The Challenge of State-Building in Africa

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herbst
Keyword(s):  
Political Geography ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
African Politics ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
European Experience ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Domestic Power

This chapter examines three sets of issues that present a challenge to state-building in Africa: the cost of expanding the domestic power infrastructure; the nature of national boundaries; and the design of state systems. Understanding the decisions made regarding each is critical, and there are profound trade-offs inherent to different approaches. Africa’s political geography helped structure the responses that leaders adopted to each set of issues just as European decisions were influenced by the structural features of that region. The chapter first compares the political geographies of Europe and Africa, focusing on the European experience of state consolidation and the nature of African politics, before discussing the extension of power in Africa. It also explores continuities in African politics and concludes with an overview of the analytic tools that are central to this study.

Assembling the Fabric of Life: When Settler Colonialism Becomes Development

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 64-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Jabary Salamanca
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Road Infrastructure ◽  
The Relationship

This article brings attention to the political geography of settler colonialism and the ways in which the Palestinian built environment materializes in space, consolidating uneven and racialized landscapes. It argues that settler-colonial space is intimately related to the building of infrastructures structured by development and humanitarian practices. More specifically, the discussion explores how roadscapes are materially and symbolically constructed; it also examines the ways in which development, rather than constituting a tool of empowerment, becomes a mechanism to manage the short-term "humanitarian" needs of Palestinians that arise from the imperatives of settler colonialism. Problematizing road infrastructure allows us to explore the relationship between Palestinian and donor agendas, and concomitant discourses on economic development and state building; in other words, how settler infrastructures are normalized through their association with tropes of modernity, progress, humanitarianism, and development.

National Design and State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa

2009 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron G. Thies
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
State Building ◽  
Statistical Analyses ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
The Political ◽  
Population Densities ◽  
Contemporary State ◽  
National Currencies ◽  
Sub Saharan

This article examines the political geography of state building in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. The absence of interstate war has produced a unique situation for contemporary state builders in Africa—they have inherited states with relatively fixed borders encapsulating a variety of environmental and geographic conditions, compounded by varying distributions of population densities. The author examines the effects of a variety of strategies that African rulers have employed to enhance their state-building efforts given the type of national design they inhabit. These strategies include the allocation of citizenship, interventions in land tenure patterns, and the adoption and management of national currencies. The author tests the effects of these strategies on several dimensions of state capacity in sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2004 using a variety of statistical analyses. The results indicate that the strategies currently adopted by African rulers have generally failed to substantially augment their capacity.

The Cost of Doing Business: Congressional Requests, Cost, and Allocation of Presidential Resources

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 813-825
Author(s):  
Brandon Rottinghaus ◽  
Philip D. Waggoner
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Doing Business ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Cost

Executive-legislative interactions operate with cost-benefit trade-offs. Presidents possess several material options in granting Congressional requests to leverage Congressional support but must also marshal these scarce resources. We argue presidents should strategically grant requests from members of Congress for a range of executive actions based upon the cost of the request and the political context. Using an original data set of nearly 4,000 internal Congressional requests made during the Eisenhower, Ford, and H. W. Bush administrations, we find that presidents are strategic in granting requests, where the cost of the request is an important consideration when deciding whether or not to approve a legislator request, especially on executive appointments but not on legislative matters. Ideological proximity to the president matters more than partisanship in granting requests. Presidents are sensitive to cost when ideology is concerned but less so when granting requests to committee chairs. We conclude by highlighting the implications for interbranch bargaining.

Analysis of energy efficiency of polder of pumping stations in a Slavsk district of the Kaliningrad region

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
Yuriy Spirin ◽  
Vladimir Puntusov
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Statistical Processing ◽  
Drainage Rate ◽  
Pumping Stations ◽  
Kaliningrad Region ◽  
Pumping Equipment ◽  
Excess Power ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Domestic Power

In the Kaliningrad region there are about 70 % of all polder lands in Russia. On these lands with high potential fertility, it is advisable to intensive agriculture. The area for the average moisture year is an area with excessive moisture, which indicates the need to maintain the rate of drainage on agricultural land. Many different factors play a role in ensuring the drainage rate, one of which is pumping stations and pumping equipment installed on them. An important parameter in the use of pump-power equipment is energy consumption, since in this industry it is a considerable expense item. Improving the energy efficiency of pumping stations on polders is a pressing issue today. At the majority of polder pumping stations, domestic power pumping equipment is installed with excess power and head of 4–8 meters, and a new one is selected based on the maximum possible head in a given place. In the Kaliningrad region, the energy efficiency of polder pumping equipment has never been analyzed. In this paper, a statistical processing of the geodesic pressure of water at the polder pumping stations of the Slavsk region for 2000–2002 was carried out. On the basis of these data and data on the hydraulic characteristics of pressure pipelines, the calculated water pressures were determined for the rational selection of pumping equipment. The calculation of the economic efficiency of pumps with optimal power compared with pumps of excess capacity. The results of the study can serve as a justification for the transition to the pumping equipment with less power and pressure, which will lead to a decrease in the cost of money for electricity.

Winning the Argument and Moving the Fight: The Legacy of a Grassroots Humanitarian

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Mary Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Winning Strategy ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Trade Offs

The author of this article argues that the two-decades-long litigation struggle was necessary to push the political actors in Mississippi into a more virtuous than vicious legal/political negotiation. The second and related argument, however, is that neither the 1992 United States Supreme Court decision in Fordice nor the negotiation provided an adequate riposte to plaintiffs’ claims. The author shows that their chief counsel for the first phase of the litigation wanted equality of opportunity for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), as did the plaintiffs. In the course of explicating the role of a legal grass-roots humanitarian, Coleman suggests lessons learned and trade-offs from that case/negotiation, describing the tradeoffs as part of the political vestiges of legal racism in black public higher education and the need to move HBCUs to a higher level of opportunity at a critical juncture in the life of tuition-dependent colleges and universities in the United States. Throughout the essay the following questions pose themselves: In thinking about the Road to Fordice and to political settlement, would the Justice Department lawyers and the plaintiffs’ lawyers connect at the point of their shared strength? Would the timing of the settlement benefit the plaintiffs and/or the State? Could plaintiffs’ lawyers hold together for the length of the case and move each piece of the case forward in a winning strategy? Who were plaintiffs’ opponents and what was their strategy? With these questions in mind, the author offers an analysis of how the campaign— political/legal arguments and political/legal remedies to remove the vestiges of de jure segregation in higher education—unfolded in Mississippi, with special emphasis on the initiating lawyer in Ayers v. Waller and Fordice, Isaiah Madison

scholarly journals Ring-Forming Polymerization toward Perfluorocyclobutyl and Ortho-Diynylarene-Derived Materials: From Synthesis to Practical Applications

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 1486
Author(s):  
Eugene B. Caldona ◽  
Ernesto I. Borrego ◽  
Ketki E. Shelar ◽  
Karl M. Mukeba ◽  
Dennis W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Resistance ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Aryl Ether ◽  
Aromatic Rings ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Repeat Units ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Synthetic Routes ◽  
The Cost

Many desirable characteristics of polymers arise from the method of polymerization and structural features of their repeat units, which typically are responsible for the polymer’s performance at the cost of processability. While linear alternatives are popular, polymers composed of cyclic repeat units across their backbones have generally been shown to exhibit higher optical transparency, lower water absorption, and higher glass transition temperatures. These specifically include polymers built with either substituted alicyclic structures or aromatic rings, or both. In this review article, we highlight two useful ring-forming polymer groups, perfluorocyclobutyl (PFCB) aryl ether polymers and ortho-diynylarene- (ODA) based thermosets, both demonstrating outstanding thermal stability, chemical resistance, mechanical integrity, and improved processability. Different synthetic routes (with emphasis on ring-forming polymerization) and properties for these polymers are discussed, followed by their relevant applications in a wide range of aspects.

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