autonomy from the state. This paper traces this historical transformation within the context of the history of ideas, and suggests that the critical event was an eighteenth-century reaction against the rationalistic universalism associated with the French Enlightenment. The continued significance of the question of universalism is suggested by the fact that universalistic Marxist Leninist theories provided the ideological underpinnings for the destruction of civil society in Eastern European nations. The paper concludes that three elements are essential to the modern understanding of civil society: its autonomy from the state, its interdependence with the state, and the pluralism of values, ideals and ways of life embodied in its institutions.


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