{"title":"The Commodification of African Politics I","authors":"Alex de Waal","doi":"10.57054/arb.v13i2.4892","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Can a book be both inspiring and disappointing? The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa might just fall into this rare category. Alex de Waal’s book is theoretically original and empirically rich, but it is also reductionist and, in the case of Ethiopia, biased. The book makes sense of the Horn of Africa’s complex contemporary politics through the prism of three elements. Firstly, de Waal proposes an innovative theory centred on the idea of the ‘political marketplace’. This theory grasps the causal interactions between violence, political finance and big man politics in East Africa and elsewhere. The ‘political marketplace’ framework is arguably the book’s most important contribution and it speaks to political scientists and policy analysts. Secondly, as the title suggests, the book sets out to explain the Horn of Africa’s ‘real politics’.","PeriodicalId":170362,"journal":{"name":"Africa Review of Books","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2017-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Africa Review of Books","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.57054/arb.v13i2.4892","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Can a book be both inspiring and disappointing? The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa might just fall into this rare category. Alex de Waal’s book is theoretically original and empirically rich, but it is also reductionist and, in the case of Ethiopia, biased. The book makes sense of the Horn of Africa’s complex contemporary politics through the prism of three elements. Firstly, de Waal proposes an innovative theory centred on the idea of the ‘political marketplace’. This theory grasps the causal interactions between violence, political finance and big man politics in East Africa and elsewhere. The ‘political marketplace’ framework is arguably the book’s most important contribution and it speaks to political scientists and policy analysts. Secondly, as the title suggests, the book sets out to explain the Horn of Africa’s ‘real politics’.
一本书能既鼓舞人心又令人失望吗?《非洲之角的真正政治》可能就属于这种罕见的类型。亚历克斯·德瓦尔(Alex de Waal)的书在理论上是原创的,经验丰富,但它也是简化主义的,在埃塞俄比亚的情况下,有偏见。这本书通过三个因素的棱镜来理解非洲之角复杂的当代政治。首先,德瓦尔提出了一个以“政治市场”为中心的创新理论。这一理论掌握了东非和其他地区暴力、政治金融和大人物政治之间的因果关系。“政治市场”框架可以说是这本书最重要的贡献,它对政治科学家和政策分析师说话。其次,正如书名所示,这本书试图解释非洲之角的“真实政治”。