"... refreshing and provocative... a significant addition to existing literature on African politics." -- Stephen Ellis "It opens up a whole new field of investigation, and brings into focus the pertinence of an interdisciplinary approach to African politics." -- René Lemarchand In this innovative work, Michael G. Schatzberg reads metaphors found in the popular press as indicators of the way Africans come to understand their political universe. Examining daily newspapers, popular literature, and political and church documents from across middle Africa, Schatzberg finds that widespread and deeply ingrained views of government and its relationship to its citizenry may be understood as a projection of the metaphor of an idealized extended family onto the formal political sphere. Schatzberg's careful observations and sensitive interpretations uncover the moral and social factors that shape the African political universe while showing how some African understandings of politics and political power may hamper or promote the development of Western-style democracy. Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa looks closely at elements of African moral and political thought and offers a nuanced assessment of whether democracy might flourish were it to be established on middle African terms.

This book takes as its theme the ways in which governments legitimate their rule, both to themselves and to their subjects. Its introduction explores legitimacy and pre-colonial states, but the three sections of the book deal with colonial legitimacy, the question of legitimation in the transition from colonialism to majority rule, and the contemporary debate about accountability.

An innovative examination of our understanding of political legitimacy in Mali, and its wider implications for democratization and political modernity in the Global South.

A radical, interdisciplinary reworking of legitimation, using ethnographic insights to explore everyday non-state authority in Tanzania.

In Para-States and Medical Science, P. Wenzel Geissler and the contributors examine how medicine and public health in Africa have been transformed as a result of economic and political liberalization and globalization, intertwined with epidemiological and technological changes. The resulting fragmented medical science landscape is shaped and sustained by transnational flows of expertise and resources. NGOs, universities, pharmaceutical companies and other nonstate actors now play a significant role in medical research and treatment. But as the contributors to this volume argue, these groups have not supplanted the primacy of the nation-state in Africa. Although not necessarily stable or responsive, national governments remain crucial in medical care, both as employers of health care professionals and as sources of regulation, access, and – albeit sometimes counterintuitively - trust for their people. “The state” has morphed into the “para-state” — not a monolithic and predictable source of sovereignty and governance, but a shifting, and at times ephemeral, figure. Tracing the emergence of the “global health” paradigm in Africa in the treatment of HIV, malaria, and leprosy, this book challenges familiar notions of African statehood as weak or illegitimate by elaborating complex new frameworks of governmentality that can be simultaneously functioning and dysfunctional. Contributors. Uli Beisel, Didier Fassin, P. Wenzel Geissler, Rene Gerrets, Ann Kelly, Guillaume Lachenal, John Manton, Lotte Meinert, Vinh-Kim Nguyen, Branwyn Poleykett, Susan Reynolds Whyte

For decades, US foreign policy in the Middle East has been on autopilot: Seek Arab-Israeli peace, fight terrorism, and urge regimes to respect human rights. Every US administration puts its own spin on these initiatives, but none has successfully resolved the region’s fundamental problems. In Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East? a bipartisan group of leading experts representing several academic and policy disciplines unravel the core causes of instability in the Middle East and North Africa. Why have some countries been immune to the Arab Spring? Which governments enjoy the most legitimacy and why? With more than half the region under 30 years of age, why does education and innovation lag? How do resource economies, crony capitalism, and inequality drive conflict? Are ethnic and sectarian fault lines the key factor, or are these more products of political and economic instability? And what are the wellsprings of extremism that threaten not only the United States but, more profoundly, the people of the region? The answers to these questions should help policymakers and students of the region understand the Middle East on its own terms, rather than just through a partisan or diplomatic lens. Understanding the pillars of instability in the region can allow the United States and its allies to rethink their own priorities, adjust policy, recalibrate their programs, and finally begin to chip away at core challenges facing the Middle East. Contributors: Thanassis Cambanis Michael A. Fahy Florence Gaub Danielle Pletka Bilal Wahab A. Kadir Yildirim