The question of whether particular types of legal institutions influence the effectiveness of the rule of law has long been answered with conjecture. Common law lawyers and judges tend to believe that the common law system is superior. This opinion is based on the idea that the common law system inherited from the British is more able to protect the rights of the individual than civil law judicial systems. Quite the opposite point of view can be found in lawyers from civil law countries, who may view the common law system as capricious and disorganised. This paper compares the effectiveness of the rule of law in common law and civil law countries in Africa, through a cross-national statistical comparison using Freedom House and Political Risk Services data. The comparison reveals that common law countries in Africa are generally better at providing ‘rule of law’ than are civil law countries.

When contemplating a return to their country of origin, exiled political opposition groups in Africa must consider the viability of their political reintegration. These considerations, in turn, must be carefully balanced against the benefits derived from life in exile. Using the exiled Mauritanian political opposition group Les Forces de Libération Africaine de Mauritanie (FLAM) as a case study, this essay attempts to identify the benefits of exile, which, in the case of FLAM, outweigh the uncertain benefits of domestic political reintegration. FLAM's presence abroad has facilitated the organisation's membership recruitment and retention and temporarily provided a base for military incursions. More importantly, FLAM's exile status has enhanced its international standing, liberated it from domestic constraints and provided it greater access to Western media and policy-makers.

Despite earlier, negative experiences in East Africa, in early 1997 the government of Rwanda embarked on an ambitious programme for villagisation and resettlement. While the Rwanda authorities present the programme as entirely different from its predecessors, a review of those and of the implementation of villagisation and resettlement in Rwanda shows that this statement cannot hold. Nevertheless, the programme gets considerable support from international agencies. This article investigates how international agencies have accepted and upheld the ‘narrative of difference’ of the Rwandan authorities. It argues that, notwithstanding the claims of the government, lessons from the experiences with villagisation in Mozambique, Ethiopia and Tanzania are relevant for the Rwanda case and should be taken into account.

The current international debate on aid to Africa seems to assume that public opinion matters, i.e. it presupposes the existence of a ‘bottom-up’ relationship between public opinion and aid policy. This paper shows that it is rather the other way round. It is only possible to understand the relationship between decision-making on aid and public opinion as a ‘top-down’ relationship. The conclusion is supported by case studies of five European aid donors: France, the UK, Germany, Denmark and the European Union. The ‘missing link’ between opinion and policy-making is mainly to be explained by the high degree of centralisation of decision-making and the weak link between government and society in this particular policy field. On the other hand, opinion surveys show that there are strong popular sentiments in Europe in favour of ‘helping the poor’. Also, surveys indicate that European public opinion believes that emergency assistance basically is the rationale for development aid. The humanitarian attitudes in favour of ‘helping the poor’ find an outlet in the growing amount of emergency assistance going to Africa, thus leaving decision-making on development aid to the elite in a typical top-down way.

This article problematises the role of the state in what is claimed to be the ‘flagship’ of the South African Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) programme, the Maputo Development Corridor (MDC). The purpose is to assess to what extent the state is best understood as a ‘transmission belt’ for transnational capital or as a ‘facilitator’ for development. The study reveals several flaws in the MDC which reinforce the role of the state as a transmission belt for transnational capital, rather than as a facilitator for development. For instance, the neo-liberal market fundamentalism and big-bang approach inherent in the MDC spells ‘jobless growth’. Similarly, the notion that ‘good governance is less government’, implies that the state is to a large extent reduced to an ‘investment promotion agency’. Having said this, the MDC does contain several novel and positive features, and its problematic aspects can be overcome through some strategic changes in the MDC approach. These may be summarised as a heavier focus on ‘development’, a more pro-active state, and more comprehensive and inclusive governance structures.

This article presents peasant grievances on the flawed 2000 elections in Hadiya zone, southern Ethiopia. For the first time in Ethiopia's electoral history, an opposition party managed to win the majority of the votes in one administrative zone. In the run-up to the elections, government cadres and officials intimidated and harassed candidates and members from the opposition Hadiya National Democratic Organisation (HNDO). Several candidates and members were arrested and political campaigning was restricted. On election day, widespread attempts at rigging the election took place, and violence was exerted in several places by government cadres and the police. Despite the government's attempt to curtail and control the elections in Hadiya, the opposition party mobilised the people in a popular protest to challenge the government party's political hegemony – and won. If this is an indication of a permanent shift of power relations in Hadiya, it is however, too early to say.