Research Catalog

Title

Africa and the international system : the politics of state survival / Christopher Clapham.

Author

Clapham, Christopher S.

Publication

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 340 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

• African independence launched into international politics a group of the world's poorest, weakest and most artificial states. How have such states managed to survive? To what extent is their survival now threatened? Christopher Clapham shows how an initially supportive international environment has - as a result partly of political and economic mismanagement within African states themselves, partly of global developments over which they had no control - become increasingly threatening to African rulers and the states over which they preside. The author also reveals how international conventions designed to uphold state sovereignty have often been appropriated and subverted by rulers to enhance their domestic control, and how African states have been undermined by guerrilla insurgencies and the use of international relations to serve essentially private ends.
• He shows how awkward, how ambiguous, how unsatisfactory, and often how tragic, has been the encounter between Africa and Western conceptions of statehood.

Series Statement

Cambridge studies in international relations ; 50

Uniform Title

Cambridge studies in international relations ; 50.

Subject

• Since 1960
• Self-determination, National > Africa
• Sovereignty
• Africa > Foreign relations > 1960-

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-331) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. Fragile states and the international system -- 2. The creation of an African international order -- 3. Domestic statehood and foreign policy -- 4. The Foreign Policies of Post-Colonialism -- 5. The politics of solidarity -- 6. The resort to the superpowers -- 7. The international politics of economic failure -- 8. The Externalisation of political accountability -- 9. The International politics of insurgency -- 10. The privatisation of diplomacy -- 11. Conclusion.

ISBN

• 052157207X
• 0521576687 (pbk.)

LCCN

^^^96003882^

OCLC

• 34193261
• SCSB-10055468

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library