State Recognition and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa A New Dawn for Traditional Authorities?

State Recognition and Democractization in Sub-Saharan Africa explores the link between liberal-style democratization and state recognition of traditional authority in Sub-Saharan Africa. Being critical and empirically grounded, the book explores the complex, often counter-balancing consequences of the involvement of traditional authority in the wave of democratization and liberal-style state-building that has rolled over sub-Saharan Africa in the past decade. It scrutinizes how, in practice, traditional leaders are being drawn into governance in Mozambique, Zambia, Namibia, Malawi, Burkina Faso, and the Somali region of Ethiopia, and relates these developments to state governance in the declining democracy of Zimbabwe and the emerging state of Northern Somalia.

Lars Buur (PhD) is a Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and a Research Associate of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg, with long-term field research experience in South Africa and Mozambique. His current research focuses on traditional leaders and the politics of decentralization and governance in Mozambique. His major publications to date are (as co-editor) Everyday Policing in South Africa (2004); the anthologies The Security-Development Nexus: Expressions of Sovereignty and Securitization in Southern Africa (2007); and State Recognition of Local Authorities and Public Participation: Experiences, Obstacles and Possibilities in Mozam­bique (2007). He has published several articles in Anthropology and Humanism, FOLK (Royal Danish Ethnographic Society), African Studies, Review of African Political Economy, Journal of South African Studies and Development and Change, as well as numerous peer-reviewed book articles on human rights, truth and reconciliation, vigilantism, traditional authority and sovereignty.
 
Helene Maria Kyed is a PhD candidate at Roskilde University and the Danish Institute for International Studies, Denmark, with an MA honors in Social Anthropology from Aarhus University. Her master’s thesis dealt with decentralization and local politics in Zimbabwe. At the moment, she is completing her PhD thesis on ‘State Formalization of Traditional Authority: State Formation, Decentralization and Changing Forms of Authority in Mozambique’, based on fourteen months of fieldwork in Manica Province. She has co-edited an anthology, State Recognition of Local Authorities and Public Participation: Experiences, Obstacles and Possibilities in Mozam­bique, to be published in 2007. She has published articles in Development and Change and the Journal of Southern African Studies, as well as peer-reviewed chapters in The Security-Development Nexus and Global Vigilantes on the topics of traditional authority and local forms of justice enforcement and policing.