The Political Impact of African Military Leaders PDF Download

Author: Sabella Ogbobode Abidde
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031314271
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

View

Book Description
This edited volume examines the cases of four African military leaders who had enormous impact on the continent and beyond. These military officers, and later heads of state -- Jerry Rawlings of Ghana; Moammar Gaddafi of Libya; Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso; and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt – were provocative and polarizing figures, beloved domestically but mostly viewed with suspicion and hostility by foreign governments. This volume studies these leaders as a group, engaging in a critical but systematic examination of their personalities, leadership styles, official performance, legacies, and their continuing impact on the future and political destiny of the continent. Providing a survey of controversial but important African political figures, this volume will be of use to scholars and students in the social sciences, especially those interested in African history, African studies, military science, Black studies, political science, leadership studies, and the politics of developing nations.

Author: Y. Alex-Assensoh
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0312292724
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

View

Book Description
Africa's former colonial masters, including Great Britain; France, Portugal and Spain, trained members and leaders of the various colonial Armed Forces to be politically non-partisan. Yet, the modern-day Armed Forces on the continent, made up of the Army, Police, Air Force and Navy, have become so politicized that many countries in Africa are today ruled or have already been ruled by military dictators through coups d'etat, occasionally for good reasons as the book points out. This book traces the historical-cum-political evolution of these events, and what bodes for Africa, where the unending military incursions into partisan politics are concerned.

Author: Mathurin C. Houngnikpo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317124308
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

View

Book Description
The relationship between civil society and the armed forces is an essential part of any polity, democratic or otherwise, because a military force is after all a universal feature of social systems. Despite significant progress moving towards democracy among some African countries in the past decade, all too many African militaries have yet to accept core democratic principles regulating civilian authority over the military. This book explores the theory of civil-military relations and moves on to review the intrusion of the armed forces in African politics by looking first into the organization and role of the army in pre-colonial and colonial eras, before examining contemporary armies and their impact on society. Furthermore it revisits the various explanations of military takeovers in Africa and disentangles the notion of the military as the modernizing force. Whether as a revolutionary force, as a stabilizing force, or as a modernizing force, the military has often been perceived as the only organized and disciplined group with the necessary skills to uplift newly independent nations. The performance of Africa's military governments since independence, however, has soundly disproven this thesis. As such, this study conveys the necessity of new civil-military relations in Africa and calls not just for civilian control of the military but rather a democratic oversight of the security forces in Africa.

Author: Anders Themnér
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1783602503
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

View

Book Description
Post-war democratization has been identified as a crucial mechanism to build peace in war-ridden societies, supposedly allowing belligerents to compete through ballots rather than bullets. A byproduct of this process, however, is that military leaders often become an integral part of the new democratic system, using resources and networks generated from the previous war to dominate the emerging political landscape. The crucial and thus-far overlooked question to be addressed, therefore, is what effect the inclusion of ex-militaries into electoral politics has on post-war security. Can 'warlord democrats' make a positive contribution by shepherding their wartime constituencies to support the building of peace and democracy, or are they likely to use their electoral platforms to sponsor political violence and keep war-affected communities mobilized through aggressive discourses? This important volume, containing a wealth of fresh empirical detail and theoretical insight, and focussing on some of Africa's most high-profile political figures – from Paul Kagame to Riek Machar to Afonso Dhlakama – represents a crucial intervention in the literature of post-war democratization.

Author: Sam C. Ukpabi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 50

View

Book Description

Author: William Gutteridge
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003801528
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

View

Book Description
Originally published in 1969, this book assesses the origin and nature of the 20th Century trend towards military intervention in the politics of African states. It begins by examining the natures of African armies and their inheritance from the colonial period. It scrutinizes the Nigerian and Ghana coups of 1966 and aspects of the East African mutinies in 1964 as well as events in certain French territories including Gabon and Dahomey. The effect of foreign military aid on the role of the armed forces in Africa is analysed, including the subtle influence of overseas military experience. The problems facing army officers when they seize the reins of government are examined along with the difficulties which they encounter when attempting to reinstitute civilian rule. Throughout the book the qualities which enable armies to intervene in politics are reviewed and related to those of the other institutions of African society.

Author: Johns Hopkins University. School of Advanced International Studies
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

View

Book Description
The concern of this book is with military rulers as political actors in contemporary Africa. Much of Africa has been under military rule during the quarter century since a majority of the countries attained their political independence. Yet studies of military rule have focused on when and how to predict the occurrence of military rule and on distinguishing between military and civilian rule. The concern of the contributors to this volume, by contrast, is the political behavior of officers once in power: how they have ruled; what has been the significance of military rule on the character of political systems in the affected countries; and how problems of regime succession have been addressed by military rulers.--Preface.

Author: George Klay Kieh
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 240

View

Book Description
Unlike other publications on the military and politics in Africa which focus on one or two aspects of the involvement of the military in African politics, this text provides a comprehensive evaluation of the various aspects of military intervention. Such a collection provides useful insights into the military's role in African politics from initial intervention to the performance of military regimes, as well as to disengagement, reengagement, consolidation and finally, the offering of ways to control the problem of intervention.

Author: Victor Oguejiofor Okafor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135529116
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

View

Book Description
This book examines the impact of post-colonial leadership on political integration in Nigeria, offering an in-depth understanding of the historical and contemporary forces that shape Nigeria's national politics as well as African politics generally. Okafor discusses how Nigeria's pre-colonial and colonial political histories along with contemporary external forces like neo-colonialism, as well as internal social, economic and political structures and developments, have affected emerging post-independence politics in the country. The study climaxes with an Africa-centered theory of political and integrative leadership and then uses it as a prism for analyzing six Nigerian post-independence political leaderships, encompassing Nigeria's First and Second Republics, along with their military interregna. The concluding chapter includes a discussion of the implications of the study for leadership and political integration in Africa in general.

Author: James Fairhead
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253110046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514

View

Book Description
In the 1860s, as America waged civil war, several thousand African Americans sought greater freedom by emigrating to the fledgling nation of Liberia. While some argued that the new black republic represented disposal rather than emancipation, a few intrepid men set out to explore their African home. African-American Exploration in West Africa collects the travel diaries of James L. Sims, George L. Seymour, and Benjamin J. K. Anderson, who explored the territory that is now Liberia and Guinea between 1858 and 1874. These remarkable diaries reveal the wealth and beauty of Africa in striking descriptions of its geography, people, flora, and fauna. The dangers of the journeys surface, too -- Seymour was attacked and later died of his wounds, and his companion, Levin Ash, was captured and sold into slavery again. Challenging the notion that there were no black explorers in Africa, these diaries provide unique perspectives on 19th-century Liberian life and life in the interior of the continent before it was radically changed by European colonialism.