ABSTRACT
The study of Africa in the Anglophone discipline of political science suffers from two separate, though related, sets of conditions. The first pertains to the spatial setting of disciplinary agendas and related practices. In the U.S., for instance, scholars of Africa, whether in the subfields of comparative politics or International Relations, have had to negotiate their own relations to the past and the present. Where this past involves Africa, there is notable ambivalence toward, as well as ambiguities around, issues of slavery, colonialism and postcolonial/neocolonial relations. The dominant ideological stance disavows the African past—of slavery, colonialism and, more recently, the Cold War—as mere misfortune better left alone. With regard to the present, the reality of U.S. power and its imperial aspirations have also influenced the study of Africa. Here, one detects frustration that the constitutional and institutional arrangements imposed at decolonization failed to deliver the promised progress, modernization and modernity. In response, scholars have identified “African dysfunctions”—including political violence and instability, dictatorship and authoritarianism, and state failure and civil wars—as reasons for the inefficacy of postwar U.S. and European interventions in the continent, including aid.
