POLI 352 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Mobutu Sese Seko, Quasi, Imagined Communities
20 Jan 2021
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Document Summary
Sovereignty in africa: quasi-statehood and other myths in international theory by. In this trenchant critique, siba n"zatioula grovogui demonstrates the failure of international law to address adequately the issues surrounding african self- determination during decolonization. Pre-colonial roots - dynamics of african state formation. Pre-colonial state formation in africa vs. europe (herbst) Europe had more people than land (density of population) In africa, this led to what herbst calls the primacy of exit = Dynamic in which african peoples who were dissatisfied with the governance in their land could just relocate elsewhere (bc land was so plentiful vs. population) This led to very flexible thin political/territorial units (as well as thin state power/centralized state authority) War and state-building: herbst: war is an important cause of state formation that is missing in africa today , this lack of interstate war, has took african state formation on a different path than. Samuel huntington (1968): war was the great stimulus to state building .
