Introduction: The logic of elite accountability in Africa / Rogers Orock and Wale Adebanwi -- The ocular president : political aesthetics of an upstart campaign in Sierra Leone / Danny Hoffman -- The renewal of local elites in times of "participation" in Morocco / Yasmine Berriane -- Elites and political representation in Africa : members of parliament in Ghana and Togo / Anja Osei -- Elite conflict and consensus in Ghana's Fourth Republic / Alex K.D. Frempong and Emmanuel K. Siaw -- Is the African university a site of elite reproduction or disruption? What the Senegalese experience tells us / Michael C. Lambert -- Who holds the power? elites and accountability in democratic South Africa / Roger Southall -- Land, freedom, and legal elites : rights debates in South Africa / Timothy Gibbs -- Elites and the practice of (non)accountability in Mauritius / Ramola Ramtohul and Roukaya Kasenally -- Elite associations in Cameroon : SWELA, development, and the cultural politics of redistribution / Rogers Orock -- Elite incorporation in Nigeria : the case of Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo / Godwin Onuoha -- Beyond Afro-pessimism : party-monialism, registers of accountability, and the politics of corruption / Wale Adebanwi -- Commanders, classrooms, cows, and churches : accountability and the construction of a South Sudanese elite / Naomi Pendle -- Sudanese elites : riverain Arabs, political dominance, and the Sudanese state / Jennifer Pekkinen.
Summary:
"Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa examines the ways that accountability offers an effective interpretive lens to the social, cultural, and institutional struggles of both the elites and ordinary citizens in Africa. Each chapter investigates questions of power, its public deliberation, and its negotiation in Africa by studying elites through the framework of accountability. The book enters conversations about political subjectivity and agency, especially from ongoing struggles around identities and belonging, as well as representation and legitimacy. Who speaks to whom? And on whose behalf do they speak? The contributors to this volume offer careful analyses of how such concerns are embedded in wider forms of cultural, social, and institutional discussions about transparency, collective responsibility, community, and public decision-making processes. These concerns affect prospects for democratic oversight, as well as questions of alienation, exclusivity, privilege and democratic deficit. The book situates our understanding of the emergence, meaning, and conceptual relevance of elite accountability, to study political practices in Africa. It then juxtaposes this contextualization of accountability in relation to the practices of African elites. Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa offers fresh, dynamic, and multifarious accounts of elites and their practices of accountability and locally plausible self-legitimation, as well as illuminating accounts of contemporary African elites in relation to their socially and historicallysituated outcomes of contingency, composition, negotiation, and compromise"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.