ASRC 3600 - Government and Politics in Africa

@ (SBA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

A. Mazrui.

Deals with power and political participation in Africa. Topics include the colonial background and its political consequences, the precolonial continuities in the post-colonial politics; ethnicity and allegiance in the African polity; and the monarchical tendency in African political culture. Discussion covers a spectrum of topics from the warrior tradition to the military coup in the post-colonial era; from the elder tradition to presidential gerontocracy; from the sage tradition to intellectual meritocracy. Other major topics include class versus ethnicity in African politics; the one-party versus the multiparty state; sociocultural versus socioeconomic ideologies; the gender question in African politics; the soldier and the state; and the African political experience in a global context.