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Begin New Search Topic Authoritarianism Journal Brazilian Journal of African Studies

1. African Marxist Military Regimes, Rise and Fall: Internal Conditioners and International Dimensions

Author:
Paulo Fagundes Visentini
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
The historical dimension is used in a limited or selective way in the analysis of contemporary international relations, and it needs to be developed. Recovering the theme and the period from 1970-1980 means, therefore, both a historical and a theoretical matter. International Relations, as an area dominated by political science, has been a field of study marked by theorizations with little empirical basis and instrumental character. Without the State building, of ruling elites and social transformations promoted by revolutionary processes, the situation of Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia, for example, would not have allowed their current international prominence.
Topic:
International Relations, Socialism/Marxism, Authoritarianism, and History
Political Geography:
Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Angola

2. Post-Authoritarian Nigeria: Democratizing Under Pervasive Corruption

Author:
Adeniyi S. Basiru and Olusesan A. Osunkoya
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
In the last three decades, the global intellectual spaces have been proliferated with scholarly studies which have explored the processes of democratization in the hitherto authoritarian, but now “democratizing” societies of the Global South (see Diamond 1995; Alexander 2002). Interestingly, while these studies, would appear to have to added to scholarly understanding of democracy, outside the lenses of the early “democratizers”, by identifying conditions under which democracy, once launched, in new democracies, could be safeguarded from break-down or reversal. However, they seem to have been skewed, in focus and orientations towards the experiences of the early “Third Waver” of Latin America, with scanty attention to African countries (see Diamond 1996; Mainwaring, O’Donnell and Valenzuela 1992; Mainwaring and Scully 1995). Even, few Africanist works, such as Villalon and Von Doepp (2006) and Cho and Logan (2009), that focus on Africa, by interrogating the processes of democratization while no doubt, have offered robust arguments to explaining the poor performance of Africa’s new “democracies”; sidelined the issue of corruption. Yet, the incidence of corruption, going by the publicity it has been given by regional and global institutions remains a gargantuan monster that has thwarted the continent’s march to sustainable development (Schiller 2000). It is against the backdrop of this observed gap in the literature that this article, with a focus on post-authoritarian Nigeria, examines the character of democratization process, in Africa, under condition of pervasive corruption. Following this introductory preamble, which sets the background and significance of the study, is the second section that conceptualizes and contextualizes the key concepts that are germane to this study. Section three explores and surveys extant literature on the nexus between democracy and corruption. In the section that follows, the Nigerian experience with democracy and corruption, in the post-Authoritarian era, is interrogated and discussed. Section five develops an explanatory framework for explaining the core problematique in the discourse. The sixth section sums up the arguments, reflects and concludes with a number of submissions.
Topic:
Corruption, Democratization, Governance, and Authoritarianism
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

3. Revolutions and International Relations: The African Case

Author:
Paulo Fagundes Visentini
Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
In 1974, during the oil crisis, two apparently disconnected events shook the African continent and placed it at the center of the international agenda. A military coup in February in Ethiopia, the long-lived and oldest African empire, ended the monarchy in September, thus marking the beginning of a revolution and of a socialist regime. Meanwhile, in April, the longest fascist regime in Europe was overthrown (in the Carnation Revolution) and the first (and last) maritime empire crumbled. Angola, Mozambique and the Lusitanian enclaves in Africa became independent, under the leadership of national liberation movements of Marxist orientation. The fifteen years of armed struggle in the former Portuguese colonies gave place, in 1975, to civil wars and to an international conflict in Southern Africa between Cuba and the Warsaw Pact, who supported the new regimes, on one side, and South Africa and the NATO nations alongside the insurgents on the other. Likewise, the Horn of Africa became a hotspot in the Cold War. As always, revolutions became inter-state conflicts fomenting the heated debate between academic internationalists. Finally, what is the place of revolutions in International Relations? Do they comprise of a dysfunction within the world system? Here, we propose to discuss this question, focusing on the African revolutions of the 1970s.
Topic:
International Relations, Politics, Authoritarianism, History, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Africa and Brazil