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African Personal Dictatorships
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
Extract
Nearly two decades ago Aristide Zolberg suggested that the most visible feature of independent Africa might well be instability and not stability, cleavage and conflict rather than unity and consensus. This observation holds equally true today. The elusive formula assuring the establishment of a viable and integrative political order has eluded many African states. Their failure politically to institutionalise themselves and to forge ahead in the direction of national integration and socio-economic development has been documented in the voluminous literature that has sprung up since Zolberg's original analysis. Ravaged now by natural disasters, international conflict or civil war, and military coups, early expectations of a relatively smooth transition from colonialism to meaningful independence have been dashed. While striking exceptions do exist, neither the richer nor the more developed nations are necessarily assured of stability and unity, given the continental context of scarcity and conflict.
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References
1 Zolberg, Aristide R., Creating Political Order: the party-states of West Africa (Chicago, 1966).Google Scholar See also his equally seminal article, ‘The Structure of Political Conflict in Africa’, in American Political Science Review (Washington, D.C.), 06 1968.Google Scholar
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1 An oligarchy, junta, or clique would, by definition, negate the personal element of dictatorship as here defined.
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3 Ibid. p. 1.
1 An oligarchy, junta, or clique would, by definition, negate the personal element of dictatorship as here defined.
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1 For a good introduction to the methodologoical issues, see Greenstein, Fred I., Personality and Politics: problems of evidence, inference, and conceptualization (New York, 1975),Google Scholar as well as his ‘Personality and Political Socialization: the theories of authoritarian and democratic character’, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Philadelphia), 361, 1965, pp. 81–95.Google Scholar See also Wolfenstein, E. Victor, The Revolutionary Personality (Princeton, 1967);Google ScholarGreenstein, Fred I. and Lerner, Michael, A Source Book for the Study of Personality and Politics (Chicago, 1971);Google Scholar and Sniderman, Paul M., Personality and Democratic Politics (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974).Google Scholar
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1 Currency control was lodged in Paris and in the regional central bank for the French equatorial states.
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3 See West Africa, 13 August 1979.
1 Lieutenant-Colonel T. O. N. Mbazogo was not only Nguema's right-hand man and part of the family mafioso, but also his prime executioner as gauleiter of Fernando Póo.
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