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International audience; Who registers to vote? Although extensive research has examined the question of who votes, our understanding of the determinants of political participation will be limited until we know who is missing from the voter register. Studying voter registration in lower-income settings is particularly challenging due to data constraints. We link the official voter register with a complete social network census of 16 villages to analyze the correlates of voter registration in rural Uganda, examining the role of individual-level attributes and social ties. We find evidence that social ties are important for explaining registration status within and across households. Village leaders-and through them, household heads-play an important role in explaining the registration status of others in the village, suggesting a diffuse process of social influence. Socioeconomic factors such as income and education do not explain registration in this setting. Together these findings suggest an alternate theory of participation is required.

The resurgence of military coups in African Politics recently is intriguing. It is a recurrent of militarism in the continent of Africa which went on extinction about two decades ago. This development is problematic because military coups d’etat have the potency of contagion effect. They can spread wide and fast too in the circumstance of the level of facilitation by different situations. Last year, Chad, Mali, Guinea and Sudan experienced military Coups d’etat. This year also the Military struck in Bissau and Burkina Faso between January and early February respectively. The rather quick successive upsurge and dimension coups have assumed backsliding Africa to the brink of praetorian society calls for concern. This paper attempts to examine the resurgence of military coup d’etat in African politics and the reversal of democracy in the Region. The method of Data collection and analysis were built on qualitative descriptive approach while the conflict theory was adopted in explaining the problem investigated. The study found out that, the resurgence of military coups in African politics is a threat to democracy and needs to be tackled for democracy to survive.

How does government bias affect prospects for peace agreements in communal conflicts? Government bias has been shown to have a strong impact on the incidence and dynamics of localized ethnic conflict, but the way that it affects conflict resolution remains underexplored. I argue that government bias makes the conflict parties less likely to overcome the commitment problem, because they cannot trust the government’s willingness to guarantee or uphold any agreement they reach. Consequently, bias reduces the chances that the parties are able to reach a peace agreement. A systematic comparison of four cases in Kenya provides support for this argument. I also distinguish between bias related to strategic interest and bias related to relationships, and find that the former is more durable, whereas the latter is more likely to be influenced by political turnover, thereby opening up possibilities for peacemaking.

The authoritarian regime in Angola seeks to control every dimension of life in the country interfering with a set of fundamental rights such as the freedom of assembly, of movement and of expression. However, by their very fluid nature, by the inherent massing and anonymity, the contexts of mobility not only offer a set of social interactions rarely allowed in the current political panorama, but also provide an escape to effective surveillance and monitoring from authorities. Furthermore, the multidirectional encounters that mobility enacts — with people, situations, events, spatial mnemonics — create the conditions for the acknowledgement of an individual and collective plight. The absence of a likely public space for the discussion of certain compelling issues transforms the contexts of mobility into ephemeral moving assemblies, into unconventional sites of resistance where a sociopolitical culture is hatching. Collective transport's ambiguous anthropological qualities configure a highly productive ethnographic setting for the surreptitious researcher and an inescapable context if one is to assess Angola’s current reality. By depicting the social life of Angola’s public transport I will unveil the several mechanisms and possibilities behind these moving assemblies examining how mobility and sociopolitical mobilization intertwine.

This book is available open access via the url above. This book provides a systematic analysis of the major structural and institutional governance mechanisms in Cameroon, critically analysing the constitutional and legislative texts on Cameroon’s semi-presidential system, the electoral system, the legislature, the judiciary, the Constitutional Council and the National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms. The author offers an assessment of the practical application of the laws regulating constitutional institutions and how they impact on governance. To lay the groundwork for the analysis, the book examines the historical, constitutional and political context of governance in Cameroon, from independence and reunification in 1960–1961, through the adoption of the 1996 Constitution, to more recent events including the current Anglophone crisis. Offering novel insights on new institutions such as the Senate and the Constitutional Council and their contribution to the democratic advancement of Cameroon, the book also provides the first critical assessment of the legislative provisions carving out a special autonomy status for the two Anglophone regions of Cameroon and considers how far these provisions go to resolve the Anglophone Problem. This book will be of interest to scholars of public law, legal history and African politics.

Face-to-face interviews constitute a social interaction between interviewer and respondent, and in the African context, social interactions are strongly shaped by ethnicity. Yet research using African survey data typically fails to account for the effect of shared ethnicity on survey responses. We find that respondents give systematically different answers to coethnic and noncoethnic interviewers across surveys in 14 African countries, but with significant variation in the degree of bias across question types and types of noncoethnic dyads, with the largest effects occurring where both the respondent and interviewer are members of ethnic groups with a history of political competition and conflict, and where the respondent or interviewer shares an ethnicity with the head of state. Our findings have practical implications for consumers of African survey data and underscore the context dependence of the social interaction that constitutes the survey experience.

In democratic Africa, where ethnicity is a key driver of vote choice, politicians must attract voters across ethnic lines. This article explores one way politicians can do this: by appealing to a coethnic bond through their spouse. We propose that cross-ethnic spouses can help candidates send credible signals of coalition building before an election. We test this argument with a survey experiment in Benin, where President Yayi has married across ethnic lines. Our results confirm that priming the first lady’s ethnicity increases support for President Yayi among her coethnics. We generalize these results by combining new data on leader-spouse ethnicity with Afrobarometer survey data. Our results suggest that cross-ethnic marriages are one tool leaders can use to shore up support in multiethnic elections.

The purpose of this article is to understand the significance of Gandhi for the discussion about the African Renaissance. The article begins with the argument that the critical process of self-reflection begun in India about its past as a resource for imagining its future is central to any possibility of a renaissance in Africa. It draws on Gandhi in terms of what an examination of his central ideas might tell us about a future post-colonial Africa. Two of these ideas relate to the role of women in society and the attendant impact this view has on dominant masculinist tropes found in colonial historiography. Using these, the article looks at Gandhi not for the political and strategic choices he makes, but for understanding the kind of ethical identity or, the humanness which Gandhi's life represents.

Why are ethnic cleavages politicized in some African countries but not others? This dissertation draws on evidence from three case studies (Ghana, Botswana and Tanzania) to show that the statebuilding strategies employed by nationalist leaders across Africa, during the periods of transition to independence in the 1950s and 1960s, often have long-term consequences for whether or not ethnic cleavages become politicized in their respective countries. Specifically, it argues that two factors ultimately determine whether or not ethnic cleavages become politicized in an African country: (i) whether or not the country in question had powerful institutions of local control (chieftaincy institutions) at the dawn of independence; and (ii) whether or not the nationalist leaders of said country choose to share power with their hereditary chiefs during the period of transition to independence. The dissertation uses process tracing methods to demonstrate that ethnic cleavages become politicized in countries with both powerful chiefs and nationalist leaders who opt to marginalize the hereditary chiefs. Conversely, ethnic cleavages become relatively depoliticized in countries with either weak chieftaincy institutions or nationalist leaders who choose to share power with their chiefs. The evidence from this dissertation suggests important methodological and substantive revisions to the existing literature on the subject of ethnicity and politics in Africa.

This chapter critically assesses Africa–Europe collaborations on climate change research and innovation. Its authors argue that the complexity of research and innovation challenges on this topic calls for subtler collaborative and evaluation programmes. More importantly, they emphasise the need for greater harmonisation between scientific and political priorities on climate change, and point out that project goals should be more precisely defined, so as to ensure that results can be measured concretely and solutions can be progressively improved. In the absence of this clarity, they argue, climate change research and innovation programmes run the risk of being reduced to mere rhetorical statements.

Face-to-face interviews constitute a social interaction between interviewer and respondent, and in the African context, social interactions are strongly shaped by ethnicity. Yet research using African survey data typically fails to account for the effect of shared ethnicity on survey responses. We find that respondents give systematically different answers to coethnic and noncoethnic interviewers across surveys in 14 African countries, but with significant variation in the degree of bias across question types and types of noncoethnic dyads, with the largest effects occurring where both the respondent and interviewer are members of ethnic groups with a history of political competition and conflict, and where the respondent or interviewer shares an ethnicity with the head of state. Our findings have practical implications for consumers of African survey data and underscore the context dependence of the social interaction that constitutes the survey experience.

Why would an otherwise capable African government permit an insurgency to persist within its borders for an extended period of time while possessing the means to address it? Through a comparative approach, drawing on academic research on Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army and Nigeria and Boko Haram, this thesis seeks to explain why some insurgencies persist for extended periods of time with minimal government intervention. The research suggests that in the case studies analyzed, Uganda and Nigeria have permitted the insurgencies to continue due to the economic and political benefits that they are able to derive from the ongoing conflict. African governments may at times exploit insurgency and internal conflict to meet political objectives. U.S. policy makers should strongly consider this possibility when deciding upon economic and military aid packages to countries involved in ongoing conflict, to avoid inadvertently facilitating ongoing conflict. http://archive.org/details/africgovernments1094550525 Major, United States Air Force Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

This thesis examines the role of private governance in sub-Saharan Africa’s largest gold producing countries. It seeks to provide an explanation for the role firms play in governing the gold mining sector in Ghana, South Africa and Tanzania. Furthermore, it seeks to illuminate the reasons why gold mining firms pursue self-regulation, beyond what is required by the state. The thesis begins with a summary of the resource curse literature, which suggests that countries rich in minerals (such as gold) are more likely to suffer slower economic growth and poorer development, when compared with their non-resource rich peers. It is from this scholarship that the thesis departs, suggesting that instead of solely focusing on the state, scholars of the underdevelopment in mineral rich states must consider the role of business in developing what is known as private governance. After advancing a classification system for private governance in the gold mining sector this research presents new empirical evidence in the form of analysis of company reporting and elite interviews with gold mining firm executives and representatives of industry associations. Using evidence gathered from interviews with mining executives, and company reports it is shown that firms do play a significant role in developing the rules and regulations that govern Africa’s gold mining industries. Large firms, with multiple operating jurisdictions are shown to be first-movers in engendering private governance, doing so in order to control the regulatory direction of their industry, but also to enhance their power vis-à-vis the state. This finding is elaborated on through the analysis of the elite interviews, where it is argued that gold mining firms with significant private authority rely on discursive power to develop private governance initiatives. Once these firms are seen as legitimate rule makers, they are able to effectively share sovereignty with sub-Saharan African governments.

IS democratization feasible in Africa? That is the question that I wish to address. It should not be confused with the question of the possibility of democracy in Africa which, though often asked, does not really arise, because democracy is in principle possible everywhere. The question is not whether democracy can be or even whether it ought to be, but how it "becomes" in the light of the circumstances of a particular historical situation. But what is this thing called democracy whose feasib...