African Affairs最新文献_第2页

Nigerian youth engagement in violent electoral environments: Political apathy or ‘Constrained Optimism’? 尼日利亚青年参与暴力选举环境：政治冷漠还是 "受限的乐观主义"？

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2024-05-29 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adae010

Justine Davis, Megan Turnbull

{"title":"Nigerian youth engagement in violent electoral environments: Political apathy or ‘Constrained Optimism’?","authors":"Justine Davis, Megan Turnbull","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adae010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adae010","url":null,"abstract":"How do young citizens engage with politicians and their political environment in contexts where elections are frequently affected by violence? We explore this question through focus group discussions (FGDs) in Nigeria, a country with high rates of election violence. We argue that young voters in violent electoral environments operate with ‘constrained optimism’, where they perceive low government responsiveness but possess high levels of self-efficacy. Participants condemned violence and expressed little faith in political institutions and leaders to curtail violence, but they also felt a determination to elect a better government and a strong sense of a civic duty to vote, participate in politics, and encourage others to do so as well. Many participants also shared that they would continue to support their preferred candidate if they were accused of violence. Some participants raised concerns about the veracity of such allegations while others explained that politicians sometimes use violence for defensive purposes. Still others stated that they would continue to support candidates who expressed remorse for engaging in violence and committed to peaceful campaigning in the future. Taken together, we argue that young voters in violent contexts operate with ‘constrained optimism’ where they remain committed to democracy, but face constraints on who they support and how they participate. Our findings nuance expectations of the effects of electoral violence on political participation and better help us understand the challenges facing voters in contexts where violence is rife.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141177199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Failed hereditary succession in comparative perspective: The case of Senegal (2000–2024) 从比较角度看失败的世袭继承：塞内加尔案例（2000-2024 年）

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2024-05-06 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adae007

Marie Brossier

{"title":"Failed hereditary succession in comparative perspective: The case of Senegal (2000–2024)","authors":"Marie Brossier","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adae007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adae007","url":null,"abstract":"Contrary to enduring theoretical expectations on neopatrimonialism, family successions are rare in sub-Saharan Africa. This article demonstrates that family successions are difficult to set up and might fail when rulers attempt to implement them. Building on the scholarship on political dynasties and family successions in broader comparative politics, I demonstrate that the study of failed attempts helps unveil the specific mechanisms of such failure. While scholarship documents how formal rules (such as term limits) constrain the ruler’s succession agenda, I contend that other types of constraints -party politics, opposition coalition, and public opinion-might also strongly impact it but have remained underexamined. The Senegal case study helps uncover these constraints. The article begins by emphasizing the theoretical importance and empirical challenges of studying non-cases of family successions and, more specifically, failed attempts. Then, the article examines the Senegalese failed hereditary succession between former President Abdoulaye Wade and his son Karim. Through a longitudinal single-country case study (2000–2024), this article employs process-tracing to uncover the three main interrelated mechanisms, which led to this failure: Popular resentment towards the succession attempt, a succession crisis due to the ruler’s not leaving power, and elite defection leading to party split. In mutually reinforcing each other, these dynamics converged to block the transfer of power from the ruler to his son. Therefore, this single case study of a failed attempt enhances our empirical and theoretical understanding of what drives variation in the success or failure of family succession. I argue that the role of actors (party elites and voters) in the succession process and how they engage with the rules of the game (mainly over party leadership selection and elections) impact the succession outcome.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140845963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The limits of concentrated power: Bureaucratic independence and electricity crises in Rwanda 权力集中的局限性：卢旺达官僚机构的独立性与电力危机

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2024-03-28 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adae003

Benjamin Chemouni, Barnaby Dye

{"title":"The limits of concentrated power: Bureaucratic independence and electricity crises in Rwanda","authors":"Benjamin Chemouni, Barnaby Dye","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adae003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adae003","url":null,"abstract":"Rwanda is a posterchild of economic success in twenty-first century Africa. Dominant explanations for the country’s growth use the political settlements framework, asserting that concentrated political power enabled long-term planning. In contrast, this article uses the case of Rwanda’s impressive boom in electricity generation to demonstrate that such concentrated power also distorts policy-making processes, creating a fiscal crisis that jeopardizes Rwanda’s economic transformation. Therefore, this article questions a central premise of the political settlements framework. Concentrated political power in Rwanda enabled rapid and ambitious construction of power plants but resulted in an oversupply crisis, plunging the sector into significant debt and raising the cost of electricity. Rwanda’s political settlement prevented experts from challenging unrealistic targets set by top politicians, which led to a headlong pursuit of electricity generation capacity. To understand this process, we assert the importance of focusing on the bureaucratic/politician relationship, which we label ‘bureaucratic independence’, rather than on the oft-used concept of ‘bureaucratic autonomy’ usually associated with the concentration of political power.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140331245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Peacemaking in authoritarian context in Africa: promoting peace from below in Cameroon 在非洲专制背景下建立和平：在喀麦隆从下往上促进和平

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2024-03-18 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adae004

Claire Lefort-Rieu

引用次数: 0

Ethnic Politics and Party realignment in African Constitutional referendums: Understanding Kenya’s ‘industry of insults’ 非洲宪法公投中的种族政治和政党调整：了解肯尼亚的 "侮辱工业

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2024-02-20 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adae002

Kirk A Harris

{"title":"Ethnic Politics and Party realignment in African Constitutional referendums: Understanding Kenya’s ‘industry of insults’","authors":"Kirk A Harris","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adae002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adae002","url":null,"abstract":"Kenya’s constitutional referendums in 2005 and 2010 stand out for their continuity with the national elections that followed both polls. During campaigns for and against the draft constitutions, politicians attempted to leverage their popularity amongst co-ethnics to signal their viability as coalition partners or ‘formateurs’ in subsequent general elections: rather than nuanced debates on constitutional issues, the campaigns became personal contests that one observer dubbed an ‘industry of insults’. A decade later, this process was repeated as the country’s political class considered further revisions to the constitution. Kenya’s referendum campaigns thus reflect a layer of strategic behaviour that has not been recognized in much of the contemporary literature on democratization and constitutional change in Africa. While the substance of the country’s constitution matters to Kenyan elites, referendum campaigns have added value to leaders independently of the outcomes of the polls themselves. The prominence of ethnicity as an organizing feature in Kenyan politics combined with high levels of party volatility produces an environment in which referendum campaigns serve as opportunities for Kenyan politicians to renegotiate political coalitions and realign party politics in between election cycles. In this way, the country’s referendum politics are a distinct byproduct of its historical and political circumstances.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139945389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Citizen Participation during the 2014 Protest in Burkina Faso: Aspiring to a ‘good State’ 布基纳法索 2014 年抗议活动中的公民参与：向往 "美好国家

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2024-02-20 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adae001

Marie-Eve Desrosiers, Nicolas Hubert

引用次数: 0

Reinvigorating Social Support Systems in Rural Northwestern Ghana: Towards Affective Empathy in a Neoliberal Age 重振加纳西北部农村地区的社会支持系统：在新自由主义时代实现情感共鸣

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2024-01-23 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad033

Constance Awinpoka Akurugu

{"title":"Reinvigorating Social Support Systems in Rural Northwestern Ghana: Towards Affective Empathy in a Neoliberal Age","authors":"Constance Awinpoka Akurugu","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adad033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adad033","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars frequently allude to the concept of a supportive extended family system that provides a lifeline to less privileged members of society, such as the indigent and the aged. Yet, the extended family and the network of support it enables have come under immense threat from neoliberalism. This article examines the constrained role of the extended family system and its implications, based on residential ethnographic fieldwork data gathered in rural northwestern Ghana. It draws on transnational discourses on empathy and local conceptions of interdependence and unity as encapsulated by African communitarian philosophies such as Ubuntu and Te jaa bonyeni of the Waala people of northwestern Ghana to explore how to generate empathy. Neoliberal individualist values have intensely undermined the support networks of the extended family system. Te jaa bonyeni philosophy, similar to Ubuntu, and many humanistic philosophies, offers important opportunities for reinvigorating debates on African indigenous support networks as important steps towards nurturing affective empathy. This study contributes to discourses on affective empathy by connecting it to communitarianism. Cultivating empathy is necessary towards imagining forms of existence that are dignifying for the marginalized and preventing them from descending into abysmal deprivation.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2024-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139544276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Expert Advice for the Expert Witness. 为专家证人提供专家建议。

1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2023-12-01 Epub Date: 2023-07-28 DOI: 10.1016/j.aan.2023.06.001

Richard P Dutton

引用次数: 0

Living for the City: Social Change and Knowledge Production in the Central African Copperbelt 为城市而生：中非铜带的社会变革与知识生产

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2023-11-29 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adad031

Dominic Liche

引用次数: 0

Citizens, Civil Society, and Activism under the EPRDF Regime in Ethiopia: An Analysis from Below 埃塞俄比亚 EPRDF 政权下的公民、公民社会和行动主义：自下而上的分析