Courts Under Construction in Angola: What Can They Do for the Poor?

A S TR I S U H R K EThe post-Taliban democratic reforms in Afghanistan were in part a recreation of the past. Afghanistan has had six constitutions between 1923 and 1990, and most have provided for national assemblies and elections in one form or other. Yet the degree of foreign involvement in the most recent reform process was unprecedented. The heavy foreign hand contradicted the promise of national autonomy, representation, and fair process held out by the democratization agenda. By implicitly devaluing the institutions it sought to promote, the democratization process has also had potentially counterproductive effects. Moreover, while promoting democratization, Western governments simultaneously created a state so dependent on external support that it deprived the critical institution of liberal democracy -the legislature -of its meaning. The logical response of the national assembly has been to engage mostly in politics with symbolic or nuisance value. This study focuses on three areas of political reform: the structuring of the interim administration, the promulgation of a new constitution, and the establishment of the legislature.

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The Question of Becoming: Islamic Reform Movements in Contemporary Ethiopia

Østebø¹

2008

J Religion Afr

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Facilitated by a new (since 1991) political climate, enhancing Muslim opportunities for religious expression, several Islamic reform movements have surfaced in Ethiopia. Under consideration here are the Salafi movement, the Tabligh movement and an Intellectualist revivalist movement, each of which was crucial for the reconfiguration of religious affiliation, and served as a channel in the search for belonging and coherent meaning. Discussing the movements' socio-cultural composition and their particular features, this paper pays attention to how issues of locality interact with translocal ideological currents and affect one another. Of particular interest in the Ethiopian case is the explicit avoidance of any political agenda, a distinct intermarriage with a discourse on ethnicity, where the latter has contributed to complex processes of constructing and demarcating religious- and ethnic-based boundaries. The paper thus seeks to demonstrate the complex interrelationship between global currents and local factors, all contributing to the heterogenisation of contemporary Islam.

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Courts Under Construction in Angola: What Can They Do for the Poor?

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

State Fragility and State Building in Africa

State Fragility and State Building in Africa

Democratizing a Dependent State: The Case of Afghanistan

The Question of Becoming: Islamic Reform Movements in Contemporary Ethiopia

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