Oil, Democracy, and Development in Africa PDF Download

Author: John R. Heilbrunn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139917013
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Oil, Democracy, and Development in Africa presents an optimistic analysis of the continent's oil-producing states. With attention to the complex histories, the interactions of key industry actors and policy makers, and the goals of diverse groups in society, this contribution fills a gap in the literature on resource-abundant countries. John R. Heilbrunn presents a positive assessment of circumstances in contemporary African oil exporters. The book demonstrates that even those leaders who are among the least accountable use oil revenues to improve their citizens' living standards, if only a little bit. As a consequence, African oil producers are growing economically and their people are living under increasingly democratic polities. Heilbrunn thus calls for a long-overdue reassessment of the impact of hydrocarbons on developing economies.

Author: Claude Ake
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815723486
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Despite three decades of preoccupation with development in Africa, the economies of most African nations are still stagnating or regressing. For most Africans, incomes are lower than they were two decades ago, health prospects are poorer, malnourishment is widespread, and infrastructures and social institutions are breaking down. An array of factors have been offered to explain the apparent failure of development in Africa, including the colonial legacy, social pluralism, corruption, poor planning and incompetent management, limited in-flow of foreign capital, and low levels of saving and investment. Alone or in combination, these factors are serious impediments to development, but Claude Ake contends that the problem is not that development has failed, but that it was never really on the agenda. He maintains that political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development. In this book, Ake traces the evolution and failure of development policies, including the IMF stabilization programs that have dominated international efforts. He identifies the root causes of the problem in the authoritarian political structure of the African states derived from the previous colonial entities. Ake sketches the alternatives that are struggling to emerge from calamitous failure--economic development based on traditional agriculture, political development based on the decentralization of power, and reliance on indigenous communities that have been providing some measure of refuge from the coercive power of the central state. Ake's argument may become a new paradigm for development in Africa.

Author: Mohamed A. El-Khawas
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Economic, political, and social factors stand at the heart of the struggle for African development. They are three sides of the same triangle and reform in each area must go hand-in-hand if a stable, sustainable and prosperous Africa is to emerge. This book examines the causes behind African leaders' failure to bring about political stability and economic development. Several factors are assessed, among them, (1) the impact of the one-party system on African societies, (2) deterioration of the economy and the social order, (3) civil war, and (4) poor management of resources, especially diamonds and oil.

Author: Meenal Shrivastava
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
ISBN: 1771990295
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
In Democracy in Alberta: The Theory and Practice of a Quasi-Party System, published in 1953, C. B. Macpherson explored the nature of democracy in a province that was dominated by a single class of producers. At the time, Macpherson was talking about Alberta farmers, but today the province can still be seen as a one-industry economy—the 1947 discovery of oil in Leduc having inaugurated a new era. For all practical purposes, the oil-rich jurisdiction of Alberta also remains a one-party state. Not only has there been little opposition to a government that has been in power for over forty years, but Alberta ranks behind other provinces in terms of voter turnout, while also boasting some of the lowest scores on a variety of social welfare indicators. The contributors to Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy critically assess the political peculiarities of Alberta and the impact of the government’s relationship to the oil industry on the lives of the province’s most vulnerable citizens. They also examine the public policy environment and the entrenchment of neoliberal political ideology in the province. In probing the relationship between oil dependency and democracy in the context of an industrialized nation, Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy offers a crucial test of the “oil inhibits democracy” thesis that has hitherto been advanced in relation to oil-producing countries in the Global South. If reliance on oil production appears to undermine democratic participation and governance in Alberta, then what does the Alberta case suggest for the future of democracy in industrialized nations such as the United States and Australia, which are now in the process of exploiting their own substantial shale oil reserves? The environmental consequences of oil production have, for example, been the subject of much attention. Little is likely to change, however, if citizens of oil-rich countries cannot effectively intervene to influence government policy.

Author: Jesse Salah Ovadia
Publisher: Hurst & Company
ISBN: 9781849044769
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Local initiatives, local control and local ownership are increasingly characteristic of Africa's petroleum sector, as Ovadia sets out in his book

Author: Gordon Crawford
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1788112652
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
Exploring and updating the controversial debates about the relationship between democracy and development, this Research Handbook provides clarification on the complex and nuanced interlinkages between political regime type and socio-economic development. Distinguished scholars examine a broad range of issues from multidisciplinary perspectives across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.

Author: A. Carl LeVan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107081149
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
This book argues that the structure of the policy-making process in Nigeria explains variations in government performance better than other commonly cited factors.

Author: Michael L. Ross
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691159637
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Countries that are rich in petroleum have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil. What explains this oil curse? And can it be fixed? In this groundbreaking analysis, Michael L. Ross looks at how developing nations are shaped by their mineral wealth--and how they can turn oil from a curse into a blessing. Ross traces the oil curse to the upheaval of the 1970s, when oil prices soared and governments across the developing world seized control of their countries' oil industries. Before nationalization, the oil-rich countries looked much like the rest of the world; today, they are 50 percent more likely to be ruled by autocrats--and twice as likely to descend into civil war--than countries without oil. The Oil Curse shows why oil wealth typically creates less economic growth than it should; why it produces jobs for men but not women; and why it creates more problems in poor states than in rich ones. It also warns that the global thirst for petroleum is causing companies to drill in increasingly poor nations, which could further spread the oil curse. This landmark book explains why good geology often leads to bad governance, and how this can be changed.

Author: Douglas A. Yates
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745330464
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Africa is often seen as a place to be pitied or feared as an area of instability. This book challenges these complacent assumptions, showing how our demand for oil contributes to the chronic problems plaguing the continent. Douglas A. Yates shows how the "scramble" by the great powers for African oil has fed corruption and undermined democracy. Yates documents how Africans have refused to remain passive in the face of such developments, forming movements to challenge this new attempt at domination. This book is an urgent challenge to our understanding of Africa, raising questions about the consequences of our reliance on foreign resources. It will be vital reading for all those studying development and global political economy.

Author: Steven C. Radelet
Publisher: CGD Books
ISBN: 1933286512
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Emerging Africa describes the too-often-overlooked positive changes that have taken place in much of Africa since the mid-1990s. In 17 countries, five fundamental and sustained breakthroughs are making old assumptions increasingly untenable: - The rise of democracy brought on by the end of the Cold War and apartheid - Stronger economic management - The end of the debt crisis and a more constructive relationship with the international community - The introduction of new technologies, especially mobile phones and the Internet - The emergence of a new generation of leaders. With these significant changes, the countries of emerging Africa seem poised to lead the continent out of the conflict, stagnation, and dictatorships of the past. The countries discussed in the book are Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lesotho, Mali Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, São Tomé and Principe, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.