Authority in Africa is increasingly exercised beyond the state. Likewise, forms of sovereignty are practiced in settings which are not territorialised as 'states' . After 1989, and the end of the Cold War, in substantial parts of the...
moreAuthority in Africa is increasingly exercised beyond the state. Likewise, forms of sovereignty are practiced in settings which are not territorialised as 'states' . After 1989, and the end of the Cold War, in substantial parts of the continent accelerated processes of globalisation and the weak institutionalisation of the post-independent state have contributed to the demise of the state as the major regime of territorialisation. Processes of deterritorialisation -that is the unmaking of an established regime of territorialisation such as the international order of (nation) states -have taken different forms: economic liberalisation and PRPS, the outsourcing of functional domains, violent contestation, etc. Different actors contribute to and participate in these processes: Africa's political elites, multinational companies, 'informal' traders, warlords and their middlemen, the so-called community of states which provide 'development assistance' , imperial interventions such as the 'war on terror'-regime, international NGOs, etc. As a result considerable parts of the continent are facing the emergence of new regimes of territorialisation: re-ordered states, complex transnational regimes, sub-national entities, new localities and transborder formations. From a perspective of historicity of international relations, parts of the African continent have entered a phase of which the outcome is not yet predictable.
