This book analyses the rapidly increasing role of African states, leaders and other political actors in international politics in the 21st Century.

In contrast to the conventional approach of studying how external actors impacted on Africa s international relations, this book seeks to open up a new approach, focusing on the impact of African political actors on international politics. It does this by analysing African agency the degree to which African political actors have room to manoeuvre within the international system and exert influence internationally, and the uses...

Although international development discourse considers the state as a crucial development actor, there remains a significant discrepancy between the official norms of the state and public services and the actual practices of political elites and civil servants.

This text interrogates the variety of ways in which state policies and legal norms have been translated into the set of practical norms which make up real governance in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that the concept of practical norms is an appropriate tool for an ethnographic investigation of public bureaucracies,...

Recent scholarship in International Relations (IR) has started to study the meaning and implications of a non-Western world. With this comes the need for a new paradigm of IR theory that is more global, open, inclusive, and able to capture the voices and experiences of both Western and non-Western worlds.

This book investigates why Africa has been marginalised in IR discipline and theory and how this issue can be addressed in the context of the emerging Global IR paradigm. To have relevance for Africa, a new IR theory needs to be more inclusive, intellectually negotiated and...

Since the end of the Cold War, the monopoly of legitimate organized force of many African states has been eroded by a mix of rebel groups, violent extremist organizations, and self-defence militias created in response to the rise in organized violence on the continent.

African Border Disorders explores the complex relationships that bind states, transnational rebels and extremist organizations, and borders on the African continent. Combining cutting edge network science with geographical analysis, the first part of the book highlights how the fluid alliances and conflicts...

Africa, which was not long ago discarded as a hopeless and irrelevant region, has become a new 'frontier' for global trade, investment and the conduct of international relations.

This book surveys the socio-economic, intellectual and security related dimensions of African regionalisms since the turn of the 20^th century. It argues that the continent deserves to be considered as a crucible for conceptualizing and contextualizing the ongoing influence of colonial policies, the emergence of specific integration and security cultures, the spread of cross-border...