With stereotypes of imperial complicity and idealistic fantasy firmly in place, tentative assumptions as to the motives of early missionaries often prove less than satisfactory. The need for new master narratives which move beyond the old paradigms of Western expansion and African victimization are being called for by scholars of both North and South; narratives which allow room for strong archival evidence of an egalitarian joint endeavor and African cultural vitality without avoiding the investment in imperialism practiced by colonial personnel. Based on extensive archival research this study advocates an alternative proposal; missionaries caught in the grinding of contradictory opposites. Alfred Robert Tucker, as a professional artist, captured this tug-of-war on canvas but similar dichotomies are found in his approach, as a bishop and Church Missionary Society Director, to marriage contracts, slavery, mission and church organizational structure, alliance with the colonial government and African partnership. Tucker, neither a consistent imperialist nor a complete egalitarian idealist, operated in both spheres without creating a third. This thesis is a piece of revisionist historiography of the Victorian encounter with Africa – a specific micro-narrative questioning the old consensus and calling for a wider discussion and a shift in perspective.

Government accountability is one of the key issues often raised in debates about governance in young democracies such as South Africa (RSA). Comparing two provincial governments in RSA as case studies, this thesis explores accountability between provincial government and its various stakeholders. There is a wide literature on government accountability however this literature is limited on RSA public sector accountability, either from the perspective of what it means or how it is attained. In recent years provincial government stakeholders have complained about weaknesses and lack of government accountability and efficient performance. The effectiveness of recent mechanisms such as Batho Pele (BP), as a way to consult citizens and therefore to enhance provincial government accountability and performance, has also been questioned by stakeholders and government. In this thesis, the PATIGAHAR accountability analytical framework is developed from the basic building blocks of the principal-agent model and the accountability literature, in particular Ashworth and Skelcher (2005) four dimensional approach. Interviews were held with various stakeholders and published reports on government accountability were also analysed against the criteria of the PATIGAHAR model. Accountability is weakened by lack of specific measures of citizens’ accountability. Poor implementation of BP hampers government efforts to involve citizens for accountability. The role of the legislature in government accountability needs to be improved and made specific for the benefits of all stakeholders.

This thesis explores the historical background of patronage politics in Nigeria by examining its evolution during key periods of the country's political development. It investigates how contemporary relations and structures of power are constructed and maintained by exploring a range of political practices, social identities and economic conditions that evidence a continuity and interconnectedness with Nigeria's precolonial and colonial past. By examining five biographies of contemporary political patrons, this thesis shows how politicians and political entrepreneurs legitimate their actions and goals in the political sphere. This process of legitimating political power takes place through a range of strategies that, first, draw on varied social, cultural and historical repertoires; second, are contingent on social settings, political traditions and cultures; and finally, are designed to construct specific social and political meanings. The central argument presented here is that we cannot fully understand how political patrons and their networks operate unless we understand the varied local contexts and political histories that structure relations of power across Nigeria. This thesis is germane because it investigates how the state penetrates different societal structures as well as how local political networks are integrated into central power.

This thesis examines the emergence of contentious forms of political agency during the Libyan uprising of 2011. The wave of popular protests known as the ‘Arab Spring’ challenged prevailing assumptions about the politics of the region. It was argued that, through their unfettered, claims making practices, Arab publics had undermined authoritarian structures of power, and become imbued with new, empowering self-understandings. Positioning itself within this literature on Middle East politics, the thesis sets out to analyse authoritarianism as a mode of domination, and to investigate the extent to which moments of radical contestation both transform authoritarian regimes and generate new political subjectivities. The analysis is centred on the Libyan uprising, which emerged under Qadhafi’s authoritarian Jamahiriya, yet witnessed widespread protests, civil activism and an armed conflict from February to August 2011. The thesis integrates multi-institutional politics theory with theories of contentious politics in order to conceptualise domination as located in social ‘institutions’ that are simultaneously material and symbolic. In turn, it understands agency as a strategic and symbolic representational practice that is capable of transforming institutional structures. Drawing on interviews with Libyan activists, and on the analysis of social movement discourses, the thesis advances three core arguments. Firstly, it argues that Qadhafi’s Jamahiriya embedded political agency into its system of domination by engendering complicity. Secondly, it argues that in 2011, Libyans undercut the Jamahiriya’s monopoly over meaning and practice by generating mobilising ‘collective action frames’, and by subverting its symbolic and classificatory schemas. Lastly, it indicates that representational practices ultimately struggled to transform authoritarian domination because they were bound up with the strategic logics of collective action, and because they re-inscribed the Jamahiriya’s definitions of power and collectivity. In proffering these arguments, this thesis generates a new body of empirical material on an understudied case, and critically applies, challenges and extends theories of authoritarianism and contentious politics.

This research looks at the textuality of hiplife – the Ghanaian version of hip hop – by investigating the hiplife discursive and non discursive practices. The thesis is that hiplife is a major platform for Ghanaian youth cultural expression. I choose the qualitative methodology because it meets the subtle demand of an enquiry on expressive culture like hiplife. Using focus group discussion, interviews and participant observation to collect data from the whole country with emphasis on the four main cities, the research analyses transcribed data and comes up with various findings. These include the fact that hiplife started with the quest of Ghanaian youth for a syncretic culture, the combination of local and foreign cultures, mediated by DJs, artistes and sites. It also reveals that it is the rhythm of the Akan drum language that provides the rhythmic complexion of hiplife. Again, as a platform for youth expression, hiplife expresses new values – new social truths, a common destiny and protest against hegemony. Furthermore, hiplife appropriates the “looking glass” concept to circulate its cultural expression and ideologies in and out of Ghana. Such a visibility is also taken advantage of by the Ghanaian women to address their gender concerns.

Whilst much of the world has been formally decolonised, the ways we think about international relations often remains Eurocentric. This is evident in the critical debate on the liberal peace, which problematises the politics of postwar intervention. In this debate, it is argued that donors conduct invasive liberal social transformations in the name of conflict management and good governance. Although insightful, these critiques have tended to ignore the target society as a subject of history and politics in its own right. In response, the thesis turns to anti-colonial thought for strategies to reconstruct the target society as a subject of politics and source of critique. Drawing on the thinking of Césaire, Fanon and Cabral, these approaches offer philosophical re-orientations for how we understand the embodied subject, how we approach analysis, and how we think about political ethics. I use these insights to look at the liberal peace in Mozambique, one of intervention’s ‘success stories’. First, ‘Mozambique’ is itself re-constituted as a subject of history, in which the liberal peace is contextualised within historical forms of rule. Second, political subjecthood is reconstructed through thinking about ‘double consciousness’ on issues of governance and corruption. Third, I look at forms of conscious transactionality and alienation in the material realities of the liberal peace. Finally, I explore the historically ambivalent relationship of the peasantry with the state, which highlights alternative responses to neoliberal policy. The conclusions of the thesis suggest that the problem with the liberal peace is not so much that it is an alien form of rule which is culturally unsuitable but an alienating form of rule which is politically and economically exclusionary. The kind of critical ethical response that this demands is not based on the assumption of unbridgeable ‘difference’ between the West and its Others, but of the potential and actual connections between embodied political subjects who can listen to and hear each other.

The thesis is a comprehensive examination of the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decrees of 1972 and 1977, and more broadly of the process of indigenisation in Nigeria. A brief introduction to the historical background of indigenisation before 1970 is followed by an account of the timing of the Decrees in the context of the oil boom in the country's economy. An examination of the problems encountered in implementing the Decrees and their effects, and an analysis of the distribution of benefits, is informed by empirical research including interviews, carried out by the author in Nigeria between 1982 and 1985. The record shows that indigenisation has led to the consolidation of an economy which accommodates the interests of ex-State personnel, the State as an institution, private indigenous businessmen and foreign capital, in an order which is far from certain to bring about the national economic independence which, in official terms, is the chief objective. Nigeria's commitment to capitalism and the promotion of Indigenous private enterprise, on the basis of resources generated initially by the agricultural economy, between the 1940s and 1960s, and then much more spectacularly and more significantly by oil revenues in the 1970s, provides an instructive example of the limits to what a post-colonial society in black Africa can achieve by trying to indigenise the ownership structure of its economy.

The creation of ECOWAS in May 1975 marked the successful outcome of protracted negotiations that had begun shortly after independence, and which reflected the mounting sense of unease in Africa and throughout the Third World that political independence did not signify effective control by the new states of their economies. Hence the numerous experiments at integration within the region, some mainly political and others more economic in character. All, however, contributed to the movement towards regional economic integration and ECOWAS. The Ghana-Guinea Union attempted briefly to bridge the unfortunate linguistic and cultural divide separating former British and French territories In West Africa. The Union was restricted, however, to political cooperation between leaders with more or less compatible and radical ideologies, who were a small minority within the region as a whole. With independence the very number and diversity of West African states seemed to dictate a different and more gradual approach to unity based, initially, on economic cooperation and functional inter-dependence, and that has been the policy of every Nigerian government since 1960. If I have emphasised the role played by Nigeria, particularly after 1970, it is because international agencies and our future partners themselves recognised that, without Nigeria, there could be no effective West African community. By reason of its size, population and oil resources, Nigeria constitutes a core state, with no interest in territorial aggrandisement but concerned, understandably, with its own security and, therefore, with the stability of the region. These objectives are best served by policies of political cooperation, economic integration and adoption of a form of collective self-reliance. Here Nigeria's perception of its development and security needs has coincided increasingly with those of the other states within the region. Particular attention has been given to the Francophone states, who are the majority within West African and whose changing relationship with the metropole on the one hand, and with Nigeria on the other, is central to our analysis. The promise of the Ghana-Guinea Union was finally realised thanks to the growing cooperation after 1970 between Nigeria and Togo who, together, formed the nucleus of the West African community in 1972. Economic Integration in the 'seventies was also facilitated by (a) the reduced importance of ideological differences within the region; (b) the mounting economic difficulties confronting states as a result of the global economic crisis and increased oil prices after 1973, but alleviated by timely Nigerian assistance; (c) the example of regional integration within the EEC, soon to be expanded to include Britain; and (d) the successful outcome in 1975 of the Lome negotiations between the EEC and the African-Pacific-Caribbean states. The greater part of the thesis is concerned with the formation of ECOWAS and the negotiations, between July 1966 and May 1975, in which I was privileged to participate. While my own association with ECOWAS ended shortly afterwards, in July 1975, there was, fortunately, no such interruption in the development of the community. It seemed appropriate, therefore, to extend the scope of the thesis to encompass the first formative years of the community, 1975-1979, which saw the establishment of the principal ECOWAS institutions, the adoption of the more important protocols, and the first difficult steps towards their implementation.

The thesis examines the social basis of the property and contractual relations of social groups in German East Africa. Chapter 1 oonsiders property relations arising principally from the labour of the producer. Social groups characterised by a communal mode of production are subdivided into shifting and stable sub-forms. In the first form, production units comprise production communities and family work-teams. In contrast to Meillassoux's study of the Guro, property relations are realised atthe level of the work-team. Land tenure in the two sub-forms differs, reflecting distinct practices in agriculture and labour organisation. Chapter 2 examines property relations arising from the direct appropriation of surplus labour by non-producers. Tributary and feudal modes of production are distinguished. Forms of tribute are examined. The 'bundle of rights' concept and Honore's theory of ownership are criticised. Chapter 3 concerns the social dissolution of the two previous forms of property due to the growth of commodity relations. Forms of sale, lease and mortgage are examined. The notion of 'absolute title' is analysed and comparisons with English Law made. Chapter 4 is a theoretical study of forms of exchange and corresponding legal relations. Chapter 5 applies aspects of the theory to contracts in East Africa. Contracts were generally not enforced. The significant point in the emergence of a law of contract was in debt relations. Generally loans were made without interest. In this case there is no distinction between restitution and enforcement of a promise. Instances of charging of interest are found where trade was developed. The Islamic rule against usury was found on the coast, but numerous exceptions developed. The enforcement of interest necessarily implies the enforcement of a promise and hence the emergence of a law of contract.

The 'peace process' is a common expression in international politics. It describes and explains events in seemingly disparate locations as Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and Southern Africa, which share only the common occurrence of violent conflict. One outstanding feature of these peace processes is the active participation of international actors or external 'third parties'. Whether they are states, international organisations or nongovernmental organisations, these external actors comprise an industry focussed on the peace process. However, in providing assistance to countries making the transition from war to peace, as an industry these external third parties often reconfigure the political space of host societies in a manner which frustrates the intended goal of attaining peace. The following analysis focuses on the process of implementing a comprehensive peace settlement to show how the peace process industry operates, using the case of Mozambique. The Mozambican peace process was selected because it is generally presented as a success which justifies similar activities in future cases. Therefore it is crucial to examine whether the intervention was a success, what kind of success and a success for whom. As Mozambique was inundated with international actors engaged in all kinds of activities, supported by substantial funding, it serves as a useful example from which to study the peace process industry at work. Mozambique is also one of the poorest countries in the world and is thus representative of larger processes in the developing world and its relationship with donors and the United Nations. This thesis draws out a number of themes on the aggregate impact of external third parties on the political space of Mozambique and uses this as a basis for reaching conclusions applicable to other cases. It seeks to contribute to debates in international relations on how questions regarding the role of international actors in peace processes and the assistance they provide should be answered.