This book shows that powerful hereditary chiefs do not undermine democracy in Africa but, on some level, facilitate it.

Post-1994, South Africa's traditional leaders have fought for recognition, and positioned themselves as major players in the South African political landscape. Yet their role in a democracy is contested, with leaders often accused of abusing power, disregarding human rights, expropriating resources and promoting tribalism. Some argue that democracy and traditional leadership are irredeemably opposed and cannot co-exist. Meanwhile, shifts in the political economy of the former bantustans − the introduction of platinum mining in particular − have attracted new interests and conflicts to these areas, with chiefs often designated as custodians of community interests. This edited volume explores how chieftancy is practised, experienced and contested in contemporary South Africa. It includes case studies of how those living under the authority of chiefs, in a modern democracy, negotiate or resist this authority in their respective areas. Chapters in this book are organised around three major sites of contest: leadership, land and law.

Questions persist as to whether African traditional governance and democratic governance are compatible. Existing debate has traditionalists arguing that Africa's traditional chiefs are true representatives of their people, accessible, trustworthy, legitimate and therefore still important to the politics of Africa. Modernists on the other hand regard traditional leadership as chauvinistic, despotic, illegitimate and an irrelevant form of rule in a democracy. A third group argues for a 'mixed government' with modified traditional leadership. This book analyses claims that this leadership oppresses individuals and stifles general democratic participation. The book examines the influence of traditional leadership on people's political choice in electing leaders of democratic Malawi. It concludes that it is the existing interdependent path of survival between traditional leaders and politicians that infringes on freedom of political choice expressed through the right to vote. This undermines democracy. Both traditional leaders and politicians overlook the rights and welfare of the voter in an effort to sustain their authority and material benefit.

This study analyses the effects of democratic transition in two African countries - Cameroon and South Africa - on chiefs and the institution of chieftainship. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the monograph explores the cultural and socio-political conditions that enabled chiefs to reinvent themselves in the new era of democratic politics despite their status as 'old political actors'. It explores the kinds of legitimacies claimed by chiefs in the new era and the responses of their subjects to such claims, particularly with respect to chiefs' involvement in national politics. The monograph makes a case for the importance of comparative research on chiefs in the era of democracy and the predicaments they face therein. It contends that contrary to exhortations about the incompatibility of chiefs and democracy, the reality is that political transition in both South Africa and Cameroon produced contradictions, creating space and a role for chiefs in a fascinating and negotiated interplay of legitimacies and history.

Reviews recent lessons about decentralized governance and implications for future development programs and policies.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the traditional and modern exist side by side. There, traditional chiefs, subnational elites who enjoy elevated social status by virtue of their historical ties to their local area, work with formal governments and maintain an active role in the everyday lives of people across the region. Despite this pattern, we lack an understanding of how their influence shapes politics. To fill the gap, I examine how chiefs shape the central political economy of development outcomes of clientelism, social conflict, patronage, and opposition fragmentation. In the first paper, I describe how political parties leverage the social influence chiefs wield to hire them on as electoral intermediaries during elections. However, when chiefs are ineffectual partners, parties seek out alternative sources of social influence in the form of opinion leaders. In the second paper, I move to outlining how chiefs shape levels of social conflict. I argue that social conflict is most likely when chiefs are neither very weak nor very strong. In regions with midrange chiefs, authority is contested and violence a more likely tool of political redress. In the third paper, I return to the electoral world and ask how chiefs can make the electoral playing field more equal. I posit that the strongest chiefs can directly blunt the patronage swords incumbents wield by refusing to join the patronage coalition. Strong chiefs too, when aligned with incumbents during the democratic transition, indirectly facilitate opposition consolidation. Together, the dissertation papers demonstrate how chiefs affect outcomes with very real impacts on the material lives of people in the region. The dissertation contributes to a wider literature on the impact of traditional institutions and subnational elites on political outcomes in other parts of the world.

Drawing on field-based data and experiences from the practice of democratic decentralization and local governance over the last three decades in Ghana, this book examines whether and how democratic decentralization and local governance reforms in developing countries have produced the anticipated development outcomes. In seventeen related contributions, the authors present four relevant focal themes, including conceptual and historical trajectories of decentralization and local governance; institutional choice, democratic representation, and poverty reduction; local governance, resource capacity, and service delivery; and non-state actors, local governance and sustainable development. The book blends perspectives of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers to provide a holistic analysis of linkages between decentralization, local governance, and sustainable development efforts, presenting a novel and useful guide for science, policy, and practice of bottom-up governance and development. It provides relevant lessons and experiences for scholars, policy-makers, and development practitioners in Africa in particular and developing countries in general.