Description
Book SynopsisThe Real Politics of the Horn of Africa delves into the business of politics in the turbulent, war-torn countries of north-east Africa. It is a contemporary history of how politicians, generals and insurgents bargain over money and power, and use of war to achieve their goals.
Trade Review"The foremost Western analyst of the Horn of Africa, Alex de Waal provides a superb account of the region's highly interdependent and often troubling politics. He combines an anthropologist's attention to local contexts with a political economist's analysis of transnational entanglements of markets, power struggles, and war. Often disturbing, even though de Waal seeks reasons to be hopeful, but a must read."
Craig Calhoun, London School of Economics and Political Science
"An outstanding book. The author's knowledge of the topic and region is unrivalled, and enlivened and enlightened by his personal experience and anecdotes"
Pádraig Carmody, Trinity College, Dublin
Table of Contents
- Introduction: Observing the business of power
- The Political Marketplace: Politics is Business and Business is Politics
- The Horn of Africa: Subcontinental war in three acts
- Darfur: The auction of loyalties
- Sudan: Managing the unmanageable
- South Sudan: The boom and bust of a speculative bubble
- Somalia: A post-apocalypse workshop
- Somaliland: A business-social contract
- Eritrea: A museum of modernism
- Ethiopia: Is state-building still possible?
- Transnational Patronage: Shadow globalization and the regional marketplace
- The Politics of Ideas: Perplexed intellectuals and policymakers
