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Elites, ethnicity, and ‘home town’ associations in the Côte d'Ivoire: an historical analysis of state–society links

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Dwayne Woods
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Extract

The democratisation process which began in the early 1990s in many sub-Saharan African countries has led to renewed interest in the role of voluntary associations in the shaping of the political and social realms. This article maintains that the most effective way to understand the role of associational politics and developments in Africa is not by postulating what they should do according to Western democratic theory, but through an historical analysis of how associations functioned before the introduction of multi-party competitive elections and putative democratic rules in recent years. In this way it will be possible to attain a richer and more complex under-standing of state–society relations under one-party and military regimes, and thus of how these links are likely to change in a more pluralistic environment. This article explores these issues in the Côte d'Ivoire.

Résumé

Le processus de démocratisation, qui a commencé au début des années 1990 dans beaucoup de pays sub-saharien africains, à conduit a un intérêt renouvelé au rôle que les associations bénévoles ont joué dans la formation des domaines politiques et sociaux. Cet article maintient que la façon la plus efficace de comprendre le rôle de la politique associative et dés developpements en Afrique n'est pas de postuler ce qu'elles devraient faire selon une théorie démocratique occidentale, mais doit se faire à travers une analyse historique pour connaître comment les associations fonctionnaient avant l'introduction des élections compétitives à partis multiples et des lois putatives démocratiques au cours de ces dernieres années. De cette manière il sera possible d'obtenir une compréhension plus riche et plus complexe des rapports état-société sous des régimes à un parti et des régimes militaires, et done par consequent la façon dont ces liens changeraient probablement dans un environnement plus pluralistique. Cet article explore ces points en Côte d'Ivoire.

Type
The ‘local factor’ in economic and political analysis
Information
Africa , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , October 1994 , pp. 465 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1994

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