Introduction 3 PART ONE: THE CHALLENGE OF STATE-BUILDING IN AFRICA 9 One The Challenge of State-Building in Africa 11 PART TWO: THE CONSTRUCTION OF STATES IN AFRICA 33 Two Power and Space in Precolonial Africa 35 Three The Europeans and the African Problem 58 Four The Political Kingdom in Independent Africa 97 PART THREE: NATIONAL DESIGN AND DOMESTIC POLITICS 137 Five National Design and the Broadcasting of Power 139 Six Chiefs, States, and the Land 173 PART FOUR: BOUNDARIES AND POWER 199 Seven The Coin of the African Realm 201 Eight The Politics of Migration and Citizenship 227 PART FIVE: CONCLUSION 249 Nine The Past and the Future of State Power in Africa 251 Index 273
An original and intriguing book, which I read with the greatest interest. Herbst's argument is provocative and lucidly presented. This book will be read and debated not only by Africanists but also by others in the political science community. It is the most important and successful contribution to the literature on African politics since Jackson and Rosberg's Personal Rule in Black Africa. -- Robert H. Bates, Harvard University, author of "Open-Economy Politics: The Political Economy of the World Coffee Trade" Herbst's arguments will excite controversy among students of African history and politics, who have built up an extensive story about European transformations of African politics. His analysis raises doubts about how deeply those transformations went; rather, he maintains that durable conditions of topography and social structure have long constrained African state formation. Herbst offers an integrated account of state formation, transformation, and deformation in sub-Saharan Africa. -- Charles Tilly, Columbia University, author of "Durable Inquality"
Jeffrey Herbst is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the author of Politics of Reform in Ghana 1982-1991 and State Politics in Zimbabwe.
This ambitious and original book turns a comparative historical lens on state-building in Africa... A brave effort to rethink some outdated approaches to fundamental problems. Foreign Affairs
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