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The Big Man has attracted considerable attention from social scientists, both as an explanatory force as well as a phenomenon to be explained. But the concept has become unmoored from its original meaning. Once used to refer to an apex figure within a patrimonial regime, today Big Men are often described as dictators or thieves. I show this using an original dataset covering discussions of Big Men in leading African Studies journals since 1980. I find that authors, especially political scientists, overemphasise theft and underemphasise accountability of Big Men. Then, drawing on my research with Ghanaian local politicians, I show how Big Men are constantly under pressure from their supporters. The paper concludes with a modest call to put the Big Man back in his place as powerful but also empowered, and thus indebted, to those beneath him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three critical trends in the evolving practice of regional peacekeeping in sub-Saharan Africa have undermined the usefulness of the common conceptual dichotomy between regional peacekeeping and UN/global peacekeeping. First, sub-Saharan African states have distanced themselves from long-term autonomous regional peacekeeping, and currently favour explicitly interim missions that are a prelude rather than an alternative to UN peacekeeping. Second, the analytically clear line between regional peacekeeping and the separate sub-Saharan African tradition of solidarity deployments (i.e. military support of embattled governments) has in practice become blurred, and the regional vs global peacekeeping dichotomy not only fails to acknowledge this trend but helps to obscure it. Finally, sub-Saharan African states are increasingly addressing regional conflicts by participating in UN operations deployed in the region. UN peacekeeping has thus emerged as a preferred form of regional peacekeeping in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political violence in sub-Saharan Africa is down. The number of military dictatorships and one-party states is also down. Are the two trends related? Conventional democratic peace theory says the answer is yes, because the relationship between democracy and peace is linear and positive. A revisionist view, however, raises questions. The majority of Africa's new regimes are not full democracies but mixed regimes that some studies find to have the greatest propensity to violent behaviour. Using statistical analysis of a trichotomous classification of African regimes from 1960 to 2008, this article suggests that neither argument fits the facts. Autocracies and partial democracies in this region appear to have similar exposure to conflict, with both types of systems suffering more conflict than full democracies. Variables other than regime type appear to be the driving forces behind these trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-standing debate about the proper role for Africa's traditional leaders in contemporary politics has intensified in the last two decades, as efforts to foster democratisation and decentralisation have brought competing claims to power and legitimacy to the fore, especially at the local level. Questions persist as to whether traditional authority and democratic governance are ultimately compatible or contradictory. Can the two be blended into viable and effective hybrid systems? Or do the potentially anti-democratic features of traditional systems present insurmountable obstacles to an acceptable model of integration? Survey data collected by the Afrobarometer indicate that Africans who live under these dual systems of authority do not draw as sharp a distinction between hereditary chiefs and elected local government officials as most analysts would expect. In fact, popular evaluations of selected and elected leaders are strongly and positively linked. They appear to be consistently shaped by each individual's 'leadership affect', and by an understanding of chiefs and elected officials as common players in a single, integrated political system, rather than as opponents in a sharply bifurcated one. Moreover, there is no evident conflict between supporting traditional leadership and being a committed and active democrat. Rather than finding themselves trapped between two competing spheres of political authority, Africans appear to have adapted to the hybridisation of their political institutions more seamlessly than many have anticipated or assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on anti-corruption reform in Africa falls into two camps. The first explores 'best practices' and policy approaches to controlling corruption, while the second focuses on the politics of anti-corruption 'reform', arguing that official anti-corruption campaigns aim to mollify donors while using corruption charges instrumentally to undermine rivals and shore up personal loyalty to the president, and thus have no chance of controlling corruption. This paper suggests that, while the neopatrimonial context is a very significant limiting factor in anti-corruption reform, limited progress is possible. Examining the motivations and effects, intended and unintended, of anti-corruption reforms in Kenya and Nigeria, it finds that while the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission has indeed been politically marginalised and largely ineffectual, the more autonomous and activist, but politically instrumentalised, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in Nigeria has had a measure of success. The analysis suggests that this is explained by the EFCC's independent prosecutorial powers and the institutionalisation strategies of its chairman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The newly independent countries of Africa are now in the second stage of their anti-imperialist revolution. This stage is characterised by their struggle to overcome cultural and economic backwardness, to achieve economic independence, to raise the living standards of vast masses of their peoples. These problems are closely related to the nature, rate, and scope of the social transformation taking place in these countries, which in turn depends to a great degree on economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The subject-matter of African politics has always presented a special challenge and a special problem to political scientists, namely to develop a theory which would make sense of a vast, inchoate, and unfamiliar body of material. This problem has become particularly acute in the last year or two. The rapid deterioration of African political parties, a series of military coups, recurrent crises of national unity, and heightened tendencies towards anomic and violent behaviour have not only cast doubt on previous assumptions as to the nature of African political life but have also led to a heightened mood of theoretical uncertainty among political scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The governments of Africa, in planning for economic and social development, have become increasingly aware that they can no longer afford to treat population as an exogenous variable. They have begun to study the component variables of population change, and their interrelationships, and have paid special attention to the critical role of fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ability of the new nations to think for themselves has surprised their former rulers as much as their capacity for self-government. In many circles it has not only caused surprise but some dismay. It was hoped that the older and wiser rulers would still continue to rule other men's minds if not their countries. Nothing has so disappointed these hopes as the development in the newly independent states of a rich and complex idea of non-alignment, and as a result this idea has been much misunderstood and much resented. Scholars have realised only recently that it is now an integral part of contemporary political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is an attempt to use some of the quantitative techniques of political science to provide a factual description of the voting behaviour of the African members in a selected session of the United Nations General Assembly. Drawing primarily upon methodology that has been used in studies of the United States Congress, 67 roll-call votes of the eighteenth session have been used to answer three questions which would seem primary to this description: (i) On what types of issues are the African states united and on what are they divided? (2) On divisive issues, into what groups are they divided? (3) How do the groupings vote, combine, and divide on these divisive issues? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Organisation of African Unity is now three years old. In view of the nature of both its scope and its goals, it would obviously be premature to attempt an evaluation of this organisation at such an early stage. On the other hand, the O.A.U. has grown precociously since its birth in May 1963, and the time is ripe for a description of its rapidly multiplying organs, and for some preliminary observations of the multifarious activity in which they have been engaged. To state that the O.A.U. is still in the cradle stage of its development is to emphasise the obvious. It is hardly surprising also that it should suffer the pains of growth, which are likely to be rather severe in the case of a scheme so ambitiously conceived. These facts must be kept in mind while reviewing the O.A.U. at its present state of development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the back cover of "The Journal of Modern African Studies" and explains the journal presents a quarterly survey of economics, politics, and related topics in contemporary Africa.

A partial table of contents is presented to the articles published in this issue.

The article presents the mission statement of the periodical, stating it offers a review of politics and economics in Africa.