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The administrative state is a powerful tool because it can control the population and, in moments of crisis, help leaders put down popular threats to their rule. But a state does not act; bureaucrats work through the state to carry out a leader's demands. In turn, leaders attempt to use their authority over the state to manage bureaucrats in a way that induces bureaucratic behavior that furthers their policy and political goals. Focusing on Kenya since independence, Hassan weaves together micro-level personnel data, rich archival records, and interviews to show how the country's different leaders have strategically managed, and in effect weaponized, the public sector. This nuanced analysis shows how even states categorized as weak have proven capable of helping their leader stay in power. With engaging evidence and compelling theory, Regime Threats and State Solutions will interest political scientists and scholars studying authoritarian regimes, African politics, state bureaucracy, and political violence.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-237) ; Daniel C Hallin and Paolo Mancini's Comparing Media Systems (2004) has been hailed as an important contribution to understanding the inter-relationship between the media and political systems. The work was, however, based on a study of 18 stable, mature and highly developed democracies either in Europe or in North America. As an emerging democracy that has recently undergone dramatic change in both its political system and its media, South Africa's inclusion poses particular challenges to Hallin and Mancini's Three Models paradigm. This thesis focuses on the South African print media and tests both the paradigm's theoretical underpinnings as well as its four principle dimensions of analysis: political parallelism, state intervention, development of a mass market and journalistic professionalisation. A range of insights and a number of modifications are proposed. This thesis is based on interviews with South Africa's most senior media executives and editors, a comprehensive study of the relevant literature and 15 years of personal experience as a political analyst, columnist and parliamentary correspondent covering South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy. The thesis sheds new light on the functioning and applicability of the Three Models comparative paradigm as well as on the development and future trajectory of South African print media journalism.

AbstractThe global interest in research on the political economy of reparations has been rekindled by recent developments in the United States of America, but much of this renewed investigation is misinformed, distorted, or limited to recycling what is already known. Recent work by Darity and Mullen is an exception. They have contributed eloquently to age‐old debates on reparations for emancipated enslaved Africans. This essay examines their work in the context of historical movements against economic apartheid in the United States, its origins, and how it can be overcome. The focus of this essay is on how reparations should be considered as a response to the entire history of racism‐cum‐discrimination, which has consistently blocked economic opportunities for African Americans. Reparations , if adhered to, will either directly or indirectly modify the economic injustices that continue to face African Americans in their adopted nation (America). Central to any new case for reparations is the power of land, which offers to breathe new life into the broken, old promise of "forty acres and a mule" as a means of addressing long‐term social stratification in modern America.

The young people of the Cameroon Grassfields have been subject to a long history of violence and political marginalization. For centuries the main victims of the slave trade, they became prime targets for forced labor campaigns under a series of colonial rulers. Today's youth remain at the bottom of the fiercely hierarchical and polarized societies of the Grassfields, and it is their response to centuries of exploitation that Nicolas Argenti takes up in this absorbing and original book.Beginning his study with a political analysis of youth in the Grassfields from the eighteenth century to the

Lately the African continent has been the focus of global attention and discussions on the present and future of Africa, especially with regards to the highly topical questions concerning the global and African state of peace and security. As multiple extremely complex armed conflicts continue to cause chronic instability and vulnerabilities in several African states and regions, they also directly affect the state of international security in the 21st century in an intensively interconnected and globalized world from an economic, political and peace/security perspective. Accordingly, this research article offers an in-depth analysis of some of the major causes and explanations of the existing wars in Africa related to the illicit exploitation of resources, vulnerability, and control. The goal of this work is to reveal and analyze the complexity of 21st-century wars in Africa and their deep interrelated causes by applying the example of the long and banal armed conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Thus, the authors argue that the destabilization of the political and socio-economic situation in Africa, and DRC in particular, is directly connected to local and regional conflicts over access to various forms of resources, influence, and power, but also to the artificially created chaos by various interested power parties for expansion, profit, and hope for further profit. In this sense, it has been emphasized that conflicts of so-called 'low intensity', artificially maintained over a long period of time, pose no lesser degree of threat to the regional state of peace and security.