The Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Beyond State Crisis? Post-Colonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective
Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young
Beyond State Crisis? Africa and Post-Colonial Eurasia in Comparative Perspective studies sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union, two regions beset by the breakdown of states suffering from extreme official corruption, organized crime extending into warlordism, the disintegration of human services and economic institutions, and the breakdown of state after state. The book examines state breakdown, democratization, economic reform, ethnicity, and the status of women, and it compares the consequences of postcommunism and postcolonialism. The contributors, representing fields such as political science, international relations, and sociology, come from the United States, Russia, Georgia, Sudan, and South Africa.
What People are Saying
"This is a serious and important book that makes a contribution to our understanding of state effectiveness, state breakdown, and violence in Africa and Eurasia. The comparison between the two broad regions is creatively handled and introduced. The individual chapters, all by prominent experts in their fields, are based on solid research and offer insights that are original and of considerable policy importance. If you want to know how weak states work--or don't work--this book is essential reading."--Charles King, Georgetown University
Chapter List
Part I: Overview and Retrospective
1. Introduction: Comparing State Crises across Two Continents, by Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young
2. Convergence to Crisis: Pre-Independence State Legacies and Post-Independence State Breakdown in Africa and Eurasia, by Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young
Part II: Sovereignty, Violence, and War
3. At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa, Achille Mbembe
4. Who Is Strong When the State Is Weak? Violent Entrepreneurship in Russia's Emerging Markets, Vadim Volkov
5. Mafiya Troubles, Warlord Crises, William Reno
6. Weak States and Private Armies, Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr.
7. Civil Wars and State-Building in Africa and Eurasia, David Holloway and Stephen John Stedman
8. The Effects of State Crisis on African Interstate Relations (and Comparisons with Post-Soviet Russia), Donald Rothchild
Part III: Democratization and Political Economy
9. Russia: Unconsolidated Democracy, Creeping Authoritarianism, Lilia Shevtsova
10. War, State-Making, and Democracy in Africa, Richard Joseph
11. The East Goes South: International Aid and the Production of Convergence in Africa and Eurasia, Peter J. Savrakis
12. Economic Reform and the Discourse of Democracy in Africa: Resolved the Contradictons, Peter M. Lewis
Part IV. State and Society
13, Ethnicity and State-Building: Accommodating Ethnic Differences in Post-Soviet Eurasia, Gail W. Lapidus
14. Beyond Cultural Domination: Institutionalizing Equity in the African State, Francis M. Deng
15 Women and Political Change in Post-Soviet Eurasia and Postcolonial Africa, Aili Mari Tripp
Part V: Beyond State Crisis?
16. Putting the State Back Together in Post-Soviet Georgia, Ghia Nodia
17. After the Fall: State Rehabilitation in Uganda, Crawford Young
18. The Effective State in Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia: Hopeless Chimera or Possible Dream? Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young
Contributors
Index