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Comparing African States

The Africanist literature of the last few years has been redolent with references to the ‘coming of age’ of independent black Africa: not in the sense, certainly, that it is now capable of looking after itself-as reports of famine, debt and military dependence daily remind us-but in the sense that a generation has passed since the modal date of independence in 1960. A generation has likewise passed in academic attempts to understand it. Independence coincided with the convenient post-war boom in comparative politics, and presented the discipline with a host of unexplored but evidently comparable states on which a corresponding host of enthusiastic researchers descended in search of material for PhDs. Where have we got to since then? This collection of books, published over the last three years, all attempt an overview of the two and a half decades since independence.’ What do they tell us about the political comparison of third world states? What do they tell us about the political systems of independent Africa and the current crises of the continent? And at a simpler level, which is the best buy for those of us who teach undergraduate courses in African politics or the politics of the third world? Methodologically, two points come over very strongly from the whole collection. The first is that, despite what may seem the obvious suitability of African states for political comparison, comparative studies-at any rate in any systematic or behavioural sense-have never really found much favour among Africanists. This is partly the legacy of the fieldwork tradition. The only way to find out about the politics of the great majority of African states is to go and look. Africanists are distinguished above all by the place where-and often the date when-they did their fieldwork. For political scientists as for anthro-