This article proposes an alternative interpretation of political disorder in Ethiopia's Somali Regional State since the rise to power of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in 1991. Some observers have perceived contemporary politics in the former Ogaden as an example of ‘internal colonisation’ by highland Ethiopians. Others attribute political instability to the ‘nomadic culture’ inherent in the Somali clan structure and the ineptness of its political leaders. This study argues that neither of these two politicised narratives grasps the contradictory interactions between the federal Ethiopian government and its Somali periphery, nor the recursive relations between state and society. With reference to the literature on neo-patrimonialism, I elucidate political disorder in the Somali Region by empirically describing hybrid political domination, institutional instability, and patronage relations, showing how neo-patrimonial rule translates into contested statehood in the region and political devices ranging from military coercion to subtle co-optation. Rather than unilateral domination, a complex web of power and manipulation between parts of the federal and regional authorities animates political disorder in Ethiopia's Somali Region.

Since the early 1990s, building peace during and after conflict has been moving away from the conference tables of diplomats to informal settings created by local NGOs. The vast majority, if not all, of the peacebuilding policy and literature argues for strengthening local organisations as vehicles for peace. This paper starts from the observation that there is a dire lack of organisational perspective to the processes set into motion. Current local peacebuilding policy, we argue, is based on analyses that are far removed from the everyday practices of the actors engaged in peacebuilding. The paper offers instead a qualitative approach that gives central attention to the dynamics of peace organisations and the way conflict is experienced in the everyday life of local people. It analyses the case of one local women's peace organisation: the ‘Sudanese Women's Voice for Peace’. Peacebuilding is done by people, and the dynamics of their organisation are crucial for its success. The paper argues that a process approach to peace organisations will enhance agencies' efforts for local peacebuilding. Such an approach focuses on the question how actors in and around organisations give meaning to an organisation. The paper outlines this approach, presents five central properties of local peace organisations, and discusses what lessons can be learnt from this perspective for the practice of peacebuilding.

This article describes and analyses voter alignments in the new democracy of Ghana in two recent elections, 1996 and 2000. These elections are a part of the Fourth Republic that began with a ‘founding’ election in 1992, ushering Ghana into Africa's new wave of democratisation. First the size of the core voting population is established to be about 82% of the voting population, refuting the assumption that voting volatility in new and transitional democracies is always extremely high. A second conclusion is that core and swing voters cannot be distinguished by structural factors, whereas thirdly, the factors behind the party alignment of core voters are similar to Western patterns; primarily level of education, the rural-urban divide, income, and occupation. Finally, swing voters seem to be characterised by a conscious evaluation of government and candidate performance in a sign of relatively ‘mature’ democratic voting behaviour.

The Great Lakes region has been in profound turmoil for the past 15 years. Through the game of shifting alliances, and because of geographic proximity in an area with porous borders, conflicts have tended to merge, thus giving rise to a huge zone of instability. Conflicts have been compounded by the export of war to neighbouring countries, and the extreme weakness of the Congolese state has led to the ‘satellisation’ of large parts of its territory. This has in turn led to the privatisation and criminalisation of public space, to the advantage of both neighbouring countries and local, regional and international ‘entrepreneurs of insecurity’. From political, ideological, ethnic or security-induced, violence has become predominantly predatory, with loyalties and alliances essentially based on the search for personal or factional enrichment. In human terms, the damage caused by the occupation and plunder of eastern DRC has been colossal.

In the last fifteen years, Tanzanian forest policy has embraced an agenda of biodiversity preservation coupled with privatisation that calls for the expansion of state oversight over forests and woodlands. Reflecting the hegemony of conservationist donors and international and local NGOs, and couched in a language of community conservation, this agenda decries peasant intrusion into forest reserves to burn charcoal for the urban market and to expand fields for agriculture. This agenda is a departure from over a century of state forestry that sought to exploit forests for domestic consumer and development needs, and to compete in export timber and charcoal markets. Following the Second World War, state forestry anchored peasants in selected forest reserves as licensed cultivators in the face of an ongoing labour shortage, in order to create tree plantations that replaced indigenous hardwoods with fast-growing exotic softwoods. This trend continued after independence as forestry was perceived as a means for agricultural modernisation and economic self-reliance, particularly after the Arusha Declaration. Current changes in forest policy prioritise forests more as ‘refugia’ for endemic plant and animal species, rather than as sources of timber and fuel, moving forest policy more in the direction of wildlife conservation, which has long aimed at excluding peasants and pastoralists from reserves. Recent evictions of peasants from forest reserves, and ongoing tensions between villagers, the state and conservationists, are the direct result of NGO pressure to protect forest reserves and to expand forest conservation into previously unreserved lands.

The World Bank and IMF launched the Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative in the context of longstanding criticisms of their structural adjustment programmes. This article examines the process of formulating Ghana's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) from two perspectives. From the perspective of reforming the Bretton Woods institutions, it assesses the extent to which the PRSP approach alters the lending practices of these institutions in Ghana. From the perspective of understanding policymaking in highly indebted, aid-dependent African countries, it reveals the multiple interfaces of politics in such countries produced by relations among and within donors/creditors, the government and non-governmental actors. Its conclusions echo the growing body of literature critiquing PRSPs, and emphasise the constraints which the foreign aid regime places on democratic governance.