Africa’s potential and challenges in the 21st century make it a focal point for global attention. The continent’s political landscape is now more diverse, with a mix of democracy, authoritarianism, peace, and conflict. Understanding the dynamics of African politics is crucial. This comprehensive book delves into African Politics and International Relations, exploring power through the lenses of politics, geography, sociology, and anthropology. It is based on the author’s three decades of fieldwork and research across Africa, Asia, and the West. Ideal for academic scholars, students, diplomats, government officials, journalists, and NGO staff seeking to deepen their understanding of African politics and international relations.

What has confounded African efforts to create cohesive, prosperous and just states in postcolonial Africa? What has been the long-term impact of the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 on African unity and African statehood? Why is postcolonial Africa haunted by various ethno national conflicts? Is secession and irredentism the solution? Can we talk of ethno-futures for Africa? These are the kinds of fundamental questions that this important book addresses. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Brilliant Mhlanga's book introduces the metaphor of the 'northern problem' to dramatise the fact that there is no major African postcolonial state that does not enclose within its borders a disgruntled minority that is complaining of marginalization, domination and suppression. The irony is that in 1963 at the formation of the OAU, postcolonial African leaders embraced the boundaries arbitrarily drawn by European colonialists and institutionalised the principle of inviolability of 'bondage of boundaries' thereby contributing to the problem of ethno-national conflicts. The successful struggle for independence of the Eritrean people and the secession of South Sudan in 2011 have encouraged other dominated and marginalised groups throughout Africa to view secession as an option. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Mhlanga successfully assembled competent African scholars to deal exhaustively with various empirical cases of ethno-national conflicts throughout the African continent as well as engaging with such pertinent issues as Pan-Africanism as a panacea to these problems. This important book delves deeper into complex issues of space, languages, conflict, security, nation-building, war on terror, secession, migration, citizenship, militias, liberation, violence and Pan-Africanism.

Africa's potential and challenges in the 21st century make it a focal point for global attention. The continent's political landscape is now more diverse, with a mix of democracy, authoritarianism, peace, and conflict. Understanding the dynamics of African politics is crucial. This comprehensive book delves into African Politics and International Relations, exploring power through the lenses of politics, geography, sociology, and anthropology. It is based on the author's three decades of fieldwork and research across Africa, Asia, and the West. Ideal for academic scholars, students, diplomats, government officials, journalists, and NGO staff seeking to deepen their understanding of African politics and international relations.

This fully updated fifth edition of An Introduction to African Politics is an ideal textbook for those new to the study of this fascinating continent. Charting trends in government over six decades of the post-colonial era, the book tackles key questions such as: How have African states made sense of their colonial inheritance? How relevant are ethnic and religious identities? Why have some states collapsed and others prospered? Why did the one-party state fail? Why is contemporary Africa now dominated by electoral authoritarian states, and not the multi-party democracies promised in the 1990s? Key features include: thematically organised, with chapters exploring issues such as colonialism, ethnicity, nationalism, religion, social class, ideology, legitimacy, authority, sovereignty and democracy; new five-part structure makes clearer Africa’s political evolution over time; new chapter on the emergence of ‘hybrid states’ and ‘electoral authoritarianism’; more coverage of twenty-first century governance trends such as China’s impact, the changing role of the military, different uses of ‘client–patron’ networks, Western conditionality and the ‘Africa rising’ debate; colour presentation of maps, photos and data; boxed case studies including Mali, Tanzania, Nigeria, Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, Somalia, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tunisia and Angola; each chapter concludes with key terms and definitions, questions and further reading. An Introduction to African Politics is essential reading for students seeking an accessible introduction to the complex social relationships and events that characterise the politics of post-colonial Africa.

Many emerging market countries are bank-based economies and are increasingly affected by geopolitical risks, U.S. dollar dynamics, regulations, preferential trade agreements (PTAs), MNCs (that often function like international organizations), social networks, labor dynamics, cross-border spillovers and the inefficient expansion of formal/informal microfinance. Country risks, informal economies (that account for 20-50 percent of the national economy of many emerging market countries), investor protection, enforcement commitment, compliance costs, sustainability (environmental, social, economic and political sustainability), economic growth, political stability, financial stability, geopolitical risk, social networks, household economics, inequality and international trade outcomes can vary dramatically across many DECs and LDECs due to these phenomena. The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the many problems inherent in political systems, economic policy and governments’ emergency powers during pandemics/epidemics and economic/financial crisis. This second volume focuses on geopolitical risks that are intertwined with constitutional political economy and labor issues, alongside addressing some of the financial and constitutional crises that occurred in Europe, Asia and the U.S. during 2007-2020. This book provides analysis of complex systems and the preferences and reasoning of state/government and corporate actors in order to develop better artificial intelligence and decision-system models of geopolitical risk, public policy and international capital flows, all of which are increasingly important decision factors for investment managers, boards-of-directors and government officials.

The need, therefore, for effective governance through border security regimes arises from the intractable challenges of conflict management as a core objective of multilateral institutions and non-governmental agencies in global governance. Thus, governance along the Frontier has come to be "marked by density and complexity". This density and complexity in frontier relations under-score the disciplinary concern for border governance. --Book Jacket.

Although developing countries far outnumber fully industrialized states, they are often neglected in the study of international relations, especially with respect to the development of foreign policy theory. International Relations in Contemporary Africa attempts to fill this void in the literature on comparative international relations while at the same time providing a detailed analysis of the economic development and integration of West African countries. Michael Anda specifically focuses on the members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and their policies, which encourage coordination on issues ranging from science and technology to diplomacy and mutual defense. Tracing the diplomatic history of West Africa from independence to the present, he assesses the various dimensions of cooperation among the smaller and less developed states of West Africa while revealing the precarious nature of the economy and security in the region. Both detailed and comprehensive, International Relations in Contemporary Africa represents a significant contribution to African studies that appeal to those with an interest in the foreign policy of smaller states.

Global Boundaries considers conceptual, legal and geopolitical aspects of international borders and borderlands. This book also presents a detailed discussion of Antarctica, an area of global territorial dispute.

Understanding crime, criminals, and criminal justice from a radical/critical perspective is indispensable in today's academic, applied research, and policy sectors. Neglect of this approach leads to narrow-mindedness and the probability of repeating past mistakes or reinventing the wheel. Cutting the Edge by Jeffrey Ian Ross will encourage individuals and organizations, especially students and instructors, to innovatively identify ways of experimenting with new policy initiatives designed to improve not only criminal justice, but social and human justice as well. Ross has significantly changed this volume to include six new chapters and three revised ones as well. The studies chosen demonstrate the difference between critical criminology and other approaches used to study and explain criminological phenomena. The authors do not approach the inequalities of the criminal justice system as phenomena that should be studied, but as wrongs that must be righted. Cutting-edge critical criminology combines concerns about fairness in punishment, tools of class analysis and the insights of feminism, postmodernism, and ethnography. The authors included here wield these newer tools with elegance and enthusiasm. Written with passion by experts in the field, the book engages the mind as fully as it engages the emotions.