$6
Tenkir Bonger
ISBN: 0850-2633
CODESRIA 1996
The Military and Militarism in Africa (Ebook)
Although all authoritarian regimes in Africa are not military in character, the question of the military has been central to the current issue of democratization on the continent. The contributions in this volume deal neither with the definitive erosion of the military and civil authoritarianism, nor with the inexorable march toward democracy but with what appears in retrospect to be a less clear-cut and more open-ended state of transition, located ambiguously between the crisis of authoritarianism and the prospect for democracy on the continent. The contributors emphasize the uneven patterns and forms of militarisation in Africa but within and between regimes.
This innovative work is the first CODESRIA has published in Portuguese, and the first scholarly work the institution has published on the politics, economics and societies of the Portuguese-speaking African countries, authored by social scientists from those countries. In its engagement with the Portuguese-speaking social science communities in Africa, the publication represents an important milestone for CODESRIA, and a symbolic moment in the development of Lusophone studies on the continent. The collection of essays grew out of CODESRIA’s ‘Lusophonia’ initiative, launched at an international symposium in May 2005 which brought together over 60 academics, mostly from the Lusophone African countries, as well as from African studies institutions in Portugal and Brazil, to reflect on the history, democracy and integration of the Portuguese speaking countries. The objectives of the Lusophonia initiative are to give a voice to social scientists from Portuguese speaking countries; centre debates on the priorities identified by the local academic communities; establish an integrated body of researchers based in the Portuguese speaking countries and integrate these into CODESRIA’s wider research programmes to the benefit of the wider research communities; and to strengthen capacity in the social sciences and comparative studies in the Lusophone environment in Africa.
Reforming the African Public Sector, Retrospect and Prospects (Printed)
Reforming the African Public Sector: Retrospect and Prospects is an in-depth and wide-ranging review of the available literature on African public sector reforms. It illustrates several differing country experiences to buttress the main observations and conclusions. It adopts a structural/institutional approach which underpins most of the reform efforts on the continent. To contextualize reform of the public sector and understand its processes, dynamics and intricacies, the book examines the state and state capacity building in Africa, especially when there can be no state without an efficient public sector. In addition, the book addresses a number of theories such as the new institutional economics, public choice and new public management, which have in one way or another influenced most of the initiatives implemented under public sector reform in Africa. There is also a survey of the three phases of public sector reform which have emerged and the balance sheet of reform strategies, namely, decentralization, privatization, deregulation, agencification, co-production and public-private partnerships. It concludes by identifying possible alternative approaches such as developing a vigorous public sector ethos and sustained capacity building to promote and enhance the renewal and reconstruction of the African public sector within the context of the New Partnerships for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), good governance and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
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