Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

here, but often with some revealing new insight; and only an exceptionally eclectic and voracious reader would fail to find new material. Even so familiar a subject as the Indian railways produces some fresh touches: Headrick remarks that British investors, under the government guarantee system (of 5 percent return on their capital), were not gambling on the profitability of railway operation in India but on the continuing ability of the British Raj to collect taxes; and India was the only nation with a major rail network that failed to industrialize during its railway boom. He describes a masterful use of technical requirements to keep out commercial rivals while maintaining a free trade ideology and a later masterful use of procrastination and indecision to avoid a hard choice between a declining British industry and an emerging India. Ironies abound. Earnest and laborious, although underfunded, efforts produced successful agricultural research programs (for export cash crops, of course) in Indonesia, India, and Malaya. But although research in Indochina "had been disorganized, unfocused, and erratic," it didn't matter, "because neighboring colonies had developed profitable plants and techniques" (p. 231) readily borrowed or stolen by French planters. Nevertheless, the French regime established something the British Raj in India never did. Its Office Indochinois du Riz, established in 1930-31, applied modern research techniques to a major peasant food and subsistence crop. Some fascinating people figure in these case studies, from the Indian geologist Pramatha Nath Bose—whose work made possible the success of Tata Iron and Steel, but only after he resigned from the service of a British Indian government that opposed such efforts—to men like Nigeria's Herbert S. H. Macaulay, Africa's first black civil engineer, who was sent to England to study surveying, civil engineering, and piano tuning. Colonial administrators often thought of technical education in terms of preindustrial crafts and not modern professions, not just out of racism (although there was plenty of that). Many were conservative, in a sense refugees from their own industrialized cultures, who wished to protect and conserve the "best elements" of the colonial cultures from rapid change. Both colonizers and colonized had ambiguous attitudes, which made it easier to transfer technology for transport and communication but difficult to transfer technology for import substitution. Asians and Africans had entrepreneurial skills, but only rarely combined with capital and an understanding of Western technology; and even a great success, such as the Tatas in India or smallholder rubber growers in Malaya, were at the mercy of government policies.

Ethnic Groups in Conflict

The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, depoliticization and bureaucratic power in Lesotho

Part I. Introduction: Developing a Regional Approach to Global Security: 1. Theories and histories about the structure of contemporary international security 2. Levels: distinguishing the regional from the global 3. Security complexes: a theory of regional security Part II. Asia: 4. South Asia: inching towards internal and external transformation 5. Northeast and southeast Asian security complexes during the Cold War 6. The 1990s and beyond: an emergent east Asian complex Conclusion Part III. The Middle East and Africa: Introduction 7. The Middle East: a perennial conflict formation 8. Sub-saharan Africa: security dynamics in a setting of weak and failed states Conclusions Part IV. The Americas: 9. North America: the sole superpower and its surroundings 10. South America: an under-conflictual anomaly? Conclusion: scenarios for the RSCs of the Americas Part V. The Europes: Introduction: 11. EU-Europe: the European Union and its 'near abroad' 12. The Balkans and Turkey 13. The post-Soviet space: a regional security complex around Russia Conclusion: scenarios for the European supercomplex Part VI. Conclusions: 14. Regions and powers: summing up and looking ahead 15. Reflections on conceptualising international security.

http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/3437/1/75.pdf

Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security

1. Equilibrium party hegemony 2. Structural determinants of mass support 3. Budget cycles under autocracy 4. The politics of vote-buying 5. Judging economic performance in hard times 6. Ideological divisions in the opposition camp 7. How voters choose and mass coordination dilemmas 8. Electoral fraud and the game of electoral transitions 9. Conclusion.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/cpworkshop/papers/Magaloni.pdf

Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico

In this article, the author assesses the nature and the impact of the May 2005 Ethiopian parliamentary elections on Ethiopian politics. The elections, although controversial and flawed, showed significant gains for the opposition but led to a crisis of the entire democratization process. The author revisits Ethiopian political culture in the light of neopatrimonial theory and asks why the political system has stagnated and slid back into authoritarianism. Most analyses of post-1991 Ethiopian politics discuss the formal aspects of the political system but do not pay sufficient attention to power politics in a historical perspective. There is a continued need to reconceptualize the analysis of politics in Ethiopia, and Africa in general, in more cultural and historical terms, away from the formal political science approaches that have predominated. The success of transitional democracy is also dependent on a countervailing middle class, which is suppressed in Ethiopia. Furthermore, political-judicial institutions are still precarious, and their operation is dependent on the current political elite and caught in the politics of the ruling party. On the basis of the electoral process, the post-election manoeuvring, the role of opposition forces, and the violent crisis in late 2005, the author addresses the Ethiopian political process in the light of governance traditions and resurrected neopatrimonial rule that, in effect, tend to block further democratization. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. (Comment by Tobias Hagmann: in African Affairs, vol. 105, no. 421 (2006), p. 605-612, with a reply by Abbink on p. 613-620.) [Journal abstract]

/pdf/discomfiture-of-democracy-the-2005-election-crisis-in-1lrhfegwri.pdf

Discomfiture of democracy? The 2005 election crisis in Ethiopia and its aftermath

This paper introduces a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies devoted to a review of Ethiopia's 20 years of “revolutionary democracy”. The collection brings together 11 articles exploring differing aspects of Ethiopia's political experience since 1991. This introduction begins with a short summary of these 11 papers, but then moves to a substantive review of Ethiopia's political history over the past two decades, featuring consideration of the extent of transformation and continuity under the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the importance of economic issues in defining government policies, and the significance of development and relations with donors.

Twenty years of revolutionary democratic Ethiopia, 1991 to 2011

State mega-infrastructure projects in developing countries evoke challenges to citizenship and reconstruct the imagery of statecraft. The Ethiopian government’s construction of a large dam in the Omo River evoked contesting accounts of development and legitimate governance among a variety of actors. Debates between relevant actors centre on classic topoi of the ‘development’ discourse but present seemingly irreconcilable views. In the process, discourses of technocratic expertise claiming to evade ‘politics’ as well as culturally grounded socio-economic narratives are mobilised. They are juxtaposed here to develop an anthropological interpretation of the discursive positions, connecting the analysis to a consideration of precarious citizenship and coercive state consolidation in Ethiopia.

/pdf/dam-controversies-contested-governance-and-developmental-3ff5zuep62.pdf

Dam controversies: contested governance and developmental discourse on the Ethiopian Omo River dam

Many inter-State and intra-State conflicts in Africa become more complex by being extended into 'proxy wars', i.e. secondary, often 'low intensity' armed conflicts, pursued in the context of a major power struggle, or outright wars between States carried out by subsidiary or co-opted insurgent movements, usually of an ethno-regional nature. In the Horn of Africa, the proxy war phenomenon is visible owing to alliances behind the scenes, the involvement of neighbouring countries, and frequent changes of allegiance. The proxy war strategy was pursued by both players in the 1998-2000 border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, not only in the enemy country but also in neighbouring States. Since the peace agreement of June 2000, the importance and impact of the proxy war factor has declined somewhat, but whether this decline will contribute to the building of a 'lasting peace' is not at all certain. The experience of tenuous negotiation during the past two years seems to indicate otherwise. The author argues that the threat of regional instability by proxy conflict remains, as long as the Ethiopian and Eritrean regimes are unwilling to make real peace with each other. App. (list of insurgent movements), bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]

/pdf/ethiopia-eritrea-proxy-wars-and-prospects-of-peace-in-the-31vkrbqlqy.pdf

Ethiopia—Eritrea: proxy wars and prospects of peace in the horn of Africa

Preface G.Hesseling Introduction: Rethinking Democratization and Election Observation J.Abbink PART I: THE CONTEXT OF ELECTIONS IN AFRICA Democratization in Africa: The Role of Election Observation O.van Cranenburgh Elections in Africa in Historical Context S.Ellis Stability or Democracy: On the Role of Monitors, Media and Miracles I.van Kessel Elections and Civil Strife: Some Implications for International Election Observation B.de Gaay Fortman PART II: CASE STUDIES African Multipartyism and the Quest for Democratic Alternatives: Ugandan Elections Past and Present M.Doornbos Of Election, Manipulation and Observation: The 1992 and 1997 Elections in Kenya D.Foeken & T.Dietz The Organization and Observation of Elections in Federal Ethiopia: Retrospect and Prospect J.Abbink Secret Worlds, Democratization and Election Observation in Malawi R.van Dijk The 1996-1997 Elections in Chad: The Role of the International Observers R.Buijtenhuijs Elections in Mali (1992-1997): Civil Society Confronted with the Rules of Democracy M.F.Lange PART III: NEW PERSPECTIVES? POLICY ISSUES AND ELECTORAL OBSERVATION IN AFRICA International Election Observation: A Discussion on Policy and Practice W.van Binsbergen & J.Abbink Election Observation: Policies of the Netherlands Government 1992-1997 O.van Cranenburgh The Kenyan General Elections of 1997 Implementing a New Model for International Election Observation in Africa M.Rutten Index

Election observation and democratization in Africa

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