afrasia.ryukoku.ac.jp/eng/info/ In working paper 15 on the African state suggest ;“Poverty and other issues associated with development are commonly found in many Asian and African countries. These problems are interwoven with ethnic, religious and political issues, and often lead to incessant conflicts with violence. In order to find an appropriate framework for the conflict resolution, we need to develop a perspective which will fully take into account the wisdom of relevant disciplines such as economics, politics and international relations, as well as that fostered in area studies. “ In his Overview on the on going debate about the African State Masahisa Kawabata; in the Working Paper Series No.15 2006 suggests that ; The Africanness of the state is determined in terms of the relationship of the state to the particular African society within its territory of jurisdiction. The post colonial African state is shaped by its colonial history. In terms of the origin and emergence of current approach to the study of the African state, the author traces this new trend back to Europe and in the USA; “Firstly, there was a new trend in research into African politics in Europe and the US. Jackson and Rosberg presented their paper “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist”;(Jackson and Rosberg 1982a; Kohli ed. 1986) at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 1981, and published Personal Rule in Black Africa (Jackson and Rosberg 1982b)”. “At the same time, research into “politics from below” (le politique par le bas) began in France in 1980 and the quarterly journal Politique Africaine was inaugurated in 1981”. There was at the same time ongoing debate between International financial institutions and the African state in relation to economic stagnation. Resurgence of the debate in the mid 1990s arose from retrogression of the state and conflicts and here the author goes further; “In particular, the collapse of the state was discussed, the state theory with negative images such as the failed state, the collapsed state, the shadow state, the criminal state, and the disorder state erupted onto the scene, overwhelming the debate on the theory of the African state with pessimism. Western policy-oriented researches on how to deal with the problems such as democratization and conflict resolution became prevalent”.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 17:03:36 +0000