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When language barriers prevent distinct language groups within a country’s population from meaningfully communicating with one another or with agents in a government purported to serve their interests, it can be difficult to understand how an open public realm of debate, contestation and democratic competition can be sustained. For scholars in sociolinguistics, the answer to the puzzle has by and large been “language planning.” The idea governing language planning is the notion that government policies directed at altering or shaping the linguistic behavior of its citizenry can also indirectly achieve other desirable social outcomes. This paper builds on work a theoretical framework advanced by Jonathan Pool (1990), who argued that political and language regimes mutually constrained one another – to empirically assess the manner and extent to which language regimes – the configuration of linguistic diversity in a given political environment – observably affect the practice of democratic politics. These claims have largely rested on assumptions about the negative consequences of linguistic diversity for social, political, and economic life. Empirical study assessing the effects of different language regimes on the political opinions and behaviors of different language groups is severely lacking. In South Africa, however, a natural laboratory has emerged; opportunities to rectify this shortage of empirical research now exist. The new post-apartheid South Africa is a multilingual country with a Constitution that embraces linguistic diversity. It is a democratic society with decisions made at all levels of government about language and language usage in the public realm; hence, it is characterized by high levels of intra-country variation in terms of the distribution of language groups and language regimes. Finally, it is characterized by a research infrastructure that has produced, since 1996, a great deal of survey data on individual political behaviors and attitudes throughout the country. Language barriers that might stand in the way of a single researcher gathering data on individuals in any of eleven official languages can be overcome. The paper proposed for MPSA presentation uses survey data generated by South African researchers to make inferences about the effect of different language environments on political competition in a new democracy. The first hypothesis tested is that the extent to which a language groups are linguistically included or “enfranchised” by a language regime is positively related to the quality and quantity of that groups democratic participation. The second hypothesis is that language groups linguistically included or “enfranchised” by a language regime are less likely to view ethno-linguistic cleavages salient political boundaries and more likely to exhibit political tolerance. Qualified support is found for both propositions, and “next steps” are outlined in terms of a plan for field research that will provide the basis of a Ph.D. dissertation. The results of the work presented and proposed in this paper have important implications not only for South Africa but for all democratizing countries struggling with an answer to the “language question.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines democracy as an international norm, and the problems encountered establishing it in Africa. The paper argues that each country's unique characteristics act as filters through which international norms are implemented. Uganda is used as a case study to generate hypotheses that can be untilized to study ways in which democracy is defined, or ways in which its institutions are adopted.Three hypotheses that we can use to explain democracy in Uganda are presented in this paper. First, it is hypothesized that countries with a history of violent ethnic conflicts are more likely to prefer no-party/one-party democracy. Second, it is suggested that the meaning of democracy in African countries is defined by the dominant elite faction. Third, it is hypothesized that African leaders who are capable of providing security are more likely to succeed in framing a norm differently from the international standards. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the political and sociological significance of the unprecedented expansion of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose of this paper is to explore the regional dynamics of IGO participation and constuction in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some hybrid regimes tolerate a strong judiciary and others do not? In order to answer this question we need to unpack our assumptions about government-judicial relations and we must examine the ways in which judicial power is constructed and perceived. Based on in-depth research across three hybrid African regimes - Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda - this paper explores the paradoxical emergence of vibrant judiciaries in constrained political settings. The findings suggest that strategic explanations of judicial power have limited explanatory value in the African context. Instead divergent levels of judicial viability and institutional legitimacy appear to account for the presence of strong judicial power in weak democracies. A judiciary with high levels of institutional viability is able to withstand the frequent exogenous shocks typically present in sub-Saharan Africa’s neopatrimonial regimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on United States democracy promotion efforts and whether they have are successful or not. The United States has played an important role in democracy promotion efforts. Historically the U.S. “supported” democracy commonly through m ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of oil abundance on political violence. First, we revisit one of the main empirical findings of the civil conflict literature that oil abundance causes civil war. Using a unique panel dataset describing worldwide oil discoveries and extractions, we show that simply controlling for country fixed effects removes the statistical association between oil reserves and civil war in a sample of more than 120 countries over the period 1930-2003. Other political violence measures, such as coup attempts and irregular leader transitions, are not affected by oil reserves either. Rather, we find that oil-rich nondemocratic countries have a larger defense burden. To further address the problems of endogeneity and measurement error, we exploit randomness in the success or failure of oil explorations. Using unexpected oil discoveries as an instrument for actual oil discoveries, once again we find that oil discoveries do not increase the likelihood of violent challenges to the state in the whole sample of country-years in which at least one exploratory well is drilled. However, in the subsample of African countries, there is some evidence that oil discoveries cause civil conflict. We suggest a possible explanation for this pattern based on the idea that except for countries with weak central governments and rough terrain, which favor insurgency, oil-rich nondemocratic regimes effectively expend resources to deter potential challengers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on the viability of civil society in Africa, and its.x000d.potential to consolidate the continent’s emerging democracies. It explores democratic.x000d.participation in African societies within a social trust framework, comparing the.x000d.experiences of South Africa and Botswana. Using Afrobarometer data from the 2003 survey set,.x000d.this project disaggregates patterns of social trust into two specific forms, namely generalized and.x000d.particularized trust. These values are then measured against various dimensions of national.x000d.political participation, including voting, contacting parliamentarians, protesting, and other forms.x000d.of activity. The research findings establish that the presence of high levels of particularized trust.x000d.within divided societies discourages participation in national political activity at the individual.x000d.level, while generalized trust in cohesive societies induces participation in national political life..x000d.Ultimately, the findings suggest that the dynamics of social cohesion in Africa must be taken into.x000d.account when forecasting the future of democracy on the continent. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that electoral systems produce similar effects on the number of parties in Africa as they do in advanced industrial democracies, a puzzling result given that most African elections take place in a context of information scarcity. If most African voters do not have access to the sources of information conventionally cited as preconditions for strategic voting, how is it that many party systems conform to Duvergerian predictions? This paper considers a possible explanation, specifically that voters use ethnic identities as an alternative source of information. I test this proposition by adapting Kanchan Chandra's "Ethnic Head Count Model" to African elections. If African voters conduct ethnic head counts to develop expectations about electoral outcomes, then the degree of strategic voting should be more likely in ethnically-heterogeneous constituencies than in ethnically-homogeneous ones. To test this hypothesis, I analyze both cross-national electoral results as well as constituency-level data from Ghanaian elections. Although the cross-national data do not support the Ethnic Head Count Model, the evidence from Ghana suggests that the level of strategic voting does in fact vary according to the ethnic composition of electoral constituencies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the voting behavior of Africans in seven countries currently ranked as "free" by Freedom House International. Thus, we are examining a select set of African countries, each of which hold regular elections at the national and local levels, support a free press and free speech and allow citizens to gather publicly to express their political views. Using the 2005 Round 3 Afrobarometer survey, we study why Africans in these seven free countries choose to support and vote for a particular political party. Studying the political choices of Africans who actually have the opportunity to make such choices tells us a great deal about the characteristics of democracy in these seven countries. What we find is surprising, interesting and encouraging. While ethnic ties affect vote choice in Africa, retrospective evaluations of economic performance are equally important. We find no evidence that patronage relations based on vote-buying have any effect on vote choice in any of the seven countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographic data have highlighted that not all groups within a society have the same rate of population growth, which suggests that over time, the balance among rival ethnic/religious groups can be expected to change. As some groups grow more (or less) rapidly than others, demands upon and grievances against the government are expected to change accordingly. Growing groups (proportional to other groups) may feel emboldened by their relative size and press for better treatment while shrinking groups may try to prevent the ascendance of others. How differential rates of growth affect conflict behavior within countries has not yet been systematically explored within the growing literature on the causes of civil conflict. In this paper, I utilize newly collected data from the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa to explore empirically the relationship between the shifting proportionality of groups within society and civil conflict. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will address recent gaps in literature on efforts of African countries to expand free education in the context of decentralization and will present preliminary findings following Ghana's introduction of a grant to fund basic education. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses "indexing theory" to assess American media coverage of two African genocides: Rwanda and Darfur. At question is the role media plays in foreign policy, that of "watchdog" or "policy supporter." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the complex relationship between the civilian control of the military and the consolidation of democracy in coup-free countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the half-century since most of colonized Africa gained independence, constitutional, democratic governance has been the exception rather than the rule. Even African countries that now have a semblance of such governance have generally had a long and painful path to achieve the level of democracy they now enjoy. The country of Senegal has been a notable exception to this seeming rule, enjoying an essentially peaceful political history that has seen them transition from being a one-party state to becoming a multi-party democracy. Through an examination of Senegal's political development, two key factors emerge that separate Senegal from other African countries. One is Senegal's early experience with democracy through four communes established by the French, while the other is the exceptional political leadership Senegal has enjoyed. Through a careful process-tracing of Senegal's political development, which includes an examination of potential counter hypotheses, this paper's analysis demonstrates how these two factors provide the key to understanding Senegalese exceptionalism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are changes in Africans' abilities to access information affecting voting behavior? In order to test a theory on information processing in African contexts, I am conducting survey experiments in Uganda. This paper presents early findings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguments have been made that a foundation for democracy exists in states where there is a critical mass of support. Said another way, democracy can not consolidate sustainably in a state in which a "pool of support" for democracy is lacking. Support for democracy has been arguably defined by some as both a demand for democratic forms of governance as the only game in town as well as rejection of non democratic forms of government (Bratton et al 2005). Autocratic forms of government, as these would be called, include such forms as one man rule, single party rule, rule by tribal leaders and military rule. It is argued that deeply rooted commitments to democracy are reflected in this dual acceptance of democratic governance and rejection of its alternatives. Yet, is it possible that support for democracy exists along side or in conjunction with conditional tolerance of one or more forms of autocratic rule? If so, what factors could cause these seeming inconsistent set of estimations to exist together, both within a state and within individual citizens? This paper takes as its foundation developing African democracies, examining individual citizens' political attitudes. Do Africans demand democracy? If so, do they also reject its alternatives? If not, what factors are potential drivers behind Africans' acceptance of autocratic forms of government? The picture that emerges is the possibility of a dual stance, demanding democracy and allowing for conditional autocracy, given the context and previous experience of respondents with independent forms of governments in their states. Muslim respondents at times permit military rule, based on the experiences of Muslims in Mali and Mozambique with democratic transitions facilitated by military regimes. Muslims in Mali and Mozambique may remember the constructive role that the military as well as traditional forms of government have had in their efforts towards democracy, and therefore permit military intervention when civilian rule fails to live up to its democratic norms. Muslims in other states, who lack positive military-democracy correlative experience, fail to support military or other forms of autocratic rule. Both cases evidence consistent preferences, simply outside what conventional wisdom entails. Though evidencing overall support for democracy, Christians support democracy and reject one-party rule less often than their Muslim counterparts. Christian benefit under one party rule vis-à-vis Muslims creates lack of certain rejection of one-party rule as consistent with democratization. Previous experience among respondents with various regime forms foster different forms of commitment to democracy among Christians and Muslims in emerging African democracies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although we know that international factors do influence domestic policy, they are typically neglected in analyses of domestic policy. This paper examines international influences on African democracies in the pursuit of AIDS policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the study of democratization in Africa, a huge body of literature has attributed the changes to aid conditionality, civil society activism, and changes in international political environment. Contentious politics and the emergent social movements have nevertheless received almost no attention in the literature. Kenya has just emerged from a long period of contentious politics that ended with the defeat of the Kenya Africa National Union (KANU) by the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (NARC), a grouping of 15 political parties. The key questions the paper attempts to answer are, that in an increasingly complex web of interaction that involves both domestic and external political actors, interest groups, and state and society interactions, are mono-causal accounts capable of capturing the vast panoply of individual processes of democratization that are in most cases country and context specific? Or, where regime change eventually takes place, is it adequate to attribute the outcome to only one actor be they elite, civil society, conditionality, or social movements? Is it not possible that regime transition and democratization in general is a product, not of a unilinear trajectory that could be explained by single event, but that of a convergence of varying causal factors which being context determined, thrive on opportunities and constraints produced by contentious politics? Using an Integrative Process Model, the paper proposes these three critical arguments namely: First, that democratization and regime change is not the outcome a single contributory factor, but that of multiple factors within a given context. Second, successful regime change requires the full participation of a section of the elite within the ruling party, generally in the direction of change, and Third, regime change results from opportunities that such participation open up in the ruling coalition, which are then exploited by social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates an alternative causal mechanism underlying the anti-democratic effect of resource endowment. Given the acknowledged positive correlation between economic development and democracy, oil rich countries defy democratic consolidation through the puzzling “resource curse.” The resource curse asserts that oil endowment leads to political and economic inequality, which in turns causes increased poverty despite the external revenue largesse. This is a timely research topic given the current shift in American foreign policy to rely more on newly-found oil sources in African countries. Thus, this paper hopes to contribute to the resource curse literature in the under-researched African context by examining Nigeria’s decades-long struggle finally resulting in its tenuous four-year democracy. The Nigerian case study may be applied to newly-found oil sources in African countries with similar contentious ethnic, religious, economic, and political cleavages. Resource-based states undergo a different democratization process from Acemouglu/Robinson redistribution and Przeworski/Limongi democracy models. As the oil revenue spurs economic growth, inequality increases due to the elite’s ability to hoard the concentrated wealth. Oil creates a rentier state where the elite is the direct benefactor of the oil revenues – at the expense of diminishing the elite’s historical dependence, economic redistribution, and democratic accountability to tribal, religious, and mercantile networks (Crystal, 1990). In the case of resource endowment, the rentier state weakens the redistribution model’s argument that resource allocation is forced by the poor’s revolutionary threat on the elite’s capital stock. Instead, state formation is shaped into different elite groups fighting for the spoils. In this study the hypothesis is as external oil revenue increases, concentration of wealth increases and democracy declines. Some exploratory questions include: If rentier states do not consolidate democracy, at what point are the poor pacified? What other factors play into their pacification? What role does capital stock have in this? How does the African context differ from Middle Eastern “resource curse” countries? Most importantly, what factors can reverse the resource curse? Nigeria is a compelling case for this study because it embodies the characteristics of the rentier state; improves the democratization model by extending its analysis to unexamined factors; and provides insight for African oil countries currently encountering the resource curse through its four year fledgling democracy. First, it embodies the characteristics of the rentier state since oil resources constitute 80 percent of the government revenue. In addition, Nigeria had an unequal horizontal and vertical tax revenue distribution system and a large concentration of revenue in the central government. Second, the Nigerian case study improves the democratization model by extending its analysis to unexamined factors. For example, religion plays a defining role in the Christian/Muslim chasm separating the North and the South, coupled with ethnic division and military dominance fueling political instability. Third, Nigeria’s democratic attempt to balance these contentious factors provides insight for newly-found oil reserves in African countries sharing similar ethnic, religious, historical, and political cleavages The study conducts an empirical analysis examining the theoretical linkage among the gini coefficient (World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators III), annual oil price price (20th Century Petroluem Statistics CD Rom 2000 Edition, DeGoyler and MacNaughton), and levels of democracy (Freedom House). These indicators will explore the potential positive correlation of increased oil revenue with wealth concentration and democratic decline. The same trends will be comparatively examined in light of the economic distribution level and annual oil price during Nigeria’s 1999 democratic transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continent of Africa continues to be an overlooked area of democratic transition and consolidation. Moreover, domestic and external challenges like ethnic and religious-based Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) and emigration (departure) issues continue to confront African states in their democratization attempts. This paper seeks to identify those overlooked challenges to democratic transition and consolidation throughout Africa. Secondly, by investigating those non-mainstream challenges to democracy, the research should reveal a more germane discussion about the prospects for democracy throughout Africa. Lastly, the paper will discuss the implications of African democratic transitions/consolidation and what it may mean for the future of international recognition and sovereignty for African states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on contemporary civil wars (Collier and Hoeffler 1998; Keen 1998; Collier and Hoeffler 2000; De Soysa 2000) has found a strong and positive relationship between lootable wealth and conflict. To explain this finding, this research has argued that lucrative, easy-to-procure resources, such as gems, precious hardwoods, and illegal drugs “breed” civil war by supplying the means and motive for armed conflict. Alluvial diamonds are seen as an especially strong risk factor in predicting civil war. As documented by numerous journalistic reports and scholarly case studies, alluvial diamonds have indeed played a central role in some of the most high-profile civil wars in contemporary Africa (e.g., Sierra Leone, Angola, Congo, and Liberia). Moreover, a recent, broadly comparative study (Ross 2003)found that countries that produce alluvial diamonds had the highest civil war rate in the 1990s among resource-rich countries. Because of their strong association with civil war, alluvial diamonds have been vividly described as “blood diamonds” and the “ultimate loot.” Yet even the ultimate loot does not breed conflict in most cases. The majority of countries (60 percent) that are significant producers of alluvial diamonds did not experience civil war during the 1990s. Even in Africa, the region with perhaps the highest incidence of armed conflict during the 1990s, half of the continent’s ten significant producers of alluvial diamonds did not experience civil wars after the Cold War. These data highlight the fundamental indeterminacy of the relationship between natural resources and armed conflict— the ultimate loot, alluvial diamonds, is at least as likely to be associated with peace as with war. This indeterminacy, in turn, raises important, yet unanswered, questions: What factors distinguish the set of alluvial diamond producers that collapsed into civil war during the 1990s from the peaceful majority of alluvial producers that did not experience civil war? Despite the positive relationship between alluvial diamonds and civil war observed in half of Africa’s major alluvial diamond producers, why did the other half not collapse into chaos? What can the peaceful producers of alluvial diamonds teach us about the conflict-ridden ones (and vice versa)? By analyzing the full universe of African countries that produce alluvial diamonds, this paper broadens the focus to cases of conflict and peace in the face of lootable resources. We argue that the probability of state collapse in countries with lootable mineral wealth depends on (1) the availability of non-lootable resources; (2) how the extraction of lootable resources is organized (what we call the mode of extraction); and (3) government spending. We formalize the conceptual framework with a model that examines how revenue-optimizing rulers achieve and maintain political order under resource, extraction, and revenue constraints. We then test our framework with evidence from the full set of African countries that are significant producers of alluvial diamonds. A concluding section summarizes the argument and calls for a far stronger integration of resource and non-resource explanatory factors, especially economic institutions, in future work on resources and conflict. In summary, we provide a stronger specification of the relationship between alluvial diamonds and conflict with the overall aim of building a more powerful theory of collapsed states and civil war—one that accounts both for political disorder and order in the face of lootable resources. By expanding the focus to include cases of alluvial diamonds without chaos, the paper also seeks to offer policy-relevant insights about how to achieve peace in the many countries where alluvial diamonds have indeed bred war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters are developing party attachments in new African democracies. But just as elsewhere in the world the propensity of individuals to form party attachments varies within and across African countries. In a recent analysis of data from countries included in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, Huber et al. (2005) demonstrated that national-level social and institutional factors can affect the likelihood that individuals develop attachments to parties, conditional on individual levels of cognitive resources. This paper extends these insights to African democracies. However, although some of the interactive effects of context and cognitive resources might be expected to hold in new African democracies, there are good reasons to think that factors specific to the African context should also be important. In particular, the legacies of previous experience with multiparty politics, and prior regime type, affect the relationship between voters and parties. This paper specifies a model that is theoretically appropriate for new African democracies and tests it using multilevel statistical analysis, incorporating individual-level data from the Afrobarometer survey series with data on national-level social and institutional factors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN currently deploys more peacekeepers in international peacekeeping theatres than ever before â€" the majority of whom are deployed on African soil. The emphasis on Africa is also reflected in the UN peacekeeping budget which earmarked more than 75% of available funds for African peacekeeping requirements. This paper will be aimed at providing a better understanding of the contributions and role of the UN in contemporary African peacekeeping challenges. Specifically, the UN’s completed and current peacekeeping operations will be analysed and discussed. Furthermore, the paper will explore the fact that over the last half decade the African Union undertook two major peacekeeping operations in Burundi and Sudan - operations that paved the way for larger UN multidimensional operations. Finally, Africa’s contemporary position and peacekeeping requirements will be appraised in the context of geo-political dynamics and related international peacekeeping trends. The issue of burden-sharing or new partnerships between the UN and the Africa Union will be highlighted, specifically in view of current efforts to establish a Pan African military standby force with a view to intervening in serious conflicts around the continent. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars see clientelism and ethnic politics as intertwined, arguing that ethnicity provides ready-made channels for clientelism (Posner 2005, Bates 1974). Yet, cases such as Senegal or Mali, where we find extensive clientelism but little ethnic politics (despite ethnic fragmentation) cast doubt on the claim that ethnic identity provides the main link between voters and clientelist benefits. In contrast, this paper will stress the prime role of communal brokers (local authority figures), as key channels of clientelism. Using original interview material from Senegal (from the 2006-7 campaign season), I will show that politicians find it more efficient to work through communal brokers, rather than make clientelist appeals to entire ethnic groups. Brokers, in turn, have a stronger negotiating position than individual voters and are thus unconstrained by fears that only co-ethnic politicians will provide material benefits. Consequently, they are open to dealing with politicians regardless of their ethnic identity. Using data on brokers’ shifting allegiance to various politicians and the rewards they receive, this paper will show that brokers have a marked preference for the highest bidder rather than co-ethnic candidates. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many African nations are struggling with the balance between burgeoning democracy and increased instability in the face of ethnic tensions, rampant poverty and uncertain governance. Most recently, widespread violence in the East African nation of Kenya reflects the tenuousness of this balance. In an attempt to understand the prospects for overcoming these struggles in African states, this paper will look at two factors potentially affecting democracy and security in one emerging African democracy: Kenya. Gender disparities have contributed to social, economic and political insecurity in Kenya. Religious bodies have been part of pushing for democratic change, including increased rights for women. This paper will explore how gender and the role of religious bodies affect the political orientations of Kenyans and the realities of Kenya's political arena as an example of African states hanging in the balance of conflict and security. Through Kenya’s democratic story, I offer vivid insight on the analysis applied to the role of gender and religion in democratic political orientations among African democracies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is democracy and good governance achievable in the multiethnic states of Africa? Can meaningful economic development be attained in the face of the divisive politics that have characterized multiracial and multiethnic states in Africa? Can the competing ethnic claims to resources be harmonized to facilitate a more peaceful coexistence in multiethnic societies? Indeed can democratization in Africa be devoid of the ethnic conflict it has generated throughout the continent? The answer to any of these questions is definitely not negative. Rather the more fundamental question is how these competing ethnic claims to positions and resources can be harmonized to make politics less violent..x000d.This paper examines the process of democratization and democratic transition in the post cold war Africa and the ethnic conflicts that democratization has generated in the continent. Using the recent post election ethnic violence in Kenya and the ongoing political tensions in Zimbabwe, the paper advocates for the establishment of institutions and constitutions that encourage power sharing or coalition governments as a mechanism for reducing ethnic politics that continue to threaten the political stability of democratizing African countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last 40 years, many African governments have pledged to enact legal reforms of sweeping proportions. Much of their attention has gone towards reforming family law, which governs issues such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. According to legal scholars and practitioners, family law reforms are essential for codifying property rights and improving women’s access to capital and land. Yet legal reforms, including those concerning the family, have encountered problems of resistance and non-implementation. This paper traces the history of one attempted legal reformâ€"the creation of a Family Code, which was abandoned in 1994 in Nigerâ€"with the goal of understanding why legal reforms have failed to fulfill their promise. Based on in-depth interviews with more than 80 government, religious, and women’s rights actors in Niger, I find that opposing actors, which in Niger were Islamic associations, play a central role in the reform process. This paper contributes a new way of studying law, gender and politics in Africa. In contrast to scholarship that highlights the strength of international norms and institutions, I find that ultimately local actors and informal institutions guide political change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increasing accessibility and use of cell phones and the internet in many African countries, the role of the “new media” in promoting fairer and more transparent elections is receiving a growing attention. While cell phones and the internet have been praised as helpful tools in independent reporting and monitoring during elections, there are also increasing trends which show that they are equally vulnerable tools for spreading misinformation. The latter needs serious attention given the multiethnic nature of these fragile states in Africa. The paper analyses the potentials and constraints in the use of the internet and cell phones by taking a case of the recent election in Kenya and the violence that proceeded it. Content analysis of government issued statements, articles from various media agencies, contents of text messages, and some institutional reports will be used. The role of key actors- the government, opposition parties, civil society groups, and the diaspora- is analyzed. The paper argues that the new media's impact in the promotion of freer elections or democracy in Africa is lucid. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Chinese expansion grows stronger in Africa, debates about the nature and outcomes of the evolving political and economic relationship have been polarized. The literature on this topic can be divided into two groups: the gloomy Greek Cassandras (mostly Western scholars and think tanks), who worry that China is the new colonizer and the optimists (mostly Chinese scholars) who believe that China is the next big thing for Africa. Missing in these debates is an African-centered strategy for advancing scholarship in this growing relationship. For example, how can we organize our ideas and information in such a way that addresses our developmental needs? Specifically, what should be the evaluation criteria for assessing this relationship? There is certainly no one right way of doing this; any guide, like a lens, will promote some features while distorting others. With this said, this paper will attempt to provide a framework of analysis that emphasizes how this relationship contributes to the restriction or promotion of African trade and governance institutions. Thus this paper is in pursuit of a market and governance criteria of analysis in framing an African-centered approach to addressing Chinese influence in Africa. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates ODA as a primary cause of Civil War in Africa. Building on the greed hypothesis of civil war, this paper analyzes the affect that ODA has on the occurrence, duration, and magnitude of civil wars in sub-Saharan Africa. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the applicability of relational (i.e. non-domestic, non-unit-level) measures to describing and analysing state failure. Continental Africa during the period 1994-2004 is used as a case study. Initial results appear to validate relational measures as a tool of inquiry. The paper concludes with a checklist of hypotheses generated, and research requirments anticipated if the project is to move forward. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-standing debate in political science is concerned with the following question: 'What factors determine the number of parties that compete in a polity?' Recent empirical and theoretical research on this topic has argued that social heterogeneity and electoral systems operate interactively to influence the number of parties (Cox, 1997). It has also been suggested that the extent to which ethnopolitical groups are concentrated in a single region is a major contributing factor in transmission of ethnopolitical fragmentation into the party system (Mozaffar et. al. 2003). This paper is situated in the nascent branch of electoral studies which attempts to examine the interplay of these factors in the context of African party systems.We develop existing theoretical accounts of how institutional incentives interact with social heterogeneity by looking at district level data and interviews with political actors in the case of Namibia. As an exercise in theory-building, Namibia is of particular value. Firstly, it allows us to hold the degree of ethnopolitical fragmentation constant, which in turn allows us to isolate the effect of variation in electoral system permissiveness (as members of the lower and upper houses of parliament are elected using proportional and non-proportional systems of election, respectively). Secondly, Namibia allows us to treat the electoral system as an exogenous variable, as the use of a PR-List system for elections to the lower house of parliament was imposed by an external body - the United Nations.The second component of this paper tests the theoretical insights generated by the case-study. It builds on recent comparative work in this field (Mozaffar et. al., 2003), and offers a number of improvements. Firstly, we adopt a methodologically rigorous approach to case selection, restricting inclusion to countries where opportunities to form or support new political parties are not limited by non-democratic means. Secondly, we bring the dataset up to date by including the most recent wave of African elections. Thirdly, we deploy Gallagher and Mitchell's (2005) "effective nationwide magnitude" a measure of electoral systems designed to capture the national-level effect of an electoral system (as national-level elections are the units of analysis). Fourthly, we employ the appropriate statistical practices for the use and interpretation of interaction terms (Brambor et. al., 2006). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on Afrobarometer survey data for over 20,000 voting age adults in 12 African countries, this paper identifies the factors associated with political participation in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of my paper would be the nature of U.S. humanitarian intervention in Africa, particularly in Sudan and Somalia. It would trace this difference in approach of United. States in tackling the two areas of ethnic conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the factors that drive trust levels in African courts, leading to a better understanding of the relationship that trust can have upon legitimacy within countries possessing varying economic and democratic levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the puzzle of parties winning large seat shares in African democracies despite unfavorable conditions to do so. I test existing theories, find them insufficient to solve the puzzle, and offer an alternative explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces local embedding of global market and community oriented conservation and development strategies. Findings speak to recent theorizing on informal institutions especially the articulation of market with non-market informal relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper measures government commitment to neoliberal reforms in 16 African countries from 1992-2000. The index shows considerable divergence in commitment levels and challenges claims that African governments lack the will to reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a historical analysis of measures taken to promote American investment in Sub-saharan Africa since 1960 and argues that this was a response to shifts in the global economy rather than domestic pressures or party politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite 40-plus years of development efforts, many people in Sub-Saharan Africa are worse off today than they were in the 1960’s: in many areas life expectancies have fallen, literacy rates have declined, and individual’s economic prospects have plummeted. The 1990’s are widely regarded a lost decade for Sub-Saharan Africa. While definitions of sustainability are many and varied, under none of them can development efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa be considered to be successful. This paper analyzes the predominant strains of development theories employed in post-independence Sub-Saharan Africa, critiquing their goals, methods, and lack of lasting tangible results. I argue that the development structure most likely to result in sustainable growth is one that utilizes a overlapping mix of actors and institutions operating on different levels – in order to best match institutional strengths with the problems at hand and the desired policy or program outcomes. A possible paradigm for a new model of development is proposed, combining the capabilities approach championed by Amartya Sen with the Institutional Analysis and Development framework developed by E. Ostrom et al. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages recent survey data from Africa to test the comparability of voter turnout models developed largely in advanced industrial democracies. The data show that across several African democracies, a unique and consistent pattern of turnout occurs. Specifically, this study lends support to an instrumental view of democracy in Africa (as evidenced in turnout), while also showing that the recent context of democratization in Africa leads to a markedly different pattern of significance amongst the variables typically used to explain turnout in developed democracies. As this study relies on survey data, it is focused on individual level variables (demographics, attitudes, etc.). However, a broader theoretical framework is offered, and controls for district and national level variables are included in the models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper examines the effects of party system characteristics on democratic development in Africa and Asia. We find that the effective number of legislative parties (ENLP) and legislative volatility are both positively associated with democracy. Theory: Democratic governance and meaningful elections have long been considered unattainable in absence of political parties and party competition. The nature and implications of changing party attachments in the Western advanced industrialized countries have been the subject of a great deal of scholarship in the discipline of political science (e.g., see Dalton and Wattenberg 2000), and political party systems in the “emerging democracies” have also attracted scholarly attention (e.g., see Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Dix 1992; Roberts and Wibbels 1999; Hicken 2000; Taylor-Robinson 2001; Bielasiak 2002). Many agree with Mainwaring and Scully’s (1995) contention that party system institutionalization (PSI) is important for the consolidation of democracy. Nonetheless, the precise nature of the relationship between political party systems and democracy has been difficult to distill. Indeed, scholars have made contradictory claims and reported contradictory findings regarding the effects of the different dimensions of political party systems on the consolidation of democracy. How do different party system characteristics affect democracy? Do higher ENLPs contribute to or detract from democracy? Do high levels of electoral volatility create instability and undermine democracy? We attempt to answer these questions by looking at the relationship between ENLP and electoral volatility and democracy in Asia and Africa. These are important questions to address. Different scholars have pointed to trends of rising electoral volatility rates and ENLPs in the industrialized democracies (see Dalton, McAllister, and Wattenberg 2000), and volatility rates and ENLPs in the emerging democracies are generally high. Methods: We test our theoretical expectations about the relationship between these party system characteristics and democracy with pooled time-series cross-sectional analysis covering the electoral regimes in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, including those that have recently undergone transitions to democracy as well as the long-standing democracies on these continents. Our analysis covers all of the elections that have taken place in a particular country since 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-Americanism is more muted in Sub Saharan Africa than in other regions of the world. This paper employs a combination of survey and national-level data to evaluate five hypotheses for the relatively benign view Africans have of the United States. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the extent to which stories of origin defne territorial rights of indigenous people. The impact of colonial and post-colonial influences will also be examined with the view to understanding some of the emerging tensions between peoples in these countries. These tensions have been identified with differences in perception and thinking on theories and practices in the political and legal domains. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent literature on aid shows significant differences in the determinants of aid allocation between bilateral and multilateral donors. While most scholars agree that bilateral aid has mostly served strategic purposes, new evidence on multilateral aid allocation draws a more optimistic picture. Yet if we look at one of the largest multilateral donors, the EU, we find that aid for ACP countries has been falling. Even more puzzling, a recent study shows that aid levels to the least developed countries have continuously decreased. These findings not only contradict the official aid goals of the EU, they stand in stark contrast to the empirical findings of the literature. This paper addresses that puzzle. We argue that the EU faces a trade off when deciding on aid allocation. In principle, they aim to support the development needs of the LDCs. However, budget constraints and expansion have increased the demands for a shift in aid towards associated countries. Data on bilateral and multilateral aid flows from the EU to all developing countries provide evidence that EU aid allocation does follow needs-based criteria within groups of recipient countries, but the allocation of aid across groups is largely strategic in nature. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the social sciences, generally, schemes of classification are considered 'a prerequisite for theorizing' (Bailey 1992: 5). In the field of comparative and party politics, no less, typologies and models of political parties are considered essential to the process of empirical inference (Duverger 1954; Kirchheimer 1966; Panebianco 1988; Katz and Mair 1995). In Africa, however, existing typologies of political parties seem 'stretched' beyond their carrying capacity (Erdmann 2004). Organisational density - a key feature of existing typologies - fails to distinguish adequately among the wide range of African parties (Randall and Svasand 2002; Bratton and van de Walle 1997). In this paper, we revise an existing universal typology of parties developed by Günther and Diamond (2003). Using a constructivist argument, we reject the tendency to classify African parties in terms of their ethnic appeal; instead, we look to a more fundamental understanding of 'linkage' developed by Kitschelt (2000) as a suitable classificatory criterion. Drawing on a series of interviews with party elites, we evaluate the revised typology's usefulness in four parties in South Africa and Namibia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E.E. Schattscheider once wrote that “Modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties." Yet recent studies of new democracies (e.g. Hale 2007; Fish 2000) have noted that political parties have notably failed to “close out” the electoral market and establish a monopoly over the channels of political recruitment and elite participation in politics. Scholars like Hale (2007) have argued that parties in new democracies have failed to monopolize the provision of “ideational” and “administrative (patronage)” capital-- thus non party organizations that provide such capital remain viable alternative channels for elite participation in politics in places like post communist Russia. In this paper we use this framework to investigate the extent to which parties have closed out the electoral market in Sub Saharan Africa, by examining the impact of resources, ethnicity, previous regime type, and political institutional factors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic decision-making in environmental governance has been forwarded as a means of securing environmental sustainability. In practice, however, it should be expected that public support for the environment can be withheld, or at worst it could assume the dimension of blocking the environmental conservation project. This paper inquires into how democratic participation in environmental governance may interact with the institutional settings to undermine environmental sustainability. Because of the dominance of positing a positive relationship between democracy and environmental sustainability in the literature, we investigate in this case the possibility of alternative scenarios, namely democratically-generated unsustainable environmental outcomes. Cases from Kenya are used to examine this possibility. The conclusion suggests that a positive relationship can be anticipated with certainty only if specified at the level of voters who are defined as green. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to explain the differences in the strategies between African and Latin American countries towards the expansion of economic power of China in the two regions by comparing their domestic economic structure and political consideration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]