Rethinking Third-World Politics

Providing a thorough reassessment of our understanding of politics in Third World societies, this book contains some of the liveliest and most original analyses to have been published in recent years. The severity of the political and economic crisis throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America in the 1980s has highlighted the inadequacy of existing political science theories and the urgent need to provide new paradigms for the 1990s.

Introduction. Part 1: Conceptualising Third World Politics; 1. The Three-dimensional State. 2. 'Waiting for a Text?': Comparing Third World Politics. 3. Finishing with the Idea of the Third World: The Concept of the Political Trajectory. 4. On State, Society and Discourse In India. 5. Political Democratisation in Latin America and the Crisis of Paradigms. Part 2:: The Theatrical and Imaginary Dimensions in Politics; 6. Political Institutions, Discourse and Imagination in China at Tiananmen. 7. The Show of State in a Neo-Colonial Twilight: Francophone Africa. 8. Power and Obscenity in the Post-colonial Period: The Case of Cameroon. Part 3: Political Institutions and State-Society Relations; 9. The Historical Trajectories of the Ivorian and Kenyan States. 10. State, Society and Political Institutions in Cote d' Ivoire and Ghana. 11. State. Society and Political Institutions in Revolutionary Ethiopia. 12. Successful Economic Development and Political Change in Taiwan and South Korea. Index.