ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out the Public Policy agenda for this volume on understanding government and governance in Africa. It provides the broader philosophical backgrounds predominating the discussions and analyses of succeeding chapters. Doing so begins by displaying the evolution of development policy paradigms to examine the interfaces between development and governance’s normative and functional approaches in Africa. It briefly shows how these have shaped politics, administration, society and state’s transnational networks, including the kinds of policy systems and changes they have produced in governing African countries. While demonstrating the eclecticism of a public policy approach to understanding governance, this chapter explains how this volume attempts to establish African Public Policy and Policy Analysis fundamentals in Africa. It concludes with an overview and outline of the rest of this book, covering different governance domains and policy sectors across Africa.
