Why read States and Power in Africa?

Book cover of States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control

Book description

Theories of international relations, assumed to be universally applicable, have failed to explain the creation of states in Africa. There, the interaction of power and space is dramatically different from what occurred in Europe. In States and Power in Africa, Jeffrey Herbst places the African state-building process in a truly…

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Why read it?

1 author picked States and Power in Africa as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Irina Filatova

Author

Jeffrey Herbst also looks at the past and present of the African continent, and ecology and demography also come into his story. But his main subject is the specific nature of power and state in Sub–Saharan Africa and the inter-relations between the two. He traces this defining aspect of Africa’s reality through several centuries and presents it within the global context by drawing in experiences of self-organisation of power and state in other continents and regions. Continuity is for him the key to understanding the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial past and even the future of the continent.

From Irina's list on to understand what is wrong and right with Africa.