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Leadership in Independent Africa, Six Decades On : The Blended Representation Principle as a Cause for Afro-Optimism

By: Resource type: Ressourcentyp: Buch (Online)Book (Online)Language: Undetermined Publisher: London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2024Description: 1 Online-Ressource (256 p.)ISBN:
  • 9781350379695
  • 9781350379688
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 320.46 23/eng/20230223
LOC classification:
  • JQ1873.5.S8
Online resources: Summary: In this open access book, Kofi Anani finds ways forward through the Blended Representation Principle (BRP), which stipulates that power be shared between leaders selected on the basis of Western-democratic ideals and leaders chosen on the basis of traditional African norms and conventions. Drawing on his research and professional experience, Anani shows how incorporating the BRP into African leadership and governance thinking would encourage more voluntary public participation in politics, guarantee transparency and accountability in decision-making, particularly when it comes to the use of public resources, and ultimately encourage more public confidence in leaders. Anani also provides concrete suggestions for how to achieve all this, not through quick fixes, but rather through educational campaigns directed at public officials and through new communities of learning and practice designed to champion the BRP in villages, schools, workplaces, places of worship, and other social organizations. This book is a must-read for all scholars and students of postcolonial governance and leadership, and it is of keen interest to anyone concerned with how Western-style state-making might ultimately find a balance with other, indigenous modes of social organization. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library CollectiveSummary: "Africa needs fresh thinking on its leadership and governance challenges, particularly when it comes to the disconnects between traditional leadership models and governance structures within the modern state. In Ghana, former Finance Minister Kwabena Duffor has even issued an explicit call to major political parties to encourage "the empowerment of chiefs and traditional rulers [...] as partners in development." Yet to date there has been very little academic literature on what exactly this means or what it would or could look like. In Leadership in Independent Africa, Kofi Anani lays the necessary groundwork for workable ways forward. He does so through an in-depth exploration of the many meanings and practical implications of the Blended Representation Principle (BRP), which stipulates that power be shared between leaders selected on the basis of Western-democratic ideals and leaders chosen on the basis of traditional African norms and conventions. Drawing on a diverse array of academic research as well as copious professional experience, Anani shows how incorporating this principle into African leadership and governance thinking can encourage more voluntary public participation in politics, guarantee transparency and accountability in decision-making, particularly when it comes to the use of public resources, and ultimately encourage more public confidence in leaders. He also provides concrete suggestions for how to achieve all this, not through quick fixes, but rather through creating dedicated educational campaigns directed at public officials and through establishing communities of learning and practice to champion the BRP in villages, schools, places of worship, public work places, and social organizations. For its robust attention to an otherwise neglected principle in the scholarship, as well as for its passionate case for the hope the BRP offers to ailing governance models in Africa, this book is a must-read for all scholars and students of postcolonial governance and leadership, and it is of keen interest to anyone concerned with how Western-style state-making might ultimately find a balance with other, indigenous modes of social organization"--PPN: PPN: 1885770057Package identifier: Produktsigel: ZDB-94-OAB
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Namensnennung - Nicht-kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 cc:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

English