The State and its Competitors in African Political Thought
This thesis traces a critical history of statehood and its competitors in East Africa primarily from the twentieth century to the present, crucially including an analysis of the thought (from both elites and non-elites) that surrounded and challenged the coming-into-being of present state-forms. It highlights the contradictions and non-straightforwardness of the debates, as well as the needs and desires that animated them. It also contends with the contemporary disappointments of the state, rereading and critiquing the way the failures of the state are framed in the literature in order to develop a more robust normative yardstick for gauging state success.
