African Success Stories POLI 120P

University of California, San Diego Summer Session I Monday, Wednesday 2pm-5pm HSS 2152 Instructor: Alex Verink averink@ucsd.edu Office Location: SSB 332 Office Hours: Tuesdays, 10am - Noon Course Description Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns us against the danger of a single story of Africa. In the media, and often even in the classroom, the stories that are told about Sub-Saharan Africa almost invariably portray it as chaotic and violent, or as noble but broken and in need of outside help. These characterizations may contain a grain of truth but, as Adichie says “the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” This course aims to provide a more optimistic corrective to the commonly grim view of Africa. In it we will explore some of the more successful cases of nation-building, democratization, and economic transformation on the continent. The course is set up as a complement to POLI 120P “Contention and Conflict in Africa.” Part of the problem of attempting to understand “Africa” is that to do so can reinforce the idea of Africa as a monolith. It might strike us as somewhat strange to see a class on North American politics in the course schedule, does it really make sense to discuss Costa Rica and Canada in the same class? A class on African politics is similarly ambitious, Canada is about as comparable to Costa Rica as Senegal is to South Africa. Each of Africa’s 50 or so countries could warrant an introductory class of its own. That said, countries on the continent often do share a similar historical arc and confront many of the same political and economic challenges. As a result, it can be instructive to study African successes in the context of the continent at large. Course Format We will meet ten times over the period of five weeks, along with an extra final exam period on the fifth week. Because the summer schedule condenses classes into half their normal timeframe, you should expect to do twice as much work each week as you would during a normal quarter. I have tried to structure the class so that assignments are due on Mondays to give you a few extra days to work on them without having to think about prepping for the next class.

Course Requirements

• Map Quiz (15%) On the third day of class (Monday, July 10th) there will be an in-class quiz. You will be asked to name all the countries on the continent and put them in the right place geographically. You will also be asked to provide the capital, colonial history and year of independence for our six focus countries.

• In Class Participation (10%) You should come prepared to discuss the readings assigned each class. In addition to participation in class discussion and actives, we will occasionally have reading quizzes. Quiz grades will count towards your participation for that day.

• Success Story Discussion (10%) Each student will present an African success story to the rest of the class one time during the quarter. These should be a relatively recent news story about some positive social, economic or political development somewhere on the continent. I will distribute a list of suggestions, but you may choose your own (subject to approval). Your discussion should be no more than 5 minutes and should cover the basic facts of the case and your assessment of the explanation behind its success. These discussions can be relatively informal and do not require a slide presentation.

• Final Paper (35%) In the first few weeks of the class, we will highlight several case studies of success in democratization, democratic consolidation and nation-building. You will be asked to choose one country on the continent outside of our six focus countries and critically evaluate its success in these areas. To spread the This assignment will be broken down into three successive steps; case selection and brief narrative (1 page, 5% of the grade), preliminary analysis (3 pages, 10%) and final draft (7 pages, 20%). Further details will be given in class.

• Final Exam (30%) On Friday, August 3rd, there will be a final exam. The exam will cover all the material presented in class and in the required readings. The exam will consist of multiple choice, short answer, and essay questions.

Course Policies Late assignments: Paper assignments are due to me in email by 10:00 AM on the date listed in the syllabus. Assignments turned in between 10 AM and the beginning of class (2 PM) will have their grade deducted by 10 points. Assignments turned in after the start of class will have an additional 20 points deducted. Each additional day the assignment is late will result in another 10 point penalty. Academic Integrity: While you may certainly consult your classmates to help you better understand the material, all your work must be your own. You should not collaborate with anyone during in-class quizzes or the final, nor use anyone else’s work on your paper, which includes copying from a source without proper attribution. Anyone caught in violation of UCSD’s academic integrity policy will be

reported to UCSD’s academic integrity office. You can visit http://senate.ucsd.edu/Operating-Procedures/Senate-Manual/Appendices/2 for details about UCSD’s Academic Integrity Policy. Make-up tests: You should make doubly sure you can be in class for the map quiz and final exam. I will only allow make-up tests to be taken under extreme extenuating circumstances that are well documented. Students with disabilities: If you need special accommodations in this class, please let me know as soon as possible. We will work with the Office for Students with Disabilities to accommodate your learning needs. Extra Credit Wikipedia is an amazing resource for many things and by some accounts it numbers among humanity’s greatest accomplishments. However, it is too often the case that Wikipedia’s African content is lacking. To do some small part to help addressing this shortcoming, and to hopefully encourage you to contribute to aggregating humanity’s collected knowledge outside of this class, I am offering extra credit for contributions to Wikipedia. Submit proof of a substantial edit to Wikipedia, including 3 or more sentences and two or more citations, for two points of extra credit on your final grade. I will give credit for the first three contributions you report to me. Additional contributions will not benefit your grade, but will still be a benefit to human knowledge. See the editing tutorial for a short introduction to becoming a Wikipedia editor before contributing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial Schedule in Brief Section 1: Introduction

1. Monday, July 3rd – Introduction

2. Wednesday, July 5th – The African Context

Section 2: Nation Building

3. Monday, July 10th – Building National Identity (Tanzania)

o Assignment: Map Quiz

4. Wednesday, July 12th – A “Country” from Scratch (Somaliland)

Section 3: Democracy

5. Monday, July 17th – Democratization (Benin)

o Assignment: Case Selection & narrative (Due at 10 AM by email)

6. Wednesday, July 19th – Democratic Consolidation (Ghana)

7. Monday, July 24th – An African Election

o Assignment: Preliminary analysis (Due at 10 AM by email)

Section 4: Economic Growth

8. Wednesday, July 26th – Generating Growth

9. Monday, July 31st – Managing Resources (Botswana)

o Assignment: Final Draft (Due at 10 AM by email)

10. Wednesday, August 2nd – Building after Genocide (Rwanda)

Friday, August 4th – Final Exam

Readings

All required readings will be available on the course TED page. We will read a significant portion of The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa by Dayo Olopade. I will give you access to copies of the required portions of the book, but it may be worth picking it up in hard copy. The university bookstore has copies for sale. I have also included a list of additional readings for each class. These are not required, and are not necessary to read to get an A in this class. Often, I will draw on these readings for my lecture materials, and I will sometimes explicitly summarize their arguments or findings in class. I have included them here on the syllabus as a resource if you want to go deeper into a topic than we are able to cover during lecture.

Class 1: Monday, July 3rd - Introduction No Required Readings

Additional Readings

- Englebert and Dunn. 2013 Inside African Politics. Chapter 1 - Thomson. 2004. Introduction to African Politics. Chapters 1 and 2 - Hyden. 2006. African Politics in Comparative Perspective. Chapter 1 - Binyavanga. 2005. “How to Write About Africa.” Granta Magazine. https://granta.com/how-to-write-

about-africa/ - World Bank. “World Development Indicators.” http://data.worldbank.org/products/wdi - Brookings. “African Leadership Transition Tracker.” https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/african-

leadership-transitions-tracker/

Class 2: Wednesday, July 5th - African Successes in Historical Context Required Readings

• Olopade. Chapter 1, “Orientation” (10 Pages)

• Miguel. 2008. “Is It Africa’s Turn?” New Democracy Forum (6 Pages)

Additional Readings - Englebert and Dunn. 2013. Inside African Politics. Chapter 2 - Thomson. 2004. Introduction to African Politics. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 - Hyden. 2006. African Politics in Comparative Perspective. Chapter 2 - Van de Walle. 2001. African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999 - Bates, Coatsworth and Williamson. 2007. “Lost Decades: Post-Independence Performance in Latin

America and Africa.” The Journal of Economic History - Watkins. 2002. “Cultivating Poverty: The Impact of US Cotton Subsidies on Africa.” Oxfam Briefing Paper - Nunn. 2008. “The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades.” Quarterly Journal of Economics - Nunn and Wantchekon. 2011. “The Slave Trade and Origins of Mistrust in Africa.” American Economic

review - Nunn and Puga. 2012. “Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa.” The Review of Economics

and Statistics - Osafo-Kwaako and Robinson. 2013. “Political Centralization in Pre-Colonial Africa.” Journal of Comparative

Economics - Various Authors. 2008. Responses to “Is it Africa’s turn?” in Boston Review’s New Democracy Forum

- Kuo. 2016. “Africa wasn’t rising before and it’s not reeling now.” Quartz. https://qz.com/816006/africa-wasnt-rising-before-and-its-not-reeling-now/

- Roser. “Our World in Data.” https://ourworldindata.org/

Class 3: Monday, July 10th – Unifying a Nation – Focus: Tanzania Assignment

• Map Quiz Required Readings

• Olopade. Chapter 5, “The Family Map” (17 pages)

• Englebert and Dunn. 2013. Chapter 3 p. 63-92 (29 pages)

• Mohammed. 2015. “Tanzania dumps English as its official language in schools, opts for Kiswahili” https://qz.com/355444/tanzania-dumps-english-as-its-official-language-in-schools-opts-for-kiswahili/ (1 page)

Additional Readings

- Thomson. 2004. Introduction to African Politics. Chapter 3 and 4 - Herbst. 2000. States and Power in Africa. Chapter 4 - Barkan (ed.). 1994. Beyond Capitalism vs. Socialism in Kenya and Tanzania.

o Chapter 1: Barkan, “Divergence and Convergence in Kenya and Tanzania: Pressures for Reform” o Chapter 7: Cooksey Court and Makau. “Education for Self-Reliance and Harambee”

- Miguel. 2004. “Tribe or Nation? Nation Building and Public Goods in Kenya versus Tanzania.” World Politics

- Opalo. 2013. “Tribe, Nation or Literacy?” An Africanist Perspective (Blog). https://kenopalo.com/2013/05/21/tribe-nation-or-literacy/

- Bandyopadhyay and Green. 2013. “Nation-Building and Conflict in Modern Africa.” World Development - Dunning and Harrison. 2010. “Cross-cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting: An Experimental Study of

Cousinage in Mali.” American Political Science Review - Posner. 2004. “The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas Are Allies in

Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi.” American Political Science Review - Robinson. 2014. “National versus Ethnic Identification in Africa: Modernization, Colonial Legacy, and the

Origins of Territorial Nationalism.” World Politics - Posner. 2003. “The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Cleavages: The Case of Linguistic Divisions in Zambia.”

Comparative Politics - Bates. 1983. “Modernization, Ethnic Competition and the Rationality of Politics." In State Versus Ethnic

Claims: African Policy Dilemmas. Rothchild and Olorunsola (eds.) - Easterly and Levine. 1997. “Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions.” Quarterly Journal of

Economics.

Class 4: Wednesday July 12th – Building a Country – Focus: Somaliland Required Readings

• Olopade. Chapter 3, “Fail States”, (12 pages)

• Upsall. 2014. “State Building in Somalia in the Image of Somaliland: A Bottom-Up approach.” Inquiries Journal. http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/880/state-building-in-somalia-in-the-image-of-somaliland-a-bottom-up-approach (16 pages)

• Englebert. 2010. “To Save Africa, Reject Its Nations.” New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/opinion/12englebert.html (2 pages)

Additional Readings

• Englebert and Dunn. 2013. Inside African Politics. Chapters 2, 5 and 8

• Thomson. 2004. Introduction to African Politics. Chapter 8

• Herbst. 2012. “Responding to State Failure in Africa.” International Security

• Englebert and Tull. 2008. “Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa: Flawed Ideas about Failed States.” International Security

• Spears. 2003. “Reflections on Somaliland and Africa’s Territorial Order.” Review of African Political Economy

• New York Times. 2013. “How to build a Country from Scratch.” https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000002043729/how-to-build-a-country-from-scratch.html (Video)

• Riordan. 2015. “In Somaliland, go-slow nation building spurs exodus to Europe” https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2015/1026/In-Somaliland-go-slow-nation-building-spurs-exodus-to-Europe

Class 5: Monday, July 17th - Creating Democracy – Focus: Benin Required Readings

• Thomson. 2004. Introduction to African Politics. Chapter 11. (16 pages)

• Gisselquist. 2008. “Democratic Transition and Democratic Survival in Benin.” Democratization (22 pages)

Additional Readings

- Englebert and Dunn. 2013. Inside African Politics. Chapters 4 and 5 - Bratton and van de Walle. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa - Cheeseman. 2015. Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failures and the Struggle for Political Reform - Bratton and Chang. 2006. “State Building and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Comparative

Political Studies - Jensen and Wantchekon. 2004. “Resource Wealth and Political Regimes in Africa.” Comparative Political

Studies - Gibson. 2002. "Of Waves and Ripples: Democracy and Political Change in Africa in the 1990s." Annual

Review of Political Science

Class 6: Wednesday, July 19th - Consolidating Democracy – Focus: Ghana Required Readings

• Cheeseman, Lynch and Willis. 2017. “Ghana: The Ebbing Power of Incumbency” (11 pages)

• Lindberg. 2010. “What accountability pressures do MPs in Africa face and how do they respond? Evidence from Ghana.” The Journal of Modern African Studies (22 Pages)

Additional Readings - Englebert and Dunn. 2013. Inside African Politics. Chapters 4 and 5 - Thomson. 2004. Introduction to African Politics. Chapter 11 - Bratton and van de Walle. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa. 1997. Chapter 7 - Abdulai and Crawford. 2009. “Consolidating democracy in Ghana progress and prospects.”

Democratization - Wahman. 2012 “Democratization and electoral turnovers in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond”

- Lindberg. 2006. Democracy and Elections in Africa - Cheeseman. 2010. “African elections as vehicles for change.” Journal of Democracy - Bogaards. 2013. "Reexamining African Elections." Journal of Democracy - Moehler and Lindberg. 2009. “Narrowing the Legitimacy Gap: Turnovers as a Cause of Democratic

Consolidation.” Journal of Politics - Wantchekon. 2003. “Clientelism and Voting Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Benin.” World

Politics - Abdulai and Crawford. 2009. “Consolidating democracy in Ghana progress and prospects.”

Democratization - Eifert, Miguel and Posner. 2010. “Political Competition and Ethnic Identification in Africa.” American

Journal of Political Science - Posner and Young. 2007. “The Institutionalization of Political Power in Africa.” Journal of Democracy - Adida et al. 2017. “Overcoming or Reinforcing Ethnic Preferences.” Working Paper

Class 7: Monday, July 24th Assignment

• Draft for in-class peer review No Required Readings

• Documentary: An African Election (2011)

Class 8: Wednesday, July 26th - Generating Wealth Required Readings

• Chuhan-Pole and Devarajan. 2011. “Overview.” In Yes Africa Can: Success Stories from a Dynamic Continent. Chuhan-Pole and Angwafo (eds.) (18 pages)

• Olopade. Chapter 7, “The Commercial Map” (25 pages)

Additional Readings

• Englebert and Dunn. 2013. Inside African Politics. Chapter 6

• Englebert. 2000. “Pre-Colonial Institutions, Post-Colonial States, and Economic Development in Tropical Africa.” Political Research Quarterly

• Sachs and Warner. 1997. “Sources of Slow Growth in African Economies.” Journal of African Economies

• Pinkovskiy and Sala-I-Martin. 2014. “Africa is on time.” Journal of Economic Growth

• Acemoglu, Robinson and Johnson. 2001. “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Emperical Investigation.” American Economic Review

• Acemoglu and Robinson. 2010. “Why is Africa Poor?” Economic History of Developing Regions

• Dellepiane-Avellaneda. 2009. “Review Article: Good Governance, Institutions and Economic Development: Beyond the Conventional Wisdom.” British Journal of Political Science

• Jerven. 2010. “African Growth Recurring: An Economic History Perspective on African Growth Episodes, 1690-2010.” Economic History of Developing Regions

• Jones. 2013. “History Matters: New evidence on the long run impact of colonial institutions.” Journal of Comparative Economics

• De la Escosura 2013 Human development in Africa: A long-run perspective

• Jerven. 2009. “Random Growth in Africa? Lessons from an Evaluation of the Growth Evidence on Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, 1965–1995.” Journal of Development Studies

Class 9: Monday, July 31st - Managing Resources – Focus: Botswana Required Readings

• Lewin. 2011. “Botswana’s Success: Good Governance, Good Policies, and Good Luck.” In Yes Africa Can: Success Stories from a Dynamic Continent. Chuhan-Pole and Angwafo (eds.) (8 pages)

• Hillbom. 2014. “Cattle, Diamonds and Institutions.” Journal of International Development (19 pages)

Additional Readings

• Englebert and Dunn. 2013. Inside African Politics. Chapter 6

• Olopade. Chapter 8, “The Nature Map”

• Thomson. 2004. Introduction to African Politics. Chapter 5 (Social Class in Botswana)

• Acemoglu Johnson and Robinson. 2003. “An African Success Story: Botswana.” In Search of Prosperity: Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth. Rodrik (ed.) (35 pages)

• Valentine. 1993. “Drought, Transfer Entitlements, and Income Distribution: The Botswana Experience.” World Development

• Hjort. 2010. “Pre-colonial culture, post-colonial economic success? The Tswana and the African economic miracle.” Economic History Review

• Hillbom. 2012. “Botswana: A Development-Oriented Gate-Keeping State.” African Affairs

• Ross. 2015. “What Have We Learned about the Resource Curse?” Annual Review of Political Science

• Iimi. 2007. “Escaping from the Resource Curse: Evidence from Botswana and the Rest of the World.” IMF Staff Papersl

• Van der Ploeg. 2011. “Natural Resources: Curse or Blessing?” Journal of Economic Literature

• Robinson. 2013. “Botswana as a Role Model for Country Success.” In Achieving Development Success: Strategies and Lessons from the Developing World. Fosu (ed.)

• Dionne. 2016. “How democratic is Botswana after 50 years of independence?” The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/09/30/how-democratic-is-botswana-after-50-years-of-independence

Class 10: Wednesday, August 2nd - Rebuilding after Genocide – Focus: Rwanda Required Readings

• Crisafulli and Redmond. 2012. Rwanda Inc. Introduction, Chapter 6 (21 Pages)

• Olopade: Chapter 10, “Two Publics” (14 pages)

Additional Readings

• Englebert and Dunn. 2013. Inside African Politics. Chapter 7

• Chu. 2009. “Rwanda Rising: A New Model of Economic Development.” Fast Company

• Kulish. 2014. “Rwanda Reaches for New Economic Model.” New York Times

• Blattman. 2009. “From Violence to Voting: War and Political Participation in Uganda.” American Political Science Review

• Al Jazeera. 2016. “Rwanda: Africa's success story or authoritarian state?” (Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FELiweMi4tA

• Al Jazeera. 2011. “Riz Khan - Rwanda: An African success story?” (Video interview with Kagame)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHbkkP2vx-0