African independence launched into international politics a group of the world's poorest, weakest and most artificial states. How have such states managed to survive? To what extent is their survival now threatened? Christopher Clapham shows how an initially supportive international environment has become increasingly threatening to African rulers and the states over which they preside. The author reveals how international conventions designed to uphold state sovereignty have often been appropriated and subverted by rulers to enhance their domestic control, and how African states have been...

African independence launched into international politics a group of the world's poorest, weakest and most artificial states. How have such states managed to survive? To what extent is their survival now threatened? Christopher Clapham shows how an initially supportive international environment has become increasingly threatening to African rulers and the states over which they preside. The author reveals how international conventions designed to uphold state sovereignty have often been appropriated and subverted by rulers to enhance their domestic control, and how African states have been...

Since 1991, Ethiopia has gone further than any other country in using ethnicity as the fundamental organizing principle of a federal system of government. And yet this pioneering experiment in ethnic federalism has been largely ignored in the growing literature on democratization and ethnicity in Africa and on the accommodation of ethnic diversity in democratic states. "Ethnic Federalism" brings a much-needed comparative dimension to the discussion of this experiment in Ethiopia.
"Ethnic Federalism" closely examines aspects of the Ethiopean case and asks why the use ofterritorial...

Since 1991, Ethiopia has gone further than any other country in using ethnicity as the fundamental organizing principle of a federal system of government. And yet this pioneering experiment in ethnic federalism has been largely ignored in the growing literature on democratization and ethnicity in Africa and on the accommodation of ethnic diversity in democratic states. "Ethnic Federalism" brings a much-needed comparative dimension to the discussion of this experiment in Ethiopia.
"Ethnic Federalism" closely examines aspects of the Ethiopean case and asks why the use ofterritorial...

Very similar in some ways, but strikingly different in others, Sierra Leone and Liberia have an obvious appeal for comparative analysis. They share the legacy of foundation by immigrants of African descent and the juxtaposition of these with indigenous peoples, but within the contrasting institutional frameworks of settler independence and British colonialism. They have similar social and economic structures but sharply dissimilar political records: Liberia has long been regarded as the classic case of stability at the price of oligarchy, whereas Sierra Leone, after a period as West Africa's...

Insurgencies or guerrilla movements have come to occupy a prominent place in the politics of modern Africa. At one time they could be regarded as the means by which Africans fought for independence against colonial or white minority regimes which refused to concede it peacefully, but in the late-20th century they have become an important source of organized opposition to incumbent African governments. In some cases they have ousted those governments and established new regimes in their place; in other cases they have prompted state collapse. This collection of articles and case studies is...

This 1988 text traces the continuities between revolutionary Ethiopia and the development of a centralised Ethiopian state since the nineteenth century.