Angola: Can the politics of disorder become the politics of democratisation & development?

Steve Kibble1

Review of African Political Economy, 2006, vol. 33, issue 109, 525-542

Abstract: Postwar Angola seems at first look to be in a triple transition from war to peace, devastation to reconstruction and from a state/elite patronage system to democratisation and transparency. In fact it is argued here that the ‘politics of disorder’ stemming from war suit the purposes of the Angolan elite whilst it simultaneously proclaims transition for outside cosmetic purposes. The Angolan elite comprising in David Sogge's words ‘a constellation of politician-rentiers, petroleum sector technocrats and military officials’-super-2 can run the state in their own interest, largely ignoring any demands from the citizenry given that the accumulation basis and the orientation of the elite is to the outside. Chinese loans, high oil prices, further oilfield expansion and the warm alliance with the USA ensure that Angolan civil society -- despite its efforts -- is unable to adequately counter the elite's ability to control events. Promised elections -- without a date having been announced -- are unlikely to change this structural framework.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03056240601001026 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revape:v:33:y:2006:i:109:p:525-542

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CREA20

DOI: 10.1080/03056240601001026

Access Statistics for this article

Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

More articles in Review of African Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().