Eight problems with African politics

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 8, Issue 3, 1997, Pages

  Monga, Célestin ^a,b  

^a WORLD BANK   (United States)

^b BOSTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0009896107     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.1997.0045     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. See Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner, "The Origin and Development of Political Parties," in LaPalombara and Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).
2. Julius O. Ihonvbere, "Are Things Falling Apart? The Military and the Crisis of Democratization in Nigeria," Journal of Modern African Studies 34 (June 1996): 193-225.
3. See Terrence Lyons, "Ghana's Encouraging Elections: A Major Step Forward," Journal of Democracy 8 (April 1997): 65-77; and E. Gyimah-Boadi, "Ghana's Encouraging Elections: The Challenges Ahead," Journal of Democracy 8 (April 1997): 78-91.
4. See Terrence Lyons, "Ghana's Encouraging Elections: A Major Step Forward," Journal of Democracy 8 (April 1997): 65-77; and E. Gyimah-Boadi, "Ghana's Encouraging Elections: The Challenges Ahead," Journal of Democracy 8 (April 1997): 78-91.
5. The voter rolls that Ghana used in 1992 dated to 1987. They covered an electorate of 5.9 million voters; 1992 estimates placed the real number at around 8.4 million. According to some observers, the failure to update them resulted in the presence of many deceased persons on the lists, whereas many people of voting age had not been registered.
6. Quoted in Jeune Afrique Economie, April 1995, 71.
7. He is rumored to be the illegitimate son of former Ivorian president Félix Houphouët-Boigny and a Ghanaian woman. Asked about this by the press, Konan-Bédié has claimed to be amused but provided no information about his real father's identity. See his interview with Jeune Afrique Economie, January 1993, 20-33.
8. See Thierry Michalon, "L'état inutile?" in A. Sedjari, ed., Etat-nation et dynamique des territoires, forthcoming.
9. See Célestin Monga, "Dollars, francs CFA et démocratisation: Symbolisme politique et fonctions économiques de l'argent en Afrique francophone" (paper presented at a conference on "Retour du pluralisme et consolidation de la démocratie en Afrique," Université Lavai, Quebec City, Canada, 5-6 May 1995).
10. Tessy Bakary, "Faut-il craindre le retour de Kérékou?" Jeune Afrique Economie, April 1996, 10-14.
11. Cilas Kemedjio, "Mutations camerounaises: Essai d'une cartographie politique" (unpubl. ms., University of Rochester, Department of Modern Languages, 1996).
12. Habermas himself has asserted that the bourgeois public sphere is "a category that is typical of an epoch. It cannot be abstracted from the unique developmental history of 'civil society' (bürgerliche Gesellschaft) originating in the European High Middle Ages; nor can it be transferred, ideal typically generalized, to any number of historical situations that represent formally similar constellations." Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), xvii. I disagree with Habermas here, since I think that he is positing an unrealistic conceptual idealization.
13. Interview with Bongo in Jeune Afrique Economie, August 1994, 12.
14. Interview with Mobutu in Jeune Afrique Economie, June 1994, 17.
15. Museveni quoted in New African, April 1996, 10.
16. Quoted by Mike Oquaye in "The Ghanaian Elections of 1992 - A Dissenting View," African Affairs 94 (April 1995): 264.
17. Interview with Soglo in Jeune Afrique Economie, May 1995, 58-65.
18. Antoine Glaser and Stephen Smith, Ces messieurs Afrique: Le Paris-village du continent noir (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1992).
19. Marchés tropicaux (Paris), 30 August 1996, 1868.
20. Interview with Patassé in Jeune Afrique Economie, May 1996, 16.
21. Interview with Ntibantunganya in Jeune Afrique Economie, April 1996, 61.
22. Rodney Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 11.