The fallacy behind the role of civil society in transitional democracies: The case of Kenyan ethno-political conflicts
March 2015
The belief in the centrality of the role of civil society in democracy promotion should be re-evaluated especially in the context of transitional societies like Kenya. Contrary to the widely held view that Civil society is a platform for citizen engagement with government and other state and non state actors, there is reason to believe that civil society has become an avenue for simmering hatred and the promotion of...
Unemployment and poverty as sources and consequence of insecurity in Nigeria: The Boko Haram insurgency revisited
March 2015
Central to the discussion in this paper is the issue of the crisis of unemployment and extreme poverty prevailing in Nigeria, particularly in the Northern region where it is endemic. It is the contention of this paper that contrary to expectations and dreams nourished by many that the country’s abundant resources will help alleviate poverty from among the citizenry, lack of judicious utilization of these resources...
Corruption and voting in Senegal: Evidence from experimental and survey research
March 2015
In Senegal, as in other emerging African democracies, political corruption remains rampant. While all experts on Africa acknowledge the profound impact of widespread corruption on politics, there is disagreement on the role corruption plays on average citizens' behavior. Does corruption affect participation in Africa, and if so, does it do so because powerful patrons compel or bribe Africans to vote? Or, are...
Evaluating the social contract theoretical ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau: An analytical perspective on the state and relevance to contemporary society
February 2015
This paper evaluates the social contract theory from the view point of Jean Jacques Rousseau and applies the relevance to contemporary society. It is found that the social contract theorists traced the origin of the state to a social contract by individuals after an experience from the state of nature. Rousseau’s state of nature initially guaranteed freedom and good life for the individuals until the institution...
Cultural theory elaborations without predictive utility
February 2015
There is no single work that has stirred the debate about cultural theory in social science than Aaron Wildavsky’s “Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation”. Anthropologists’ use of culture as an explanatory tool is quite acceptable because they (anthropologists) usually seek to describe what has been observed by using history, artifacts,...
Political Leadership in Ghana: 1957 to 2010
February 2015
Leadership is a universally recognized concept whose practice and interpretation is culturally framed. The fundamental thrust of this study is to examine the leadership journey in Ghana with specific reference to political leaders, military or civilian; and their administrative leadership styles. Four outlined variables in the form of personality, values, role and setting constituted the framework of analysis, which...
The Writing as a condition of validity in the arbitration agreement in Tunisian legislation
February 2015
Nowadays, arbitration is required in the world of international trade as the normal mode of dispute settlement. Indeed, the development of the business world and the intensification of global trade have contributed to the emergence of several conflicts between international traders, these conflicts are amplified with different cultures, mentalities and especially international legislation. The arbitration was then the...
The promise of regional projects for Africa’s landlocked countries: Focusing on Ethiopia
February 2015
Landlocked countries face significant development challenge merely from their geopolitical position. This is magnificent specifically in terms of their access to the sea. However, some argue that regional arrangements can be promising in solving at least such specific challenge in their development endeavor. In this context, this article reviews real and potential challenges and prospects Ethiopia has to deal with at...
An alternative perspective: Islam, identity, and gender migration of Sudanese Muslim women in the UK
January 2015
This article is yet an attempt to provoke and stimulate minds, to seek an alternative understanding - an accurate one to the multiple nature of Islam. This is done by situating knowledge and mapping history, and including a minority of minorities. African Islam needs more articulation. Muslim women of Africa exist in Europe in silence. They face double/triple jeopardy generated from the interplay of racism and sexism...
Towards institutionalizing gender equality in Africa: How effective are the global gender summits and convention? A critique
January 2015
In the neo liberal order, gender equality discourse has had a renewed impetus following the post global gender summits and conventions inspired by options to enlarge the participation of women in governance and decision making processes such as the Beijing 35% affirmative action. However, decades on, institutionalizing gender equality in the periphery societies such as Africa has been elusive. This paper explores some...
Micro-hegemony and political orders in Uganda
January 2015
In the last twenty years, local government in Uganda has been transformed into one of power centers with authoritative actors. Within the existing constitutional structures local government is a host of powerful actors whose activities influence public policy decisions as well as determine the fortunes of local areas. The creation of new power centers has implied more avenues of influence. Both the political and...
The legitimacy challenge of market governance in Botswana
December 2014
This paper examines the economic policy implementation in Botswana, a country where the state is actively engaged in the management of the economy in partnership with organized interests in the private sector, to bring about a diversification of the market away from dependence on mining. The discussion looks at the institutional mechanisms of state-market “partnership”, examining how the weak legitimacy of...
The riddle of Barack Obama: A psychoanalytic study
December 2014
In August 2008 the 47-year-old Barack Hussein Obama was elected by the U.S. Democratic National Convention as its nominee for President of the United States. This was the first time an African-American had ever been nominated to this office. It was a momentous and revolutionary event. The bright African-American orphan son of a bright but tragic Kenyan father, who had died in a tragic car accident in 1982 in Kenya,...
Ethnocentrism: Significance and effects on Kenyan society
December 2014
This study investigates the significance and effects of ethnocentrism in the Kenyan society. The usual concept of ethnocentrism combines the belief that one’s culture is superior to other cultures with the practice of judging other cultures as inferior to one’s own culture. This concept does not address the underlying issue of why people do this but emphasizes that people make false assumptions based on...
PBC- A commission for hegemonic peace building?
November 2014
The United Nations’ (UN) organ, the Peace-building Architecture (PBA) directed by Peace-building Commission (PBC) is yet to become a distinct player in peace-building. Arguments articulate well how it continues to find it difficult to tackle challenges that mar world wide support for peace-building. It seems to display behaviours that are assumed in the modernization theory and has a vague approach to the concept...
Arab African Northern revolt states (2010-2014): The missed path of re-institutionalization and democratic transformation
November 2014
The quick current of revolt spread rapidly from Tunisia to Egypt, and then from Egypt to Libya, in one timing date, threatening entrenched regimes and the status quo. For example, Libya’s revolt turned into a bloody civil war, spilling over armaments, everywhere in the country. By the end of 7th of February, 2014, the General National Congress will end its mandate, which will lead into political vacuum in the...
America and Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) Gas Pipeline
November 2014
India and Iran share a historical and long term economic relation that has formed the basis of close bilateral relationship. In contemporary World politics, energy resources play an important role and are considered as the engines of economic growth and development for a country. India’s growing energy demand and Iran’s vast energy resources make the two nations natural economic partners. For India, Iran...
National power and the search for a generalized theory of terrorist target selection: An introduction to the Uyo School
November 2014
The assumption that terrorist organizations (TO) select their target(s) putting into consideration its own limited resources and the impact of the selected target on the national power of the victim state has been the underlying assumption of the Uyo School. In the face of the increasing search to uncover the determinant of terrorist target selection which has become central in terrorism literature does the Uyo School...
Elites and exclusive politics in Sub-Saharan African
November 2014
This paper examines democracy as a major and popular form of government which is finding ground across the African continent. The study also examines the degree to which political power is concentrated in the hands of elites while the ordinary citizens are relegated to voting alone when elections are due shortly after which they are soon forgotten in the governance of state affairs. Conducted with the use of secondary...
Analysis of the current democratic wave in the Arab world: Lessons and implications
November 2014
The Arab world which occupies the vast desert land of the Middle East is one of the most blessed in natural resources and with a peculiar socio-political setting distinct from the West. This oil rich region which has over the years been governed by monarchical rule witnessed an unrest that started at the end of 2010 attracting interest in the western democracies, in the middle and near eastern nations, whose instability...
A critical analysis of whether Zimbabwe can achieve economic development through its ‘Look East Policy’
November 2014
The aim of the paper is to critically analyse the potential of Zimbabwe’s foreign policy, specifically the Look East Policy at stimulating economic development and growth. This analysis is based solely on selected secondary material. In response to external and internal pressure, the government of Zimbabwe redesigned its foreign policy outlook with the aim of establishing relations with countries in the East like...
The influence of Treaty Design on the participation of Developing and Developed Nations in International Environmental Agreements (IEAs)
November 2014
It is an observed fact that developing and developed countries participate in International Environmental Agreements (IEAs) to different levels. Do IEA provisions exert differential levels of influence on the participation of developing and developed countries? This paper relies on multivariate regression analysis to examine the relationship between key IEA provisions and the participation of developing and developed...
Unipolar world in crisis as Russia challenges U.S and allies, dragging other disgruntled countries along
November 2014
For more than two decades after the collapse of Soviet Union and concomitantly, cold war, United States of America became dominant world power, with western powers queuing behind her. Preoccupied by domestic political and economic problems that led, in the first instance, to the collapse of the octopus (Soviet empire), the old rival and foe receded from international politics and other engagements. United States and her...
Lessons of 1969’S US Selective Service Amendment Act: Explaining US babyboomers’ civil war
October 2014
Studies of opinion cleavages among Americans born 1946 to 1964 are informed via Erikson and Stoller’s 2011 analysis of the impact of the December 1, 1969 Vietnam War draft lottery (which prioritized men vulnerable to 1970 callup). The scope of discussion therein and herein includes asessments of political socialization research from 1965, 1973, 1982 and 1997. Enabled there was the interpretive method, herein, of...
Neo-colonialism or De-colonialism? China’s economic engagement in Africa and the implications for world order
October 2014
In recent two decades, China's economic involvement in Africa was accused of colonialist actions by many Western observers. However, most of these accusations have no basis. In this article, after comprehensively exploring China’s trading and investing relations with Africa based on data and case studies, it argues that China’s engagement in Africa in recent decades has nothing to do with neocolonialism....
Elaborated and restricted codes of pluralism - Entangled manifestations in natural resource-dependent African countries
October 2014
Africa's re-democratization project set in motion more than two decades ago has produced varying outcomes. Factors such as political character of the state, cognitive resources and intervention strategies of core elites, commitment to democratic stewardship, social cohesion, diversity of resilience-resources, tolerance may combine to produce hybrid outcomes. This piece explores the state of democracy and appropriate...
A social-semiotic engagement with representations of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in The ZimDaily.com from June 2008 to July 2013
October 2014
THE FIVE-YEAR government of national unity tenure in Zimbabwe that brought together three leading political parties namely the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) parties came to an end when the country held successful parliamentary and presidential elections in July 2013. As was the case in 2008, the ruling ZANU-PF party won the 2013 election....
State-economy relations and survival of democratic governance in transiting societies: Lessons from South Korea
September 2014
Rational men support institutions that best guarantee the attainment of their socioeconomic aspirations. Of all known political rationalizations, democracy, it is that best prides such. However, in certain climes, there are inhibitive factors defiling the success of democracy, much of which is located within the state-economy relations. With a state-economy relations and democratic governance model, this...
Identity, centralization and resistance in Ethiopia: The case of Nuer and Anuak
September 2014
The Anuak-Nuer resistance to centralization traced back to their incorporation in the last decade of the ninetieth century. It was a reaction against submission, and aggravated and shaped by the new developments in Ethiopia and British-ruled Sudan. The perspectives of local and ethnic groups and formation of local groups, identities and interests have been formed, dissolved and affected the...
Corruption and development administration in Africa: Institutional approach
September 2014
At the post 1990s, African countries undertook some democratic reforms following the end of one party authoritarian regimes and return to multiparty elections, which resulted in a more competitive political system. However, the central clog to economic transformation namely, public corruption remains germane. The paper explores some of the theoretical issues raised by the dynamics of socio-political change in...
Human right education in sub-Saharan Africa: An overview of some challenges and prospects
August 2014
This analysis takes up the issue of human rights education in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that human rights education is necessary for shifting the status of sub- Saharan Africans from subjects—mostly to local and international power relations—to citizens: with rights and responsibilities. The feasibility of this process is analyzed by looking at the challenges to its materialization, mainly...
“Clientele democracyâ€: Political party funding and candidate selection in Nigeria*
August 2014
The upsurge of democracy during the third and fourth waves democratic epochs has led to a “proliferation of alternative conceptual forms…involving democracy ‘with adjectives’” (Collier and Levitsky, 1997:430). Clientele democracy, though similar with neopatrimonial democracy, is distinguished in both concept and substance. At the heart of the development of different democracy...
African development crisis and global thinking: Collapse of the periphery, decay of the core
May 2014
This paper used the core-periphery concept of underdevelopment as a theoretical framework to analyze the African development crisis and the collapse of African initiatives with the development of the Global thought. The paper observed inter alia, that the force of Globalization in which the policies of the core centers have led to the collapse of local (African state) initiatives in all spectrums of the region’s...
Political development as social intelligence in constitutional democracy: The central place of dialogue in decolonization
May 2014
Regressions in the moral practical consciousness of politicians during decolonization in Sierra Leone created the precondition for a crisis-ridden post-Independence social order. Using the Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, and the Critical Theory of Society, the paper analyzes epochal political discourses during decolonization to explicate normative deficits in the society’s attempt to...
Exploring the character of political parties, civil society organizations, security agencies, traditional institutions and the press in the Nigerian electoral processes
April 2014
Electoral system is a major attribute in any democracy. The failure of the electoral system is as a result of the problems associated with its processes. These problems, notwithstanding, are caused by some independent and intervening variables such as: the nature of Political Parties; the nature of Security Agencies; the role of Civil Society Groups, Traditional Institutions and the Press; as well as the dominant forces...
Districts creation and its impact on local government in Uganda
April 2014
The volatility of creating new district local governments (DLGs) in Uganda has attracted heavy domestic and feasibly significant international criticism. The phenomenon now forms part of the political and governance discourse in the country. Despite this condemnation government insists on establishing more DLGs in the guise of increasing political participation and improving social service delivery. This...
Amadu Sesay’s Civil Wars, Child Soldiers and Post Conflict Peace Building in West Africa, Lagos
March 2014
The end of the cold war triggered civil wars in West Africa and beyond. These wars were, in the first instance, caused by ethnic struggles for political supremacy, economic control of natural resources, issues of unemployment, poverty, etc. An immediate byproduct of all these civil wars was the ugly phenomenon of child soldiers (a combatant below 18 years) in the annals of African history. “Civil Wars, Child...
Religion, politics and war: Reflections on Mozambique’s Civil War (1977-1992)
March 2014
Religious ideology, in its diverse forms and contradictory roles, was a salient feature of every stage of the Mozambican civil war from 1975-1992. First, the conflict had its roots, partly, in attempts by the state to suppress religion. Second, during the war different groups appropriated and adapted religion to explain, manage and survive the violent turmoil. Third and even more important, religious actors played a...
Neopatrimonial logic and national programmatic policies in Ghana: A case of rice importation and production policies under the administrations of J.A. Kufuor and J.E.A. Mills
March 2014
Ghana’s 1992 constitution requires a party’s candidate to obtain 50% plus one valid vote to win presidential elections. However, no party has ever secured such valid votes in the respective stronghold alone. This study explores whether or not political parties in Ghana are emerging as programmatic parties, and the implications of the lack of programmatic parties for a party’s credibility and the...
Oil activities, unsustainable environment and the combative reactionism of women in the Niger Delta
February 2014
The Niger Delta is made up mainly of rural communities with the majority of the people depending mostly on fishing and farming for their livelihoods. The traditional division of labour gives the Niger Delta woman primary responsibility for providing for and managing the sustenance of the family household. Women depend mainly on the environment to eke out a living as they have little access to and control over land,...
Regionalism and sub-regionalism: A theoretical framework with special reference to India
February 2014
Regionalism and sub-regionalism are at present a fairly widespread phenomenon in Indian political system. As the various developmental programs are carried out, regional disparities are already becoming more marked and widespread engendering a sense of cumulative deprivations in the people of certain regions. This, coupled with increasing politicisation in the community, is sure to impart sharper focus to regionalism...
Obasanjo’s leadership role as chairman of NEPAD’s HSGIC
October 2013
In extant literature the role of the individual has been disregarded as a potent force driving and moderating international relations. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is one agency of international relations, being an international organization in the African continent. In the studies so far on the NEPAD as an agency of international relations concerning Africa, the role of individuals has...
One-party domination, a flaw in Africa’s democracy: Comparative cases from Cameroon and South Africa
October 2013
One-party domination has been firmly established as the mainstay of the political landscapes of most African countries. With a combination of both empirical and secondary data, this research set out to selectively examine the factors that contribute in entrenching the dominance of the ruling parties of Cameroon and South Africa. It also analyzed the extent to which one-party domination has contributed in thwarting good...
South Africa’s BRICS membership: A win-win situation?
October 2013
After significant diplomatic efforts, South Africa’s inclusion into the BRICS grouping in 2011 can be regarded as one of South Africa’s principal foreign policy achievements over the past years. It also fundamentally altered the nature of the BRICS group, giving it a more global structure. Yet little is known about why South Africa sought BRICS membership, why it was chosen over larger economies (e.g....
Power, powerlessness, and globalization
September 2013
The key issues of the globalization process relate to the historic background of centuries of Western accumulation of power through realpolitik; US cultivation of semi-colonial satellites in Japan and East Asia endowed with economic empowerment in the post World War II period through a policy of benign hegemony; the rise of China, followed by India, as globalizers intent on preserving their sovereignty and independent...
Patrimonial rule in Olusegun Obasanjo’s Nigeria
September 2013
Since the fall of the Berlin wall or the end of the cold war in 1980s, many African leaders appear to be championing the cause of democratic transition in their states whereas in the real sense of it they directly or indirectly engage in systems that are quite antithetical or in contradistinction to the project in question. The paper, therefore, appraises the Obasanjo’s eight years administration arguing that his...
Global Hegemonism and the rise of Comprador Intellectualism
September 2013
One of the attendant effects of globalisation and the hegemonising forces unleashed thereof has been the rise of comprador intellectualism. This is a genre of intellectual analysis which by its failure to elaborate on the class character of globalisation tends to uphold, consciously or unconsciously, the dominant liberal doctrine underpinning globalisation. The tragedy associated with this intellectual capitulation is...
The regulation of the institution of matrimonial engagement in the new Romanian Civil Code
September 2013
The paper aims at analysing the institution of matrimonial engagement both in the Old Romanian Law and in the new Civil Code (Adopted 1 October, 2011)- that came into force by law no. 287 of July 17th, 2009 on the Civil Code republished through Law no. 71/2011, the new Civil Code. The 2nd Book of the new Civil Code, entitled “On Family” dedicates its 2nd title to marriage, and in...
Icj Judgment On Bakassi Peninsula And Lake Chad: Litmus Test For Peace And Integration In Africa
September 2013
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled against Nigeria on the disputed Bakassi (Backassey) Peninsula and parts of Lake Chad territory with Cameroun on 10 October 2002, and Nigerian government has complied to a large extent. Ordinarily, the case has been foreclosed from further discussion. But, like any other human judgment, it has created its own problem bordering on security and integration of West...
White South Africa’s early external relations*
August 2013
White supremacist South Africa’s Department of External Affairs was set up in 1927 to demonstrate the country’s political independence of the United Kingdom. It operated under various names until the régime gave way to a democratically-elected government in 1994. Unlike its counterparts in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, which had long included in their structures sections of historians...
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