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Southern Africa: Co-operation and Conflict in an International Sub-System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Timothy M. Shaw
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Extract

Most attempts to explain the slowness and perversity of change in Southern Africa are deficient because not enough attention is paid to regional interactions. This review suggests that it is time to correct the over-concentration on the national or global relations of this international sub-system by the adoption of an intermediate level of analysis. We cannot understand the coexistence of confrontation and co-operation in Southern Africa without an examination of the patterns of dependence and interdependence among its black- and white-ruled states. The adoption of a regional approach here is particularly promising and suggestive as it indicates the need to revise the established conceptual framework for the study of subordinate state systems.

Type
Review Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1974 , pp. 633 - 655
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

Page 633 note 1 Barratt, John, ‘South Africa: intra-regional and international relations’, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 01 1973, especially pp. 1–9.Google Scholar

Page 633 note 2 Shaw, Timothy M., ‘Southern Africa: dependence, interdependence and independence in a regional sub-system’, Annual Social Science Conference of the East African Universities, Dar es Salaam, 12 1973.Google Scholar

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Page 643 note 1 The books reviewed here and the drafting of this article both pre-date the April 1974 coup in Portugal. This metropolitan political change has profound implications for the region, and serves to support the sub-systemic approach advocated here. Such an extra-regional event has implications for the pattern of relationships throughout Southern Africa.

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Page 653 note 1 First, Ruth, Steele, Jonathan, and Gurney, Christabel, The South African Connection: Western investment in apartheid (London, 1972).Google Scholar The logic of Afrikaner nationalism suggests the irrelevance of economic disengagement for the future of politics in the region.

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Page 655 note 1 Cf. Canton, Louis J. and Spiegel, Steven L., The International Politics of Regions: a comparative approach (Englewood Cliffs, 1970), p. 5.Google Scholar

Page 655 note 2 See Shaw, Timothy M., ‘The Military Situation and the Future of Race Relations in Southern Africa’, in Mazrui, Ali A. and Patel, Hasu H. (eds.), Africa in World Affairs: the next thirty years (New York, 1973), pp. 37–61.Google Scholar