March 2009
Theorising African States
The Case of Angola from a Critical Theory Perspective
This paper is a theoretical contribution to the debate about statehood in Sub-Saharan Africa. The author argues that Eurocentric international relations theories fail to make sense of states in Africa. A synthesis between the theories of Robert W Cox and Mahmood Mamdani is proposed. According to the author, adding Cox to Mamdani contextualizes Mamdani's African state in space and time, whereas adding Mamdani to Cox shows how African states respond to outside pressures and in the process (re)constitute the world order by adding an inside-out pressure. The author uses the case of Angola to illustrate the theoretical synthesis.
© 2009 Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI)
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Audun Solli
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