It is now widely accepted that, in many cases, the democratization process that began in Africa in 1990 has been crippled by several factors (Chazan 1994; Bratton 1994; Lemarchand 1992). These factors range from weak patterns of state-society relations to economic disequilibium. Another potential obstacle that has received little examination is the trend, particularly in West Africa, of military rulers resigning their commissions and competing in “democratic” elections designed and supervised by their regimes (The New York Times, 24 October, 1996). We call this phenomenon political transmutation. In the past five years successful transmutation has occurred in Ghana, Niger, Chad and the Gambia. The attempt failed in Nigeria in 1993, but may soon be resurrected by the current military regime. Both the incidence of this type of transition and the likelihood that there will be additional attempts requires that we carefully study the circumstances that facilitate this type of transition.

Recent democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa suggest that the ruling authoritarian regimes may seek, although not always successfully, to retain power by any means necessary. For example, Haggard and Kaufman noted that often “authoritarian regimes do not permit fully competitive elections and rely on intimidation, manipulation and cooptation to restrict the activity of independent interest groups, and political opposition” (1995, 11). In almost all the cases such regimes were characterized by single, dominant parties led by civilians. Rarely do these cases involve military rulers. It appears that the favored option for the military is to become the power behind the throne after disengaging from direct governing. Several factors account for the armed forces' reluctance to transmute their regime through elections. One is the fear that such an attempt would eventually seriously weaken the military's corporate interests.

This article explores how international discourses on AIDS prevention have been incorporated into national-level programs that promote particular lifestyle and livelihood strategies in Zambia, particularly within the realms of wife inheritance, widowhood, and marriage. In response, Zambian communities have recast these narratives to inform local political economies, identities, and struggles for power. Often community and national-level efforts work at odds with each other, as each seeks to legitimize various moralities and codes of behavior. At the local level actors choose the strategies that most effectively mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS and also enhance their overall well-being.

Israel's relations with the developed world--both West and East--are well documented. Yet there is a dearth of material about its relations with the underdeveloped states of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This gap in documentation partly reflects Israel's own dilemma in the international system. Geographically it's a part of the Afro-Asian group, yet by inspiration and methods and technological sophistication it is different from that regional system, if not alien to it. This essay will attempt, through the usage of such standard empirical indicators as trade and diplomatic interaction, to shed some light upon Israel's relations with the states of sub-Saharan Africa.

Another indicator, and one which this study relies heavily upon, is the African reaction to the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. To assess the position of an African nation on that conflict, we have used its official reaction--if any--as well as the votes cast in the United Nations General Assembly on the various resolutions that were proposed during the Fifth Emergency Special Session assembled in the aftermath of the June War.

Israel's attention to the African states yields an interesting insight into the nature of the international system and the change it has undergone since the end of World War II. Proclaimed as a state in 1948, Israel was mainly concerned in its foreign policy to secure the help and the good will of the Great Powers that were dominant in world affairs.

Mozambique is a country that lends itself to metaphor—of high ideals, of challenge to the world system, and of unfulfilled aspirations. There, questions that elsewhere are raised in academic forums are articulated as matters of public policy: searching questions about the structures that perpetuate international inequality, the ability of a mass movement to erode the basis of worldwide domination, and aspirations for democracy amid pervasive poverty. In an extreme form, to be sure, Mozambique has gone the way of the continent—from lofty expectations to an increasingly marginal position in the international division of labor. This article is an attempt to discern the dynamics of marginalization in the world system. Informed by theoretical debates over the emerging international division of labor, this is an effort to rethink, and draw lessons from, one concrete historical experience: the global constraints and opportunities facing Mozambique.

Stated briefly, the core argument is that the concept of the international division of labor must be stretched to account fully for the regionalization of problems and solutions. While internationalization entails increasing integration into expanding financial markets and penetration by transnational corporations, Africa has not kept pace with the global manufacturing system and the related upsurge of export activities. Although industrialization is not a magic remedy for the problems of underdevelopment, upgrading the role of manufacturing is a key component of productive economic growth. However, efforts to promote manufacturing are constrained by market-based reforms insofar as they are anti-egalitarian and erode the basis of democracy at the very time when forces at home and abroad are pushing for democratization.

Political science as a discipline has ignored women in its research and consequently in its literature. Cathartic ranting and raving by feminist political scientists about the blindness of their male colleagues will not bring out the fundamental issues. The shortsightedness of political scientists about the political role? of women is not merely a function of the attitudes of the discipline's practitioners (the vast majority of whom have always been males). Nor can the whole problem of how political science views women be discarded with the observation that women are rarely influential actors in public activities and therefore do not merit the serious attention of observers of political life.

The invisibility of women in political science stems from the traditional concerns and emphases of the discipline which come, in turn, from its largely Western setting. By examining politics in other cultural settings, we can come to understand why women have received so little attention in political science. Only with a significant expansion of its scope can the discipline incorporate women into its analyses. The changing circumstances of politics around the world now mandates such an expansion. Nowhere is this more obviously the case than in Africa. Before examining how and why political scientists have ignored African women, it is important to review briefly political science as a discipline.

In The Age of Uncertainty, John Kenneth Galbraith, the noted Harvard economist, expressed some simple but profound thoughts on power, ideas, vested interests, and the politics of leadership. Galbraith's ideas have significant bearing on the concerns of this essay. First he argued (1977: 11) that “people have an enduring tendency to protect what they have, justify what they want to have. And their tendency is to see as right the ideas that serve such purpose. Ideas may be superior to vested interest. They are also very often the children of vested interest.” Second, he (ibid.: 13) observed that there is a unique relationship between power and income: Power flows unidirectionally from top down. Income (salary or wealth in Nigerian parlance) flows unidirectionally from bottom up. “As power flowed down, income extracted thereby flowed up. It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.” That is, power and influence are the means of making money, of securing favorable allocations of public resources to one's side, to one's group, and for protecting one's vested interests including socioeconomic class interests in any society.

Third, Galbraith (ibid.: 330) sees the essence of leadership as “the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time.” Since leadership inevitably involves the power and authority to decide for others, it becomes necessary for leaders to be “equipped with knowledge, self-confidence and self-esteem” (ibid.: 338), in order to make the right and equitably just decisions for the people, all the people. Thus, the problems of public policy, the problems of allocating resources, tax burdens, sacrifices during austere conditions, and in general, the problems of the authoritative allocation of values in an environment of scarcity always involve questions of power, self-interest, and leadership.

As the silence of male CRSV victims continues to be debated, some argue that gender norms and a lack of agency contribute to the silence of victims, even as others assert that victims exercise agency by speaking selectively about their experiences. In northern Nigeria, the concept of kunya—a model for appropriate behaviour rooted in the importance of secrecy and discretion—plays a role in the silencing of victims. We examine how kunya contributes to the invisibility of victims and influences their silence, as well as how victims use silence to gain social tolerability and/or protect themselves from re-victimization. We argue that an attentiveness to such community-specific cultural precepts and norms can further our understanding of the silence (and silencing) of victims and survivors.

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s 2018 novel De purs hommes fictionalizes recent incidents of homophobia in Senegal to interrogate the relationship between queer men and social dynamics in the country. This article demonstrates that the novel deploys multidirectional critical discourse and oblique narrative tactics to highlight the foundational role in Senegalese culture and society of the fraught dichotomy between private and public life. Bryson contends that the novel unearths these queer roots in order to incorporate all normative identities into queer existence, conceptually blurring the social barriers to LGBTQ+ agency in the country.

The comparative analysis of three “contested truths” around COVID-19 in East Africa demonstrates that knowledge is a product of knotted, uneven, and disputed epistemological practices tied to structures of power. Lee, Meek, and Katumusiime examine: (1) the construction of a pan-African skepticism of COVID-19 that drew on anti-imperialist discourses; (2) social media posts through which Tanzanian digital publics critically evaluated steam inhalation as an alternative therapeutic for COVID-19; and (3) the resistance by many Ugandans to complying with public health measures such as lockdowns. “Contested truths” is used as an analytical framework to center the specificity and situatedness of truth-making in East Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Academic freedom,” Ashby asserts, is “an internationally recognized and unambiguous privilege of university teachers.” Is this proposition confirmed by experience to date as regards the academic freedom of the foreign scholar in African universities? This is the central empirical question. Or is it merely a culture-bound affirmation of a normative ideal which it is hoped might be instituted as a universal right of university teachers, irrespective of citizenship status, tenure of appointments, and the political and university systems in which they serve? Indeed, is it an ideal which can be realized, however imperfectly, or in any event, ought to be categorically affirmed as a privilege of foreign scholars serving in universities anywhere? These are among the questions Ashby’s proposition provokes, and which require, at the outset, some disaggregation of the meanings and interpretations of such a highly normative and emotion-ridden concept, whose genesis and sustenance are undeniably sui generis to a particular cultural and historical experience.

The term, “brain drain,” has been controversial ever since the Royal Society (1963) coined it to refer to the emigration of British scientists to the United States and Canada. The ensuing debate has produced two schools of thought. The nationalists, such as Patinkin (1968) who assume that the brain drain is dysfunctional to nation-states and who more or less view the talented individual as a property of a nation-state, have found sympathetic audiences in most of the developing countries and also among the altruistic moralists of the developed world. The moralists are concerned with the propriety and logic of the recipient countries accepting brains from the underdeveloped while at the same time granting them foreign aid. In response, the internationalists, such as Johnson (1968), who assume that the brain drain is functional to the pervasive trend towards closer integration of world economy and community and who more or less view the talented individual as a commodity in the international rather than the national market, have also found an equally sympathetic audience, especially among the drainees themselves. Being even more underdeveloped than the other developing areas, Africa is seen by the moralists as an ideal example of the follies of the brain drain.

The significance of the UN Decade for Women, in Africa as a whole and in Senegal in particular, must be assessed not only in terms of what was gained and what was not, but also in terms of where we started and the odds we were up against. For women in Africa, the decade meant the droit a la parole — the right to speak out, and the right be heard -- whether this right was won or granted, exercised spontaneously or in organized ways, and even if it was controlled or censored. Discourse by women on women was opened. Women seized the right to speak for themselves about themselves, sometimes freely, and sometimes cautiously within imposed limits.