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Exploring the contentious landscape of Nigeria's escalating violence, this book describes the changing roles of traditional authorities in combatting contemporary security challenges.

Set against a backdrop of widespread security threats – including insurgency, land disputes, communal violence, regional independence movements, and widespread criminal activities – perhaps more than ever before, Nigeria's conventional security infrastructure seems ill-equipped for the job. This book offers a fresh, empirical analysis of the roles of traditional authorities – including kings, Ezes, Obas, and Emirs – who are often hailed as potent alternatives to the state in security governance. It complicates the assumption that these traditional leaders, by virtue of their customary legitimacy and popular roots, are singularly effective in preventing and managing violence. Instead, in exploring their creative adaptation to governance roles after a dramatic postcolonial downturn, this book argues that traditional leaders can augment, but not substitute, the state in addressing insecurity.

This book's in-depth analysis will be of interest to researchers and policy makers across African and security studies, political science, anthropology, and development.


David Ehrhardt is an Associate Professor of International Development at Leiden University, The Netherlands. His main research interests are African governance and educational innovation. David has published extensively on Nigeria and co-leads the Learning Mindset project that promotes autonomous learning in higher education.

David Oladimeji Alao is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, and Chief of Staff to the President/Vice Chancellor, Babcock University, Ogun State, Nigeria. Professor Alao has authored several articles and 3 edited books.


M. Sani Umar is a Professor in the Department of History and Diplomatic Studies, University of Abuja, Nigeria. His research centres on religious vio- lence and peace building, with a focus on understanding the roots of religious conflict and the dynamics of religious pluralism.

In Buur, L.; Kyed, H. M. (Eds.). State recognition and democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa.: A new dawn for traditional authorities?. New York, NY, USA: Palgrave MacMillanPalgrave studies in governance, security and development

A central feature of the Bechuanaland Protectorate was the wide jurisdiction accorded to the tribal chief or kgosi by the Administration. These traditional leaders were allowed by the colonial authorities to retain a considerable measure of autonomy and were able to regulate nearly all aspects of tribal life.

ABSTRACT
Chiefs in Malawi exercise significant authority based on legitimacy derived from the position's purportedly deep historical origins. But, does such legitimacy confer when a new chieftaincy is created from scratch? I address this question within the context of an ongoing cultural revival of the Lhomwe ethnic group in Malawi, which has included the appointment of many new Lhomwe chiefs and the creation of a Lhomwe paramount chieftaincy. Using a combination of in-depth interviews and original survey data, I explore the political drivers, mechanisms and implications of the this newly created Lhomwe chieftaincy. I find that its creation was driven by top-down, elite-led action rather than citizen demands, and that the newly appointed chiefs enjoy the most support among urban-based backers of the political party responsible for their appointments. This research contributes to historical work on the colonial-era creation of chieftaincies, but does so using a contemporary case of cultural engineering.

Langsamer Abbau der Machtbefugnisse der Häuptlinge nach der Unabhängigkeit. Versuch, sie über Integration in den öffentlichen Dienst zu Staatsbeamten zu machen. Widerstand der Häuptlinge diesen Bestrebungen gegenüber und der Versuch, so viel wie möglich von ihrer traditionellen Rolle am Leben zu erhalten und entsprechende Funktionen weiter auszuüben. (DÜI-Hlb)

The Sudan Handbook, based on the Rift Valley Institute's successful Sudan Field Course, is an authoritative and accessible introduction to Sudan, vividly written and edited by leading Sudanese and international specialists. The handbook offers a concise introduction to all aspects of the country, rooted in a broad historical account of the development of the Sudanese state. It consists of eighteen self-contained, cross-referenced chapters, covering essential topics in the geography, history, sociology, culture and politics of the country, written by outstanding Sudanese scholars and recognized international experts. It includes numerous purpose-drawn maps and diagrams, glossaries of key terms, capsule biographies of key figures, a chronology and a bibliography.

While forms of authority that descend from social or cultural tradition are commonly understood as archaic, traditional authorities often survive and occasionally even thrive during the formation of modern states. Chieftaincies do not only endure in the Ghanaian countryside but also proliferate in new neighbourhoods on the peripheries of Ghana's fast-growing cities. We develop an explanation for the endurance of traditional authorities, based on extensive fieldwork in one recently developed neighbourhood in a previously uninhabited part of Greater Accra, where we conducted interviews and analysed documents from the archives of the chief's Divisional Council. We show that the formation of a modern state has restricted the chiefs' discretion as sovereigns but afforded them greater power as managers of the land and gatekeepers of the state bureaucracy. Traditional authority is not overwritten but rather refined, transformed and stabilized in the process of state formation.

Paper presented at the Twelfth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASC), University of Gloucestershire, UK, 14-18 July 2008 ; Colonial governments 'invented' tradition in order to serve their interests in Africa. This made traditional institutions pivotal in the resilience and perpetuation of colonial rule. In Zimbabwe, the postcolonial state is in the process of 're-inventing' its subordinate version of traditional authority, which has enhanced its support base at the time its legitimacy is increasingly being questioned. This paper looks at how the year 2000 re configuration of traditional leadership impacted on customary law and democratic governance in rural Zimbabwe. It particularly explores how this is reflected within the sphere of natural resource management. It will demonstrate how the reconfiguration of traditional authority in Zimbabwe has undermined the accountability and legitimacy of traditional authorities in the north-western parts of Zimbabwe. This is being done through selectively appealing to the past in order to legitimate current practices - despite the historical contradictions. The Zimbabwean context further demonstrates that this legitimating process is based on two grounds. Firstly, the state wants the rural citizens to accept their oppressive version of traditional authorities. Their legitimacy is said to be unquestionable since it is based on an 'established tradition.' Secondly, the oppressive state policies are getting de jure recognition through passing of legislation - mainly the Traditional Leaders Act of 1998. This attribute is peculiar to the Zimbabwean state's determination to hide the oppressive state policies beneath the veneer of 'acting within the law' albeit it's arbitrary implementation. Chiefs are now largely viewed as localized state despots who are helping reproduce the postcolonial state whilst undermining their local credibility.

This dissertation addresses the role that tribal chiefs play in electoral politics in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily local politics in Ghana. To examine these issues, the dissertation uses a combination of cross-national public opinion survey data along with original survey data from approximately 3000 households in southern Ghana. The argument put forth in the dissertation is that strong chiefs serve as vote mobilizers for local candidates in exchange for being allowed to extract informal taxation. This collusion is hypothesized to lead to increased individual turnout in elections, decreased electoral competitiveness, and decreased quality of public service delivery. Methodologically, the dissertation estimates a measure of chiefly power using households' contributions of informal taxation, typically in the form on in-kind communal labor. In order to address the causal inference problem of studying informal political institutions, the dissertation uses a natural experiment of early 20th century railroads that are argued to have weakened the cultural power of chiefs. The findings support the idea that strong chiefs drive voter turnout in local elections, leading to less competition. However, the public service delivery and welfare consequences of strong traditional authority institutions are more muted.

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Economics from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics ; Local elites in developing African countries, the so-called Traditional Authorities, still hold considerable power over rural communities, namely they are likely to have a decisive influence on their voting behavior. This study measures this influence using data collected through a field experiment for Aker, Collier and Vicente (2011) during the Mozambican elections of 2009 in 161 locations. The results obtained point to a positive correlation between a set of indicators of the power of Traditional Authorities and both voter turnout and the vote for Frelimo, the incumbent.