The question of whether particular types of legal institutions influence the effectiveness of the rule of law has long been answered with conjecture. Common law lawyers and judges tend to believe that the common law system is superior. This opinion is based on the idea that the common law system inherited from the British is more able to protect the rights of the individual than civil law judicial systems. Quite the opposite point of view can be found in lawyers from civil law countries, who may view the common law system as capricious and disorganised. This paper compares the effectiveness of the rule of law in common law and civil law countries in Africa, through a cross-national statistical comparison using Freedom House and Political Risk Services data. The comparison reveals that common law countries in Africa are generally better at providing ‘rule of law’ than are civil law countries.

Civil society has been a central force in political and economic reforms. The activities and even proliferation of civil groups have been seen by several authors as vital to the democratisation project and its sustenance. Only a few scholars have pointed to the roles that civil groups may play in undermining democracy and national stability. In Nigeria, civil society was in the vanguard of the democratic struggle, but recent events are pointing to the negative roles played by some civil groups in the construction of platforms for ethnic militancy and violent confrontation with other groups and the state. Based on evidence from three cases of civil groups, the paper identifies goals, methods, strategies and tendencies that indicate intense primordialism, militancy and violence. The study finds that in plural societies, civil society may become so parochial, divisive, divergent and disarticulative that it actually undermines democracy.

Between 1987 and 1999, Ghana's privatisation programme generated revenues for the government equivalent to about 14 per cent of GDP from a moribund public sector which had previously been dependent on state subventions, and thus succeeded in fulfilling a key role in easing the fiscal crisis and in fostering the Structural Adjustment Programme. The big question remained, however, whether the privatisation process would help the growth of Ghana's economy and help maximise political gains. This article reviews the experience of Ghana in privatising public enterprises, and assesses the impact of the ongoing privatisation programme on the Ghanaian economy. It suggests that, in spite of the high proceeds, the net direct revenues from privatisation have been relatively modest, due to the high outstanding credit sales, the high costs of divestiture and high outstanding liabilities of privatised firms. It also appears that the programme has placed too much emphasis on public finance rationalisation and faith in the market system, and too little on sociopolitical and regulatory issues. Equally, the inadequate attention given to post-privatisation regulation of privatised businesses, and the use of the divestiture programme as a political patronage instrument to reward the regime's friends and political insiders, has conferred limited success for privatisation in achieving its goal of enhancing efficiency, private sector investment and employment.

During the 1990s, African governments sought to translate their commitment to privatise state enterprises into action. In doing so, they faced questions concerning the form in which these enterprises would be sold, to whom and on what terms. This paper examines the privatisation of Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) between 1992 and 2000. It argues that the capacity of the Zambian government to determine the answers to these questions was constrained by a number of factors, of which the most important were the strategies pursued by potential purchasers, the demands of donors and the financial weakness of ZCCM itself.

The attitudes of ordinary people in Africa towards the liberalisation of politics and economies are not well known. Are there popular constituencies for reform? Which specific reform measures do different social groups accept or reject? And does popular support for structural adjustment, if any, go together with support for democracy? In an effort to find answers, this article reports results of a national sample survey in Ghana conducted in July 1999 as part of the Afrobarometer. The survey finds that the constituency for democracy is broader than the constituency for market reform, which is concentrated among educated male elites. In addition, while most Ghanaians are patient with democracy and want to retain this political regime, most Ghanaians are fatigued with adjustment and want the government to ‘change its policies now’. Given this distribution of popular preferences, one can surmise that democracy will be easier to consolidate than a market-based economy.

African countries are among those receiving the most foreign aid per capita. Many detractors blame that aid for encouraging dictatorship and undermining democracy. This article takes a contrary view. It analyses the relationship between the amount of development assistance given to sub-Saharan countries in the 1990s, and changes in their political systems. There is empirical evidence that arbitrary, unrepresentative government diminished in Africa. The data also suggest a positive, though small, correlation between development assistance and democratisation in the 1990s. The issue now facing many African countries is how to consolidate and extend these reforms on their own, with less external support.

When contemplating a return to their country of origin, exiled political opposition groups in Africa must consider the viability of their political reintegration. These considerations, in turn, must be carefully balanced against the benefits derived from life in exile. Using the exiled Mauritanian political opposition group Les Forces de Libération Africaine de Mauritanie (FLAM) as a case study, this essay attempts to identify the benefits of exile, which, in the case of FLAM, outweigh the uncertain benefits of domestic political reintegration. FLAM's presence abroad has facilitated the organisation's membership recruitment and retention and temporarily provided a base for military incursions. More importantly, FLAM's exile status has enhanced its international standing, liberated it from domestic constraints and provided it greater access to Western media and policy-makers.

This article considers the diplomatic strategies of African states within an evolving United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). It proposes that the prominence of certain ideas about economic development rises and falls not so much as a result of the nature of the ideas themselves, but as a result of opportunities made and unmade by the world economy. The world economy in turn changes the work mandates of international economic organisations like UNCTAD. The trajectory of African diplomatic strategies is important because it calls into question recent literature in international relations theory focusing almost exclusively on the experiences of industrialised states. In the case of African ideas in UNCTAD, underlying variables associated with the world economy destroyed the remnants of the Group of 77 coalition which had served as an agent for African representatives in UNCTAD. African diplomats have tried to realise whatever objectives they can in the changed circumstances without necessarily changing their ideas about development.

Like many other Sub-Saharan African countries, Ghana implemented an orthodox Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), to resuscitate its ailing economy, in the early 1980s. Subsequently, there has been a dramatic expansion in the production and export of processed wood. Based on an empirical study of Ghana's formal wood processing industry, this paper discusses the various determinants that have combined to boost the export-oriented output in the industry, particularly in the first decade of the programme, and assesses the extent to which the SAP-based policy actions account for the change. The study concludes that adjustment played a major role in the change, and suggests that even though SAP supporters and critics disagree on the nature, dynamics and effects of the programme, government measures under the programme are an indicator of what real commitment on the part of African governments can do to engender production expansion in comparable African manufacturing industries.

Despite earlier, negative experiences in East Africa, in early 1997 the government of Rwanda embarked on an ambitious programme for villagisation and resettlement. While the Rwanda authorities present the programme as entirely different from its predecessors, a review of those and of the implementation of villagisation and resettlement in Rwanda shows that this statement cannot hold. Nevertheless, the programme gets considerable support from international agencies. This article investigates how international agencies have accepted and upheld the ‘narrative of difference’ of the Rwandan authorities. It argues that, notwithstanding the claims of the government, lessons from the experiences with villagisation in Mozambique, Ethiopia and Tanzania are relevant for the Rwanda case and should be taken into account.

This paper enquires into the reasons for Uganda's 1998 intervention in the recent Congo war, arguably the most important impediment to economic and political progress in sub-Saharan Africa. It examines a number of prominent arguments about the intervention, and determines that the Rwanda–Uganda alliance should be at the centre of a ‘thick description’ of the intervention. That is, the Uganda–Rwanda alliance was the key to President Museveni's initial decision in 1998, but other explanations contribute to our understanding of the intervention by providing information about its context, justification and permissive causes. Further, the paper suggests that Uganda's initial reasons for entering Congo differ from its reasons for remaining there after having failed to realise its initial goals.

Civil society has been associated with challenges and popular struggles for state and democratic reforms. Though these may relate to the articulation of substantive ethnic, regional and communal demands, few studies have addressed the dynamics and ramifications of their engagement in struggles other than democratisation. This study focuses on the ramifications of the entrance of civil society into a regional resource agitation in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The study finds that civil society has flowered, taken over and escalated the struggle and constructed itself into a solid formation of regional resistance. Civil groups have reconstructed the agitation into a broad, participatory, highly mobilised and coordinated struggle and redirected it into a struggle for self-determination, equity and civil and environmental rights. The study denotes the roles that civil society can play in the sociopolitical process and reveals the dynamics of their encounters with the state and multinational corporations.

This paper presents three propositions about tax collection by local authorities in Tanzania. First, revenue performance depends on the degree of coercion involved in tax enforcement. Reciprocity does not seem to be an inherent component of the state–society relationship in connection with local government taxation. Second, the extent of coercion depends on the bargaining powers of the stakeholders involved in the tax enforcement process. In particular, coercive tax enforcement is facilitated when the ‘bargaining powers’ with respect to tax collection favour the council administration, and the elected councillors have no direct influence on collection. Third, the presence of donors in a local authority may be crucial by changing the ‘balance of power’ in favour of the council administration, with implications for accountability, responsiveness and democratic development. These results may explain why widespread differences in revenue performance between local authorities are observed.

The current international debate on aid to Africa seems to assume that public opinion matters, i.e. it presupposes the existence of a ‘bottom-up’ relationship between public opinion and aid policy. This paper shows that it is rather the other way round. It is only possible to understand the relationship between decision-making on aid and public opinion as a ‘top-down’ relationship. The conclusion is supported by case studies of five European aid donors: France, the UK, Germany, Denmark and the European Union. The ‘missing link’ between opinion and policy-making is mainly to be explained by the high degree of centralisation of decision-making and the weak link between government and society in this particular policy field. On the other hand, opinion surveys show that there are strong popular sentiments in Europe in favour of ‘helping the poor’. Also, surveys indicate that European public opinion believes that emergency assistance basically is the rationale for development aid. The humanitarian attitudes in favour of ‘helping the poor’ find an outlet in the growing amount of emergency assistance going to Africa, thus leaving decision-making on development aid to the elite in a typical top-down way.

Analysing the dynamics of agrarian change and economic diversification is central for understanding the current transformation of African countries under market reforms. This article examines the complex changes taking place in the densely populated Uluguru Mountains of Tanzania, and places the Uluguru case in the context of wider debates dealing with market liberalisation, economic diversification, poverty, and inequality. It argues that rural households are not ‘trapped in decline’ on the Uluguru Mountains, as depicted in previous literature. Under the harsh realities of farming in this area, households can improve their livelihoods in three ways – short of migrating and in addition to relying on remittances. These are to expand land cultivated in the surrounding plains, to experiment with alternative farming systems, and to increase non-farm income. Uluguru households are doing all of the above, with a certain degree of success. Economic diversification can thus play an important role in improving rural livelihoods in Tanzania and beyond, but this process is more likely to take place in locations with well-established economic ties and relatively good access to major markets.

Given that incomes in South Africa are distributed very unequally, it might be expected that the establishment of representative democracy would result in the adoption of redistributive policies. Yet overall inequality has not declined since 1994. The electoral and party system provides uneven pressure for redistribution. The fact that poor South Africans have the vote ensures that some areas of public policy do help the poor. The post-apartheid government not only inherited a surprisingly redistributive set of social policies (welfare, education and health care), but has made changes that entail even more redistribution. But these policies do little to help a core section of the poor in South Africa: the unemployed, and especially households in which no one is working. Other public policies serve to disadvantage this marginalised constituency: labour market and other economic policies serve to steer the economy down a growth path that shuts out many of the unskilled and unemployed. The workings of these policies remain opaque, making it unlikely that poor citizens will use their vote to effect necessary policy reforms.

Southern Sudanese civilian populations have been trapped in a rising tide of ethnicised, South-on-South, military violence ever since leadership struggles within the main southern opposition movement – the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) – split into two warring factions in August 1991. This paper traces the devastating impact of this violence on a particularly volatile and fractured region of contemporary South Sudan: the oil rich heartlands of the Western Upper Nile Province. Foregrounding the historical experiences and grassroots perspectives of Nuer civilian populations in this region, the paper shows how elite competition within the southern military has combined with the political machinations of the national Islamic government in Khartoum to create a wave of inter- and intra-ethnic factional fighting so intense and intractable that many Nuer civilians have come to define it as ‘a curse from God’. Dividing Sudan's seventeen-year-long civil war (1983–present) into four distinct phases, the paper shows how successive forms and patterns of political violence in this region have provoked radical reassessments of the precipitating agents and ultimate meaning of this war on the part of an increasingly demoralised and impoverished Nuer civilian population.

This article problematises the role of the state in what is claimed to be the ‘flagship’ of the South African Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) programme, the Maputo Development Corridor (MDC). The purpose is to assess to what extent the state is best understood as a ‘transmission belt’ for transnational capital or as a ‘facilitator’ for development. The study reveals several flaws in the MDC which reinforce the role of the state as a transmission belt for transnational capital, rather than as a facilitator for development. For instance, the neo-liberal market fundamentalism and big-bang approach inherent in the MDC spells ‘jobless growth’. Similarly, the notion that ‘good governance is less government’, implies that the state is to a large extent reduced to an ‘investment promotion agency’. Having said this, the MDC does contain several novel and positive features, and its problematic aspects can be overcome through some strategic changes in the MDC approach. These may be summarised as a heavier focus on ‘development’, a more pro-active state, and more comprehensive and inclusive governance structures.

The decentralisation programme in Mali received a boost when municipal elections were finally held in 1998–99. This programme, initiated in 1992, is notable for its scope and the degree of autonomy extended to rural and urban communes. Given Mali's history of failed attempts at decentralisation, the current administration's commitment to the programme suggests that political motives are driving the reform. The decentralisation effort began as an attempt to placate separatist Tuareg groups in the north of Mali, and was subsequently extended to include the rest of the country. I argue that the extent of the programme, as well as the relative zeal with which it has been carried out, are products of a political strategy of cooptation on the part of President Alpha Oumar Konaré. This political analysis of decentralisation serves as a supplement to policy analyses of decentralisation in general.

State responsiveness to pressures from women's movements in Africa has been limited. However, where inroads have been made, associational autonomy from the state and dominant party has proved critical. The women's movement is one of the most coordinated and active social movements in Uganda, and one of the most effective women's movements in Africa more generally. An important part of its success comes from the fact that it is relatively autonomous, unlike women's movements in earlier periods of Uganda's post-independence history. The women's movement, in spite of enormous pressures for cooptation, has taken advantage of the political space afforded by the semi-authoritarian Museveni government, which has promoted women's leadership to serve its own ends. Leaders and organisations reflect varying degrees of autonomy and cooptation. Nevertheless the women's movement has had a visible impact on policy as a result of its capacity to set its own far-reaching agenda and freely select its own leaders.