Dr George Ofosu

This course is available on the BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in History and Politics, BSc in International Social and Public Policy with Politics, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (with a Year Abroad), BSc in Politics, BSc in Politics and Data Science, BSc in Politics and Economics, BSc in Politics and History, BSc in Politics and International Relations, BSc in Politics and Philosophy and BSc in Social Anthropology. This course is not available as an outside option. This course is available with permission to General Course students.

This course is capped at 1 group.

This class is an introduction to the study of contemporary African political economy. The goal is to set major questions of state and economy in historical, geographic, and international context. Course readings and lectures stress marked unevenness in national and subnational trajectories and in the political-economic character of different African countries, and introduce students to theories that aim to identify causes of similarity and difference across and within countries. Students will come away with a better understanding of the possibilities and limits of structured, focused comparisons in comparative politics, and with an introduction to political economy approaches to questions of late development. They will also develop substantive knowledge of the political economy of sub-Saharan Africa and analytic tools to describe and make sense of its diversity.

This course provides a minimum of 20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term. There will be a reading week in AT Week 6.

There will be one 1,200 word formative assignment (short essay). 

Texts used may include all or part of the following:

• Christensen and Laitin (2019). African States Since Independence: Order, Development & Democracy.
• Katherine Baldwin. The Paradox of Traditional Leaders in Democratic Africa. Cambridge University Press.
• Catherine Boone, Property and Political Order in Africa: Land Rights and the Structure of Politics (CUP 2014).
• Fred Cooper, Africa Since 1940 (Cambridge U. Press).
• Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa (Princeton 2000).
• Prempeh, H. Kwasi. "Presidents untamed." Journal of Democracy 19.2 (2008).
• Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Africa and the Legacy of late Colonialism  (Princeton 1996).
• Andrew M. Mwenda Roger Tangri, Patronage politics, donor reforms, and regime consolidation in Uganda African Affairs (2005).
• Nicolas van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999 (Cambridge University Press 2001).

Essay (75%, 3000 words) in January.
In-class assessment (25%) in the AT.

For the in-class assessment: Students will be asked to serve as a seminar discussant during the term. On these weeks the discussant will write a two or three-page memo that discusses the readings in a comparative perspective. In the last class meeting, each student will give a 5-minute overview of his/her plans for the final course essay.