Africa Power and Politics Programme, Research Streams, 2008/2010.
Abstract
For the APPP, governance encompasses the exercise of power in the management of society's resources at all levels, from the offices of Presidents to the back yards of urban neighbourhoods and the killing fields of local conflict zones. The program aims to challenge conventional nostrums about 'good' governance and democracy that are taken to apply comprehensively and with few reservations to today's development challenges in Africa. This requires a similarly comprehensive plan of research, one that does not limit itself to events and processes at the apex of state power, but carefully assembles a body of evidence on the full range of functions performed more or less badly by organs of the central or local state, from the administration of justice to the protection of natural resources or prevention of infantile dysentery. Such a plan is described in detail in this document.
It has been agreed that in its next phase the APPP will organise the bulk of its research and policy engagement work within six Research Streams, designated as follows:
• Business and politics.
• State bureaucracies.
• Parliamentarians.
• Local governance and leadership.
• Local justice provision.
• Formalising schooling.
The document presents a concise description of the rationale, research questions, approach and methods of each Stream, drafted by Stream Leaders and approved in outline by their supporting research teams. In one case, 'Business and Politics', two distinct sub-Streams are already under way. Others, notably 'State Bureaucracies', may well acquire additional components in later stages of the programme.
Citation
London, UK, Africa Power and Politics Programme (APPP), 55 pp. Presented to theConsortium Advisory Group, November 2008.
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