Social Science Research Council

The second part of my review of Patrick Chabal, Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling, is posted at African Arguments. In this, I try to trace some of the key features of rule by the Sudanic kingdoms, arguing that they present a special case of patronage/clientelism, which both vindicates and elaborates Chabal’s thesis, and [...]

I have published the first part of a two-part review of Patrick Chabal’s Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling, on the African Arguments website. The first part is a general review of Bayart’s book, focusing on his treatment of patronage and clientelism. The second part will seek to explore the relevance of the analysis [...]

This is the final installment of a five part critical review of Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (2009). Bayart’s thesis is provocative, deliberately shorn of moralism and disrespectful of any political correctness. He doesn’t allocate blame because he doesn’t diagnose failure. He does not agree that “Africa south of [...]

This is the fourth in a five part review of Jean-François Bayart’s The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. In this part, I address the questions of democracy, war and the internationalization of African governance. In the first (1989) edition, Bayart argued that experiments in breaking free from the grip of African governmentality [...]

This is part three of a five part expansive critical review of Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (2009), focusing on the moral dimensions of African governance—in the sense of how ethics and legitimacy are adduced in support of political practice. As well as the acquisition of resources, Bayart also [...]

This is part two of a five part critical review of Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (2009), analyzing and applying the concept of “extraversion” and examining the historicism of regional political-economic orbits. Another major element of Bayart’s analysis is “extraversion” of African states, defined as “mobilizing resources derived from [...]

The republication of Jean-François Bayart’s classic book-length essay, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, is an opportunity to reflect on the hypotheses he raises and their application to Sudan and especially Darfur. Bayart’s book mentions Sudan only in passing but the scope of his ambition is certainly relevant to Sudan in general [...]