Political Violence In Africa Research Articles

A DECONSTRUCTION OF FRUSTRATION-AGGRESSION THEORY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN NIGERIA

The work set out to deconstruct and reconstruct Ted Roberts Gurr’s (1970) theory of relative deprivation, frustration-aggression as contained in his work ‘Why Men Rebel’ (1970). The study used descriptive research design and evaluated the capacity of the theory, which was created to explain political violence in Africa and Asia in the colonial era, to also explicate why intense relative deprivation, frustration and aggression arising from the avalanche of poor governance in postcolonial African states such as Nigeria and many others, have not culminated into political violence and rebellion. The study presented numerous data obtained through observation and analysis of events in Nigeria, Africa and case-studies of American, French, English and Russian rebellions and distilled qualitative data which indicated lack of association between the variables. The application of the study design revealed first the state as the source of relative deprivation, frustration and aggressions of the citizenry when they are denied access to public values, which they feel entitled to. Secondly, it further discovered that there are no direct correlations between relative deprivation, frustration and aggression as initially conveyed by the theory since 1970. Furthermore, it exposed that there is an intervening variables identified as ‘Social Movements’ or ‘Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), which harness relative deprivation, intense frustration and aggressions from the sufferers and convert them to other set-of-action, which may not be political violence and rebellions but could be advocacy towards the expansion of the mechanism for supply of public good or values and to make it accessible to many as a means of addressing relative deprivation. The study concluded in the light of its findings, that the initial theory requires deconstruction and reconstruction to include ‘Social Movement’ as a principal component. It is only then that it could be applied in the analysis of issues in postcolonial African and Asian states

Testing the Theory, Blessing or Resource Curse? The Effect of Natural Resources on Political Violence in Africa

Political conflicts in Africa have intensified due to the competition for natural resources by various conflicting parties and their conflict intensification. Previous studies have shown that cell phone coverage plays a significant role in the occurrence of these conflicts. This paper explores the impact of oil reserves and diamond abundance on cell phone coverage in Africa. The authors also investigate how rebels are motivated by these resources to engage in conflicts. The Scobit model (Nagler 1994) is used to analyse the cases of unbalanced conflict, which is found to be more accurate than the Logistic model. The results indicate that diamond abundance is a resource blessing, while oil reserves lead to a resource curse. However, the latter finding needs to be more consistent across robustness checks, suggesting that the effects of different natural resources on African political conflicts remain debatable.

Agricultural windfalls and the seasonality of political violence in Africa

AbstractWhen the prices of cereal grains rise, social unrest and conflict become likely. In rural areas, the predation motives of perpetrators can explain the positive relationship between prices and conflict. Predation happens at places and in periods where and when spoils to be appropriated are available. In predominantly agrarian societies, such opportune times align with the harvest season. Does the seasonality of agricultural income lead to the seasonality of conflict? We address this question by analyzing over 55 thousand incidents involving violence against civilians staged by paramilitary groups across Africa during the 1997–2020 period. We investigate the crop year pattern of violence in response to agricultural income shocks via changes in international cereal prices. We find that a year‐on‐year one standard deviation annual growth of the price of the major cereal grain results in a harvest‐time spike in violence by militias in areas where this cereal grain is grown. This translates to a nearly 10% increase in violence during the early postharvest season. We observe no such change in violence by state forces or rebel groups—the other two notable actors. By further investigating the mechanisms, we show that the violence by militias is amplified after plausibly rich harvest seasons when the value of spoils to be appropriated is higher. By focusing on harvest‐related seasonality of conflict, as well as actors more likely to be involved in violence against civilians, we contribute to the growing literature on the economic causes of conflict in predominantly agrarian societies.

Political violence in Africa and the search for an ideal democracy model

ABSTRACT What could be a more compelling model of democracy for countries in Africa if they are to work towards avoiding the vice of political violence, which has been blamed on the operations of majoritarian democracy? After showing that majoritarian democracy that has been touted as an ideal model for countries in Africa and other geopolitical centres has been associated with elections-related political violence in the conduct of political parties, Kwasi Wiredu’s idea of consensual democracy is invoked highlighting its deliberative nature and how it treats occasions of diverse and divergent views among parties. Thereafter, it is shown that despite opposition to its utility in present times, consensual democracy could overcome political violence in some countries in Africa if its opposition to intolerance and adversarial confrontation are taken seriously.

Spaces of Conflict and Conflict of Spaces: Territory and Communal Conflicts in Jos, North Central Nigeria

Communal violence, one of the deadliest forms of political violence in Africa, has characterised Jos and other central Nigerian cities since the 1990s. With origins in colonial land and administrative policies at the inception of the city, communal tensions rooted in local elite competition over ‘indigeneship’ and entitlement to political and government positions, access to higher education and land rights have manifested more forcefully in contemporary time claiming over 5,000 lives. This article focuses on the relationship between collective identity, struggle for space and collective violence. It explores persistent attachment to territory by urban communal groups and violent conflicts over those territorial stakes. It does so because emerging research has focused on land rights, neglecting how conflicts structure territory—the living space—and how territory, in turn, shapes conflict. Inspired by the motivation versus opportunity framework, it relies on focus groups, interviews, oral history, archival documents and secondary sources to generate data.

Many are Better Than Few: Financial Isolation and Political Violence in Africa

This paper investigates how misconduct, in the form of state-level human rights violations, is reflexively related to the concentration of external relationships, in the form of global financial ties. The argument is agnostic to which comes first, though the evidence demonstrates different predictive pathways for each. State-caused deaths resulting from political violence, a clear violation of human rights, across Africa from 2003 through 2015 serve as the macro-level form of misconduct. Descriptive and econometric analyses demonstrate that homogeneity of foreign financial ties has a direct predictive effect on state-caused political deaths. Foreign countries, however, vary in their reactions to this misconduct. I find that bilateral relations based in natural resource trade and colonial ties are durable to and even grow following such misconduct events. Identifying types of relationships durable to misconduct demonstrates a mediated pathway through which misconduct may result in the homogeneous relations that support rather than deter misconduct. Adding these country-level results to previous work at individual and group levels suggests a generalizable way of understanding the prevalence of misconduct by demonstrating relational accounts of the causes and consequences of misconduct across levels of analysis.

Rethinking Genocide, Mass Atrocities, and Political Violence in Africa

Rethinking Genocide, Mass Atrocities, and Political Violence in Africa

The Gospel as Politics in Africa

The reality of political violence in Africa poses a major theological challenge. There is no more pressing challenge for New Evangelization (NE) in Africa than the search for a different, nonviolent basis for social existence in Africa. The essay argues that for NE to meet this challenge it will have to move beyond the trap of “culture” and engage more explicitly the political vision of the gospel. The story of Archbishop Emmanuel Kataliko’s life and work exemplifies what this concretely looks like. Accordingly Kataliko’s story confirms that, pursued under the aegis of reconciliation, NE cannot but become deeply political in that it seeks nothing short of a new vision of society in Africa grounded in the story of God’s nonviolent and reconciling love.

Rebel Behavior in the Context of Interstate Competition: Exploring Day-to-Day Patterns of Political Violence in Africa

This study develops a day-to-day theory of political violence that predicts that rebels respond strategically to the onset of interstate conflict that is directly related to a civil war. Government-initiated interstate conflict is theorized to incentivize rebels to signal their resolve, willingness to bear costs, and vulnerability of government forces. In addition, this form of interstate conflict is predicted to decrease violence against civilian populations, as it makes it more likely that rebels will need to rely on civilians for resources in the future. This is contrary to interstate conflict initiated by an external state, as this signal of third-party support makes civilian support more dispensable from the perspective of a rebel movement. Using a country-day data set constructed from event data, evidence is presented that is consistent with this theoretical logic. Interstate conflict, therefore, is shown to play a significant role in explaining the variation of violent events that occur on a day-to-day basis during a civil conflict.

South Sudan and the nation-building project: Lessons and challenges

Over the past 50 years of independence in Africa, no event has captured the minds and imaginations of activists, scholars and policy makers and has challenged the conscience of the global community like political violence. South Sudan has just completed a referendum on self-determination. The Republic of South Sudan was inaugurated on 9 July 2011. The challenge that lies ahead for the new republic is that faced by all African states: it must reform the colonial state inherited at independence, build a more inclusive political community that effectively manages diversity, upholds the rule of law and practises democracy in governance. This article contributes to the development of the New Sudan Framework, an alternative solution to the intractable conflict in Sudan and a model for solving the problems of political violence in Africa. In the first section the author argues that the current rise in ethnic violence across South Sudan and the border regions is due to the failure to reform the colonial state inherited from Great Britain in the late 20th century. Violence in the disputed regions is analysed to illustrate the dilemma that faces both North and South Sudan in a post-referendum era. Lastly, the author argues that the way out of the current predicament in the disputed regions and the way to build a more inclusive political community in the North and South that respects unity in diversity is contained in the conceptual framework known as the New Sudan, which was articulated by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

Technology and Collective Action: The Effect of Cell Phone Coverage on Political Violence in Africa

The spread of cell phone technology across Africa has transforming effects on the economic and political sphere of the continent. In this paper, we investigate the impact of cell phone technology on violent collective action. We contend that the availability of cell phones as a communication technology allows political groups to overcome collective action problems more easily and improve in-group cooperation, and coordination. Utilizing novel, spatially disaggregated data on cell phone coverage and the location of organized violent events in Africa, we are able to show that the availability of cell phone coverage significantly and substantially increases the probability of violent conflict. Our findings hold across numerous different model specifications and robustness checks, including cross-sectional models, instrumental variable techniques, and panel data methods.

South Sudan and the Nation-Building Project: Lessons and Challenges

Over the past 50 years of independence in Africa, no event has captured the minds and imaginations of activists, scholars and policy makers and has challenged the conscience of the global community like political violence. South Sudan has just completed a referendum on self-determination. The Republic of South Sudan was inaugurated on 9 July 2011. The challenge that lies ahead for the new republic is that faced by all African states: it must reform the colonial state inherited at independence, build a more inclusive political community that effectively manages diversity, upholds the rule of law and practises democracy in governance. This article contributes to the development of the New Sudan Framework, an alternative solution to the intractable conflict in Sudan and a model for solving the problems of political violence in Africa. In the first section the author argues that the current rise in ethnic violence across South Sudan and the border regions is due to the failure to reform the colonial state inherited from Great Britain in the late 20th century. Violence in the disputed regions is analysed to illustrate the dilemma that faces both North and South Sudan in a post-referendum era. Lastly, the author argues that the way out of the current predicament in the disputed regions and the way to build a more inclusive political community in the North and South that respects unity in diversity is contained in the conceptual framework known as the New Sudan, which was articulated by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

Mixed regimes and political violence in Africa

ABSTRACTPolitical violence in sub-Saharan Africa is down. The number of military dictatorships and one-party states is also down. Are the two trends related? Conventional democratic peace theory says the answer is yes, because the relationship between democracy and peace is linear and positive. A revisionist view, however, raises questions. The majority of Africa's new regimes are not full democracies but mixed regimes that some studies find to have the greatest propensity to violent behaviour. Using statistical analysis of a trichotomous classification of African regimes from 1960 to 2008, this article suggests that neither argument fits the facts. Autocracies and partial democracies in this region appear to have similar exposure to conflict, with both types of systems suffering more conflict than full democracies. Variables other than regime type appear to be the driving forces behind these trends.

A Select List of Articles on Africa Appearing in Non-Africanist Periodicals: January to March 2009

General Anyu, J. N. and Ifredi, J-P. A. China's venture in Africa: patterns, prospects and implications for Africa's development. Mediterranean Quarterly19, 1 (2008), pp. 91–110. Bäringhausen, T. and Bloom, D. E. ‘Conditional scholarships’ for HIV/AIDS health workers: educating and retaining the workforce to provide antiretroviral treatment in sub-Saharan Africa. Social Science and Medicine68, 3 (2009), pp. 554–61. Bove, R. and Valeggia, C. Polygyny and women's health in sub-Saharan Africa. Social Science and Medicine68, 1 (2009), pp. 21–9. Dunn, K. ‘Sons of the soil’ and contemporary state making: autochthony, uncertainty and political violence in Africa. Third World Quarterly30, 1 (2009), pp. 113–27. Handler, J. S. The middle passage and the material culture of captive Africans. Slavery and Abolition, 30, 1 (2009), pp. 1–26. Kallaway, P. Education, health and social welfare in the late colonial context: the International Missionary Council and educational transition in interwar years, with specific reference to colonial Africa. History of Education38, 2 (2009), pp. 217–46.

‘Sons of the Soil’ and Contemporary State Making: autochthony, uncertainty and political violence in Africa

The employment of autochthony discourses has become a prominent feature of contemporary politics around the world. Autochthony discourses link identity and space, enabling the speaker to establish a direct claim to territory by asserting that one is an original inhabitant, a ‘son of the soil’. Drawing from recent African examples, this contribution argues that the employment of autochthony discourses is an attractive response to the ontological uncertainty around political identities within the postmodern/postcolonial condition. Autochthony discourses can resonate deeply with populations longing for a sense of primal security in the face of uncertainty generated by a variety of sources, from the processes of contemporary globalisation to the collapse of neo-patrimonial structures. Yet this sense of security is inevitably fleeting, given the instability and plasticity of autochthony claims. The contribution examines why these discourses are often characterised by violence, and argues that autochthony is frequently linked to the desire for order inherent in contemporary state making, which invariably relies on multiple manifestations of violence.

Ethnicity and political violence in Africa: The challenge to the Burundi state

This paper contributes to debates on the crisis of the African state, particularly the challenge posed by the rent-seeking elite, ethnicity and political violence. In most accounts, Burundi's persistent civil war fits contemporary discourse of the failed neo-patrimonial state in which opportunistic elites mobilize ethnicity for economic gain. Drawing on recent theorising on the politicization of identities and their intersection with state formation, the paper examines historically the development of ethnic consciousness and its links to the Burundi state. Ethnicity, it contends, has been the central organizing principle of the modern Burundi state with its successive policies of differentiation and exclusion. Throughout its post-colonial history, the Burundi state has not been a fully functioning sovereign state along the lines of its western counterparts. Yet, its citizens, irrespective of their ethnic affiliation, have not contested its territorial integrity. Instead the conflict reflects contested claims for enrichment, representation and security as expected from a model state. The on-going violence is attributed to an increasingly factionalised political elite, based on the multiple cleavages in Burundi society, who mobilize ethnicity in their struggle for control of the state. Recent peace negotiations, aimed at correcting ethnic imbalance through power sharing and reform of the institutions of governance are unlikely to resolve the political crisis as they fail to move beyond a methodological pre-occupation with ethnic identities and address the complex social reality of Burundi society and to include the people of Burundi as part of a broader non-ethnicized political community, a prerequisite for a stable pluralistic democracy.

Editoris Comments

Editor's Comments John Conteh-Morgan Most of the articles in this issue of Research in African Literatures are devoted to selected papers presented at two African Literature Association (ALA) conferences: the 2002 conference in San Diego, California, and the 2004 meeting in Madison, Wisconsin. With the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide barely behind us, Research in African Literatures welcomes the opportunity provided by the 2002 ALA Conference to contribute to the various critical discourses on political violence in Africa, by devoting space to the reflections of literary critics on the ways in which this subject has haunted and shaped the creative imaginary of recent African writers. All but the last article in the cluster on violence, an independent submission, are drawn from some of the papers presented at the panel organized on the topic by Kenneth Harrow and Richard Priebe at the San Diego meeting. The second set of papers—grouped in the Forum section, and exploring from a theoretical point of view the ancient problem (as it applies to African literatures) of mimesis, the complex articulations and interplay between literary text and social reality, and the configurations of the latter in the former—is taken from the panel on literary theory organized by Tejumola Olaniyan at the Wisconsin conference. Research in African Literatures wishes to thank the conveners of these panels for coordinating these contributions to this issue and will be pleased to receive for publication in future "Forum sections" short, considered responses to and comments on some of the issues raised by the material presented here. Copyright © 2005 The Indiana University Press

Political Science as an Obstacle to Understanding the Problem of the State and Political Violence in Africa

by Jeffrey HerbstPrinceton University Press, 296 pp.,$21.95, ISBN 0691010285The Graves Are Not Yet Fullby Bill BerkeleyBasic Books, 2002, 320 pp., $17.00,ISBN 0465006426 Some thirty-two years ago, Albert O. Hirschman published an article in the journal World Politics entitled “The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Our Understanding”.1 In that article, he inveighed against what he called “the mindless use of paradigms” in Latin America by North American scholars who imagined that with the use of a single sharp edged analytical model, they could unlock the door to the mystery of underdevelopment in Latin America. By way of illustration, he analysed what were then two newly published books on Latin America: John Womack’s now classic book, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York, Alfred Knopf, 1968), and James L. Payne’s Conflict in Colombia (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968).

The Redistributive State and Conflicts in Africa

This article argues that ethnic problems are only one aspect of political violence in Africa, while violent conflicts must be considered a failure of the state to perform some of its fundamental tasks. State formation in Africa is a transition process starting from an institutional endowment of ethnic division. Ethnic capital in Africa ensures the provision of many of the services that a modern state has taken over in rich countries, e.g. security, education, norms of behaviour. Few African states can deliver all these services adequately, and must go through an initial phase of federation of ethnic groups before they can provide a credible substitute for ethnic capital. The system of redistribution within and among groups is the key to creating the solidarity links between them, and its breakdown is liable to trigger political violence. A formal game-theoretic model is presented which brings out the impact of redistribution on rebellious activity, as well as the crucial role of the ability of the government to commit credibly to its expenditure policy. Without this, there is no redistribution taking place in equilibrium, and large amounts of resources are invested in warring. Civil wars, or other forms of political violence, are thus an integral part of the political economy of Africa.

New political violence in Africa – Secular sectarianism in Sierra Leone

Mary Douglas (1993) has indicated some of the shared concerns that keep voluntary enclaves together as ‘social movements’. The present paper describes a rather different kind of enclave politics, being concerned with the ‘new violence’ of groups enclaved by social exclusion and force. The paper focuses on the emergence and subsequent development of dissidents in the civil war in Sierra Leone. The RUF was at the outset a tiny but conventional guerrilla force, modelled on one of the militias in the Liberian civil war, and seeking to overthrow a decayed neo-patrimonial ‘one-party’ regime. Gaining little popular support, its members became marooned in forested isolation on the Liberia-Sierra Leone border. Recruits were mainly school children seized by force and ‘converted’ through having to take part in atrocities against rural civilians. Unable to return to the larger society on pain of summary execution, captives have had little option but to adjust to the political fantasies of a violent and unstable leadership. They were enclaved by force. Indicating the predictive strength of Douglas' arguments about the cultural dynamics of the enclave, the subsequent atrocity-drenched story of the RUF suggests that it is not the content of belief that determines institutional culture but vice versa. To survive, the enforced enclave develops the concerns of the classic ‘sect’ - a doctrinaire ‘rationality’ (expressed in crude acts of ‘subtractive’ violence), rejection of magic, decision making by lots, preoccupation with defection, otiose leadership style. If the rest of the world is to come to terms with violent enclave organizations such as the RUF and Algerian GIA it may have to pay more careful attention to the way enclave institutions think. They may not respond ‘rationally’ to the kinds of incentives offered by mainstream groups organised around hierarchical and/or individualist systems of social accountability.