Suchergebnisse

The concept of neopatrimonial rule was first applied to Africa in 1978, when Jean-François Médard undertook to account for the Cameroonian state"s lack of institutionalization and "underdevelopment". The lack of distinction between office and officeholder, Médard went on, is masked behind discourses, juridical norms and institutions that nourish the illusion of a legal-bureaucratic logic. In the absence of a legitimizing ideology, the ruler owes his ability to remain in power to his capacity for transforming his monopolistic control over the state into a source of opportunities for family, friends and clients. Neopatrimonialism in Africa is still classically viewed as the outcome of confusion between office and officeholder within a state endowed, at least formally, with modern institutions and bureaucratic procedures. The introduction of "neo" as a prefix, means that neopatrimonialism is freed from the historical configurations to which patrimonialism had been associated by Weber. The display of legal-bureaucratic norms and structures coexists with relations of authority based on interpersonal rather than impersonal interactions. This coexistence of patrimonialism with legal-bureaucratic elements, begs the key question of the forms of interaction and their outcomes. Indeed, neopatrimonialism infers a "dualistic situation, in which the state is characterized by patrimonialisation, as well as by bureaucratization". Such dualism translates into a wide array of empirical situations. What is ultimately at stake, however, is the state's capacity (or lack thereof) to produce 'public policies: political systems where patrimonial practices tend to be regulated and capped should be distinguished from those where the patrimonialisation of the state has become all-encompassing, with the consequent loss of any sense of public space or public policy.

Economic and financial relations between the European Union and « new » South Africa were characterized by a rapid process 0} normalization following the general elections of27 April 1994. Much more problematic has been the process of negotiating a long term relationship which should result in the implementation of a Eu-South Africa free trade area over a ten year transition period, and a qualified membership of South Africa in the Lome Convention. The analysis 0} current negotiations reveals how the parties' mutual concern for the World Trade Organisation principles is constantly tempered by their equally strong commitment to Systems of regional preferences. At a time when the future of the Lome Convention has become a matter of official discussion by the EU and the ACP states, the revival of regional integration programmes in Southern Africa confers to the negotiations between the EU and South Africa a special value. Indeed, they prefigure as a test on the capacity to integrate the realities of new trade regionalism in euro-African relations.

Examines development of Nigeria's federal government system and need for its reform, in light of economic recession and refusal of the military regime to hand over power to a civilian government. Summaries in English and Spanish p. 450 and 464.

Traces African-EEC political and trade relations since the 1957 Treaty of Rome, focusing on the declining commercial and financial flows in the 1980s; 7 articles. Summaries in English p. 165-6.

Europe and Africa : regionalism without co-prosperity.
The current trend towards concentration of international trade and financial flows around the «Triad» invites Europe to translate regionalism in terms of integration. New policies, based on proximity linkages, are being developed with Eastern Europe and the Maghreb states. In subsaharan Africa, the colonial past is so recent that it influences deeply attemps to renovate existing polity frameworks. Economic transitions also appear impossible to conceive without prior inclusion of non viable staes into larger entities. Notwithstanding the potentials attributed to South Africa and Nigeria, subsaharan Africa lacks regional powers capable of combining hegemonic functions towards sub-regional integration and external mediation for access to the world economy.