Elites and the politics of accountability in Africa / Wale Adebanwi and Rogers Orock, editors.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Adebanwi, Wale.

Contributor:

Orock, Rogers.

Series:

African Perspectives

African perspectives

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Government accountability--Africa.

Government accountability.

Elite (Social sciences)--Africa.

Elite (Social sciences).

Africa--Politics and government.

Africa.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (425 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2021.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Introduction: The logic of elite accountability in Africa / Rogers Orock and Wale Adebanwi

The ocular president : political aesthetics of an upstart campaign in Sierra Leone / Danny Hoffman

The renewal of local elites in times of "participation" in Morocco / Yasmine Berriane

Elites and political representation in Africa : members of parliament in Ghana and Togo / Anja Osei

Elite conflict and consensus in Ghana's Fourth Republic / Alex K.D. Frempong and Emmanuel K. Siaw

Is the African university a site of elite reproduction or disruption? What the Senegalese experience tells us / Michael C. Lambert

Who holds the power? elites and accountability in democratic South Africa / Roger Southall

Land, freedom, and legal elites : rights debates in South Africa / Timothy Gibbs

Elites and the practice of (non)accountability in Mauritius / Ramola Ramtohul and Roukaya Kasenally

Elite associations in Cameroon : SWELA, development, and the cultural politics of redistribution / Rogers Orock

Elite incorporation in Nigeria : the case of Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo / Godwin Onuoha

Beyond Afro-pessimism : party-monialism, registers of accountability, and the politics of corruption / Wale Adebanwi

Commanders, classrooms, cows, and churches : accountability and the construction of a South Sudanese elite / Naomi Pendle

Sudanese elites : riverain Arabs, political dominance, and the Sudanese state / Jennifer Pekkinen.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780472128730

0472128736

OCLC:

1226085456