Catherine Boone examines political regionalism in Africa and how it affects forms of government, and prospects for democracy and development. Boone's study is set within the context of larger theories of political development in agrarian societies. It features a series of compelling case studies that focus on regions within Senegal, Ghana, and Cote d'Ivoire and ranges from 1930 to the present. The book will be of interest to readers concerned with comparative politics, Africa, development, regionalism and federalism, and ethnic politics. Multi-country study of politics and political development in Africa. Book places African political development in the mainstream of studies of state-formation in agrarian studies. Study combines macrosociology with choice-theoretic perspectives in Political Science.

Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice

Colonial relations of political administration are being reproduced in the current era of participation and decentralisation. In natural resource management, participation and decentralisation are promoted on the basis that they can increase equity, yield greater efficiency, benefit the environment and contribute to rural development. Reaping these benefits is predicated on (1) the devolution of some real powers over natural resources to local populations, and (2) the existence of locally accountable authorities to whom those powers can be devolved. However, a limited set of highly circumscribed powers are being devolved to locally accountable authorities, and most local authorities to whom powers are being devolved are systematically structured to be upwardly accountable to the central state, rather than downwardly accountable to local populations. Many of the new laws being passed in the name of participation and decentralisation administer rather than enfranchise. The article examines the historical legal underpinnings of the powers and accountability of state-backed rural authorities (chiefs and rural councils), the authorities through which current natural resource management projects in Burkina Faso and in Mali represent local populations, and the decisions being devolved to local bodies in new natural resource management efforts. Without reform local interventions risk reproducing the inequities of their centralised political-administrative context. Rather than pitting the state against society by depicting the state as a negative force and society and non-state institutions as positive—as is done in many decentralisation and participatory efforts—this article suggests that representation through local government can be the basis of general and enduring participation by society in public affairs.

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Decentralisation, participation and accountability in Sahelian forestry: legal instruments of political-administrative control.

The designations employed in UNRISD publications, which are in conformity with United Nations practice, and the presentation of material therein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNRISD concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The responsibility for opinions expressed rests solely with the author(s), and publication does not constitute endorsement by UNRISD. Contents Acronyms ii Defining Decentralization ii Acknowledgements iii Foreword iv Summary/Résumé/Resumen v Summary v Résumé vi Resumen vii

African decentralization : local actors, powers and accountability

Preface Introduction 1 Encounters 2 Rice Origins and Indigenous Knowledge 3 Out of Africa: Rice Culture and African Continuities 4 This Was "Woman's Wuck" 5 African Rice and the Atlantic World 6 Legacies Notes References Index

Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas

The standard model for the diffusion of innovations in consumer behavior does not adequately account for the incorporation of novel items of non-local origin into the material culture inventory of Hausa-speaking peasants in Niger. A synthetic, culturally relative model composed of elements drawn from the standard diffusion paradigm, from world-systems theory, and from economic and symbolic anthropology provides a more satisfactory account of these processes. Analysis shows that novel goods provide a medium through which alternative paradigms of consumer behavior and reality contend. Among the Hausa, a premarket model, a Western market-mediated model, and an Islamic ethnonationalist model compete for consumer affiliation.

Toward a Broadened Theory of Preference Formation and the Diffusion of Innovations: Cases from Zinder Province, Niger Republic

Afrique noire, l'ère coloniale 1900-1945

LE 31 Decembre 1957, paraissait au Journal Officiel de la Guinee Francaise, un arrete signe de Keita Fodeba, Ministre de l'Interieur du gouvernement de la ‘;loi-cadre’, portant suppression sur le territoire de la Guinee de la ‘chefferie dite coutumiere’. Nul ne conteste que, sans la suppression de la chefferie, le succes du ‘Non’ en Guinee, lors du referendum constitutionnel du 28 septembre 1958 n'eut pas ete assure. Quelques semaines apres le referendum, M. Jacques Rabemananjara (aujourd'hui ministre du gouvernement de Madagascar), prefacant le volume qui publiait le compte rendu de la ‘Conference des Commandants de cercle’, tenue a Conakry les 25–26 juillet 1957, ecrivait:L'un des bastions du regime [colonial], son artillerie lourde, celle qu'il n'engage que dans les circonstances graves, s'appelle la feodalite africaine.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0021853700006538

Jean Suret-Canale

Papers

Afrique noire, l'ère coloniale 1900-1945

La Fin de la Chefferie En Guinee

Afrique noire occidentale et centrale

La République de Guinée

Essays on African History: From the Slave Trade to Neocolonialism