The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power - Hardcover

De Waal, Alex

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745695574 ISBN 13: 9780745695570

Publisher: Polity, 2015

Synopsis

The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa delves into the business of politics in the turbulent, war-torn countries of north-east Africa. It is a contemporary history of how politicians, generals and insurgents bargain over money and power, and use violence to achieve their goals.

Drawing on a thirty-year career in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, including experience as a participant in high-level peace talks, Alex de Waal provides a unique and compelling account of how these countries’ leaders run their governments, conduct their business, fight their wars and, occasionally, make peace. De Waal shows how leaders operate on a business model, securing funds for their ‘political budgets’, which they use to rent the provisional allegiances of army officers, militia commanders, tribal chiefs and party officials at the going rate. This political marketplace is eroding the institutions of government and reversing state-building – and it is fuelled by oil exports, aid funds and western military assistance for counter-terrorism and peacekeeping.

The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa is a sharp and disturbing book with profound implications for international relations, development and peacemaking in the Horn of Africa and beyond.

 

About this title

Review:

The foremost Western analyst of the Horn of Africa, Alex de Waal provides a superb account of the region's highly interdependent and often troubling politics. He combines an anthropologist's attention to local contexts with a political economist's analysis of transnational entanglements of markets, power struggles, and war. Often disturbing, even though de Waal seeks reasons to be hopeful, but a must read. Craig Calhoun, London School of Economics and Political Science An outstanding book. The author's knowledge of the topic and region is unrivalled, and enlivened and enlightened by his personal experience and anecdotes. Pádraig Carmody, Trinity College, Dublin

About the Author:

ALEX DE WAAL is Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and a Research Professor at The Fletcher School, Tuft's University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Polity
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0745695574
• ISBN 13: 9780745695570
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220