Corruption, Good Governance, and the African State

Download or read book Corruption, Good Governance, and the African State written by Ganahl, Joseph Patrick and published by Universitätsverlag Potsdam. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African states are often called corrupt, indicating that the political system in Africa differs from the one prevalent in economically advanced democracies. This, however, does not give us any insight into what makes corruption the dominant norm of African statehood. Thus we must turn to the overly neglected theoretical work on the political economy of Africa in order to determine how the poverty of governance in Africa is firmly anchored both in Africa’s domestic socioeconomic reality, as well as in the region’s role in the international economic order. Instead of focusing on increased monitoring, enforcement and formal democratic procedures, this book combines economic analysis with political theory in order to arrive at a better understanding of the political-economic roots of corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa.