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Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa
Wale Adebanwi and Rogers Orock, Editors
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Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa examines the ways that accountability offers an effective interpretive lens to the social, cultural, and institutional struggles of both the elites and ordinary citizens in Africa. Each chapter investigates questions of power, its public deliberation, and its negotiation in Africa by studying elites through the framework of accountability. The book enters conversations about political subjectivity and agency, especially from ongoing struggles around identities and belonging, as well as representation and legitimacy. Who speaks to whom? And on whose behalf do they speak? The contributors to this volume offer careful analyses of how such concerns are embedded in wider forms of cultural, social, and institutional discussions about transparency, collective responsibility, community, and public decision-making processes. These concerns affect prospects for democratic oversight, as well as questions of alienation, exclusivity, privilege and democratic deficit. The book situates our understanding of the emergence, meaning, and conceptual relevance of elite accountability, to study political practices in Africa. It then juxtaposes this contextualization of accountability in relation to the practices of African elites. Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa offers fresh, dynamic, and multifarious accounts of elites and their practices of accountability and locally plausible self-legitimation, as well as illuminating accounts of contemporary African elites in relation to their socially and historicallysituated outcomes of contingency, composition, negotiation, and compromise.
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: Elites and Democratic Accountability in State and Civil Society
Chapter 1. The Ocular President
Chapter 2. The Renewal of Local Elites in Times of “Participation” in Morocco
Chapter 3. Elites and Political Representation in Africa
Chapter 4. Elite Conflict and Consensus in Ghana’s Fourth Republic
Chapter 5. Is the African University a Site of Elite Reproduction or Disruption?
Part 2: Elites, Race, and Class
Chapter 6. Who Holds the Power?
Chapter 7. Land, Freedom, and Legal Elites
Chapter 8. Elites and the Practice of (Non)accountability in Mauritius
Part 3: Elites, Ethnoregional Competition, and (Counter)hegemonic Politics
Chapter 9. Elite Associations in Cameroon
Chapter 10. Elite Incorporation in Nigeria
Chapter 11. Beyond Afro-Pessimism
Part 4: Elites and Competitive Leverage in Violent Contexts
Chapter 12. Commanders, Classrooms, Cows, and Churches
Fig. 1.3: Campaigning in the small town of Jojoima, the political seat of the eastern Malema chiefdom, MT addresses community leaders at the central meeting hall, or court barri. Photo by John D. Hoffman.
Fig. 1.4: MT, left, and his principal adviser, Abubakar Juana, unfurl the banner that announces him as running mate to Dr. Femi Claudius Cole of the Unity Party. Photo by John D. Hoffman.
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