Author Description

The 9 contributors to this volume are Africanists whose comprehension of the political "vernacular" of Africa helped to sharpen their analyses of a continent on the eve of a new millennium and in the aftermath of the Cold War. The debate over the most relevant political models for African countries has till recently been conducted against a backdrop of the competing claims of socialism and capitalism. Attempts to consolidate democracy and constitutional have taken place in the shadow of intractable economic problems, prompting the question of whether democracy can survive in Africa without economic prosperity. The papers published here address many of these problems, as well as dealing with the questions of ethnicity, leadership, the power of the military, and prodemocracy movements within African nation states.