ABSTRACT
This book spotlights, analyzes and attempts to explain varying forms and patterns of state-society relations on the African continent, taking as point of departure the complexities created by the emergence, proliferation and complicated interactions of so-called ‘big men’ in varying contexts across Africa’s 54 states. Although wide variations of history, culture, language, economic advancement and political stability can be found among the states that constitute the African continent, certain characteristics are strikingly similar: the current African states were creations of the colonial enterprise between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; preceding these states were ancient forms of governing that were either erased, mutated or transformed in the colonial situation; the majority of African states confront challenges of social pluralism, ethnic political mobilisation, democratic development and social progress; citizenship is contested, elites are recycled and frustrate mass political participation, elections are bitter battles for state power and patronage, and a few powerful individuals determine the destiny of the many. Poverty, conflict and disease may have given the continent a bad name, but the roots of these crises are not often explored or explicated from an African perspective, or paying attention to multiple explanatory variables rather than single, deterministic variables. This book, Africa’s Big Men: Predatory State-Society Relations in Africa, makes a solid contribution in this regard.
