Chiefs in Post-Colonial Ghana: Exploring different elements of the identity, inequalities and conflicts nexus in the Northern Region

By the mid-1990s Ghanaian ethnic groups were (re)discovering chieftaincy on a wide front and looking to traditional ‘chiefly’ structures as part of a move towards more extensive political indulgence. In this paper, the author examines the discussion of traditional authority in anthropological literature, examines the emerging political discourse on ‘chiefs’ within Ghana, and comments on its contemporary political significance. The author looks at the following: Konkombas, described here as “Bigmen” and traditional chiefs in post-colonial society, and contestable issues of land, marriages, extortions in traditional judicial courts, and ‘taxation’; as they impact the co-existence of the ethnic groups in the Northern Region of Ghana. It remains to be seen whether the clamour for traditional leadership by so-called ‘stateless’ groups, represents a permanent change in the nature of Ghana’s political system, or whether it is primarily philosophical and semantic in nature.Ye

Regionalism and Integration in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Review of Experiences, Issues and Realities at the Close of the Twentieth Century

Globalization, the ‘border-less world’ or the ‘end of geography’ is an important theme of the post-Cold War discussion of the nature of international order. Although rarely tied to any clearly articulated theory, it has become a powerful metaphor in the sense that a number of universal processes are at work generating increased interconnection and interdependence between both states and societies. Increasingly common are images of a global flood of money, people, values, and ideas overflowing the old system of national barriers seeking to preserve state autonomy. Two areas are discernible in this regard: First, territorial boundaries are becoming less important. Second, traditional understandings of sovereignty are being undermined and individual regions are being viewed within a broader global context. This paper investigates the impact of the changing global conditions on regional integration efforts in SubSaharan Africa. The underlying argument in this paper is that there are a number of ways in which globalization works against the emergence of regionalism in sub-Saharan Africa. Changes in the global economy such as technology and productive systems, and especially the impact of information technologies have meant that regional industrial policies and the promotion of regional champions are no longer considered adequate. Therefore, the assertion of this paper is that globalization is undermining the sustainability of integration efforts within Sub-Sahara Africa. Globalization works against regionalism where states are increasingly facing powerful pressures toward the homogenization of economic policies solely to attract foreign investment and technology and to compete in a closely-knit market arena. Consequently, regionalism in Sub-Saharan Africa is being deemphasized due to the emerging centripetal forces of globalization

Policy implications of the Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS) in regional development

Bibliography: pages 189-208.This thesis is a critical examination of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) since inception, the institutional protocols, and the operational procedures on regional integration. The study argues that ECOWAS is a transplant of the European Union's neo-functionalism model of regional integration and has been a misapplication. Far from relieving the economic, social and political conditions of West Africa, typical of developing countries, it has contributed to the defeat of the goals and objectives of its Founding Fathers. The chief consequence has been the lack of unanimity among the countries, resulting in the non-implementation of policies. Similarly, the treaties adopted by ECOWAS for a development model are increasingly divorced from the policies applied by member states at the national level because the member countries do not factor the interest of the sub-region into their domestic planning. The study reviews the institutional protocols in the light of the actual practice of regional integration in West Africa. The result is that varying conflicts have compounded the policy inconsistencies resulting from the gap between the formal and informal modes of integration. The failure to address these directly is a primary cause of the slow pace of integration. The study suggests that an iterative planning process grounded in the political realities of one of the continent's most fractured and conflictual sub-regions would have allowed ECOWAS to evolve as an effective regional institution. As it is, ECOWAS operations continue to be fatally undermined by the failure of ECOWAS' institutions to understand the nature of African bureaucracies and to craft policies and instruments which are properly shaped to fit the underlying economic, social and political realities of its environment. The study concludes that the political, economic and social measures so far adopted by ECOWAS have not had a major impact in West Africa and cannot be said to have contributed to the formation of a self-reliant economic grouping for regional development. Like many other regional organisations in Africa, the Community has adapted an "alien model" without regard to the prevailing conditions and realities of the West African sub-region. Regional integration is an absolute necessity for West Africa. But it has to be built from the bottom up, with institutions in each national state reflecting the key constraints of its particular polity. It is only on this basis that regional plans can be devised, into which local plans can dovetail

Grafted or crafted : federal endeavors in East Africa and East Asia

This article documents and analyzes the limits of multinational federalism in East Africa and the diffusion of the East Asian model of integration. As the most advanced regional bloc in Africa, the East African Community is ideally suited to test different models of integration and federalism, especially those developed in Asia, and in particular by Malaysia. The article seeks to move beyond traditional explanations of relatively limited impact of external model of integration on African states, and proposes an alternative framework of analysis where external pressures and models are compared with more demanding expectations on the African side. Thus, the main aim of the article is to explore, and to compare, different theoretical perspectives and empirical examples of federalism in the two regions where working patterns of integration does not necessarily follow a Western style of integration (the EU) or federalism (Canada and the US)