{"title":"The Executive","authors":"B. A. Gebeye","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on the executive branch in order to explain how legal syncretism influences African constitutional design and practice, using Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa as comparative case studies. The chapter first develops a conceptual framework for the design of the executive and the practice of executive power drawing from liberal constitutional theory. The chapter then explores and examines the design of the executive and the practice of executive power in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa. The aim is to demonstrate how legal syncretism shapes the executive branches in these countries and how different configurations of legal syncretism have produced imperial executives in Nigeria and Ethiopia, but not in South Africa. By disentangling the discursive practices that bring about and sustain the imperial executives, and by showing the pathologies of constitutional design and practice related to the executive, the chapter defends the idea of a limited executive if constitutionalism is to prosper in Africa.","PeriodicalId":448430,"journal":{"name":"A Theory of African Constitutionalism","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126163636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Legal Syncretism as a Theoretical Framework for African Constitutionalism","authors":"B. A. Gebeye","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter presents legal syncretism as a new theoretical framework for African constitutionalism. After providing reasons for needing a new theoretical framework the chapter proceeds to explore the existing theoretical frameworks of law in general—legal centralism and legal pluralism—and examines their relevance to African constitutionalism. After demonstrating both the potential and limits of these frameworks, the chapter then proposes legal syncretism as a new and better theoretical framework with which to capture and explain the transformation of African constitutionalism from precolonial times to the present, as well as all the attendant constitutional designs and practices.","PeriodicalId":448430,"journal":{"name":"A Theory of African Constitutionalism","volume":"12 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116929992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Design and Practice of African Constitutionalism","authors":"B. A. Gebeye","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores and examines how legal syncretism as a result permeates the design and practice of African constitutionalism. By seriously considering the constitutional structures and rights, as well as their practical applications, the chapter attempts to decrypt the identity, nature, and texture of African constitutionalism through legal syncretism. The chapter explicates the nature of the African state and its various modalities of organization, examines the African government architecture, and investigates the constitutional rights regime. Through a closer look at the texts and contexts of constitutions and constitutionalism in Africa, and building on legal, constitutional, social, political, and international relations theory, the chapter aims to reveal the distinctive features of African constitutionalism. The overarching objective of this chapter is to underscore why appreciating the syncretic features of African constitutionalism is necessary for understanding, improving, and fostering constitutionalism on the continent.","PeriodicalId":448430,"journal":{"name":"A Theory of African Constitutionalism","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129191018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Women’s Constitutional Rights","authors":"B. A. Gebeye","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explains how legal syncretism influences and manifests itself in the design and practice of constitutional rights—with a particular focus on women’s rights—in the constitutional systems of Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia. The chapter demonstrates how the interaction between the liberal and indigenous conceptions of rights in a constitutional space produces unique regimes of women’s rights in these countries. The chapter first presents a brief theory of women’s rights as a standard of comparison and evaluation; this is done through a more general investigation of women’s rights in international law. This is then followed by a more focused discussion of women’s constitutional rights in Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia. Such discussion explores the substantive content and the way in which women’s rights are constitutionalized, as well as their practical and judicial applications. The syncretic nature of women’s rights in these countries sheds some light on the importance of looking beyond the universalism versus cultural relativism debate when trying to enforce human rights in Africa.","PeriodicalId":448430,"journal":{"name":"A Theory of African Constitutionalism","volume":"203 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122769628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"B. A. Gebeye","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"This concluding chapter explores why and how legal syncretism offers a better theoretical framework than both legal centralism and legal pluralism for understanding the processes and dynamics of African constitutional change and transformation from precolonial times to the present, and for capturing and explaining the identity, nature, and structure of the attendant constitutional designs and practices across time and place. The chapter demonstrates how legal syncretism offers key theoretical tools and practical insights for diagnosing, improving, and evaluating African constitutionalism. The chapter also indicates how future research can be directed towards examining and understanding the various aspects of constitutional designs and practices through the lens of legal syncretism—both within African states and beyond.","PeriodicalId":448430,"journal":{"name":"A Theory of African Constitutionalism","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133289998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Federalism","authors":"B. A. Gebeye","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter demonstrates—using Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa as comparative case studies—how federalism in Africa shares the forms, structures, and discursive practices of classic federal theory, while, at the same time, it also differs from classic federal theory in its normative articulations and institutional frameworks due to its syncretic configurations. To identify and illuminate the syncretic features of federalism in these countries, the chapter first presents the original logic, formation, and fundamental elements of federalism, as well as the reasons for its successes and failures, as developed in classic federal theory; explores how federalism takes new pathways—in both its original purpose and formation—in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa; and examines how the fundamental elements of federalism in these countries are a blend of syncretic convergences, adaptations, and innovations. And building on this, the chapter argues why it is necessary to rethink the classic standards for assessing the successes and failures of federalism and proceeds to discuss how this can help to improve the performance of federalism in fostering constitutional democracy in these countries. The chapter concludes by suggesting that if federalism is to ensure the practice of constitutional democracy in Africa, then democratic values, human rights, and constitutionalism should all animate its normative and institutional underpinnings of self-rule and shared rule, as they do in classic federal theory.","PeriodicalId":448430,"journal":{"name":"A Theory of African Constitutionalism","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121409318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Future of African Constitutional Design and Practice","authors":"B. A. Gebeye","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Building on the theses and analyses of the previous chapters, this chapter attempts to bring the elements of legal syncretism to the attention of future African constitutional design and practice. With this objective, the chapter discusses why African constitutional design should take sovereignty seriously and underscores why sovereignty is—and must be—an important aspect of any African constitutional theory; presents some of the major limits or shortcomings of postcolonial constitutional reforms and draws attention to possible future constitutional reform areas; and highlights the potential of some aspects of African constitutional design and practice that can mediate and operationalize the practice and application of plural constitutional values—something that future constitutional design and practice should attempt to consolidate.","PeriodicalId":448430,"journal":{"name":"A Theory of African Constitutionalism","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114148259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Transformation of African Constitutionalism","authors":"B. A. Gebeye","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter investigates how legal syncretism as a process can explain the African constitutional transformations and developments from precolonial times to the present. Through the lens of legal syncretism, the chapter explores and examines the idea and practice of constitutionalism in precolonial Africa, traces the transformation of precolonial constitutionalism brought about by the introduction of colonial constitutionalism, and shows how postcolonial constitutionalism builds on, and departs from, the previous constitutional systems. This investigation illustrates how the encounters and interactions between international law, colonial law, indigenous constitutional systems, and the liberal constitutional norms that have been prevalent since the late nineteenth century have all contributed to the establishment of the territorial, political, and theoretical contours of African constitutionalism.","PeriodicalId":448430,"journal":{"name":"A Theory of African Constitutionalism","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133887874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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