Nelson Kasfir
Biographic Data
| ID | 170284 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nelson Kasfir |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nelson |
| FAMILY NAME | Kasfir |
| SIGNATURE | KASFIR N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Dartmouth College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5620-581X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 255 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Leftovers for legacy
What causes insurgents to modify their rebel governance after they win? When the National Resistance Army/Movement defeated Uganda’s army, it vowed its wartime promises and practices of good government, especially democracy and proper conduct by soldiers, would become the basis of its policies as the state’s government. Certain wartime doctrines and practices were implemented at first, both to strengthen the new regime’s legitimacy and its signif…
Legacies of Victors’ Rebel Governance
Insurgents who achieve state control through military victory or elections after peace settlements can introduce ideas and structures of civilian governance they developed during their rebellions. Some come close to fulfilling their prospective legacies while others abandon them despite commitment to them during civil war. Characteristics of rebel governance and habits of military command enhance or constrain the creation of legacy. Significant f…
The insurgent’s dilemma
The restoration of the Buganda Kingdom Government 1986-2014
The restoration of the Kabaka of Buganda a quarter century after its abolition was the unexpected and contested product of different views of Ganda social structure that had emerged over several centuries. Competing groups, despite acting on contradictory cultural principles, overcame the suspicion of a newly empowered central government. Selective recall of cultural norms and adroit organisational tactics of the individuals who recreated the Bug…
Introduction
In this special issue we broaden the academic debate on rebel governance by examining additional armed actors – militias, police and foreign intervenors, and the ‘layers’ of governance they add. We develop the notion of ‘multi-layered’ governance to capture the complexity of these cases. We consider ‘mediated stateness’ as a special case of multi-layered governance. We discuss ‘polycentricity’ as an equivalent concept, but deem multi-layered gove…
Kingdom, State and Civil Society in Africa
Civil society is one of several Western political and social concepts that have not traveled successfully to Africa. Revived in response to the search for democracy in Eastern Europe during the late Soviet era, Western donors promoted and funded new civil society organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, regarding them as an essential grounding for African democratization. Most of these new civil society organizations had little in common with African…
Violence after War
Book Review| April 01 2017 Violence after War: Explaining Instability in Post-conflict States Boyle, Michael J., Violence after War: Explaining Instability in Post-conflict States. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 433 pp. Nelson M. Kasfir Nelson M. Kasfir Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2017) 23 (2): 348–349. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3815918 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share…
Applying a Counterfactual
Joel Barkan surveyed Ugandan university students' attitudes in 1966 and worked on Ugandan national governance three decades later. These two inquiries facilitate an unusual counterfactual analysis. Counterfactuals typically test historical explanation by manipulating an antecedent to estimate change to a known outcome. But a counterfactual can be constructed to examine how an antecedent would react to a later activity. By extrapolating from 1966 …
Rebel Governance in Civil War
This is the first book to examine and compare how rebels govern civilians during civil wars in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Drawing from a variety of disciplinary traditions, including political science, sociology, and anthropology, the book provides in-depth case studies of specific conflicts as well as comparative studies of multiple conflicts. Among other themes, the book examines why and how some rebels establish both structures a…
Rebel Governance – Constructing a Field of Inquiry
Rebels frequently form governments for civilians living in areas they hold during civil war. Since the causes and structures of these governments vary considerably, they present an underexploited opportunity for comparative analysis. Building a subject area of rebel governance, as for any other field, means finding its boundaries, determining which activities by insurgents amount to governance, deciding which structures and actions to include, an…
Civil Society and Democracy in Africa
L'A. presente l'oeuvre citee dans le titre de Nelson Kasfir publiee en 1998. Elle est composee de six articles qui abordent des questions theoriques : la societe civile ; le capitalisme, l'economie et ce qui separe l'etat et la societe ; les organismes qui font la societe civile, comme l'Eglise catholique dans l'ouest de l'Ouganda ; une perspective feminine de la societe ; et le domaine des affaires. Ces etudes contribuent de maniere significativ…
State and Class in Africa
This collection explores the relationships of class and state in contemporary African politics
Legislative Power in Emerging African Democracies
A puzzle underpins this groundbreaking study of legislative development in Africa: Why are variations in the extent of legislative authority and performance across the continent only partially related, if at all, to the overall level of democratization? And if democratization is not the prime determinant of legislative authority, what is? Exploring the constraints that have retarded the development and power of legislatures across Africa--and how…
Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa by Daniel N. Posner
Journal Article Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa by Daniel N. Posner Get access Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa by Daniel N. Posner. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005. 360 pp. Cloth, $70.00; paper, $26.99. Nelson Kasfir Nelson Kasfir Dartmouth College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 121, Issue 2, Summer 2006, Pages 330–332, https://doi.org/1…
Sudan's Darfur
In causing civilian atrocities on such a massive scale, has the Sudanese government adopted a policy of cultural annihilation, or has it decided to crush a rebellion to protect its dominance
Guerrillas and civilian participation
Guerrilla organisations vary greatly in their relations with civilians living in territories that they control. The NRA presents a rare, though not unique, case of a guerrilla group whose commitment to popular support deepened into democratic village management during the course of its civil war. The significant causal factors in deepening this commitment were its ideological conviction, relative military strength, dependence on civilian material…
From Guerrillas to Government
Reviewed by: From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front Nelson Kasfir Pool, David . 2001. From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Oxford: James Currey; Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. 206 pp. $22.95 (paper). The Eritrean People's Liberation Movement (EPLF) capped the longest guerrilla struggle in Africa, and perhaps the world, with victory in 1991, and since then as the People's Front…
Civil Society and Democracy in Africa
Démocratie de « mouvement », légitimité et pouvoir en Ouganda
La démocratie de « mouvement » théorisée et mise en place par Y. Museveni est parfois considérée comme une authentique démocratie à l'africaine et comme une alternative viable au multipartisme. Mais ce système politique innovant a surtout permis au NRM de légitimer son pouvoir et de le conserver, même si son introduction a contribué à l'émergence d'une « culture démocratique
Civil society, the state and democracy in Africa
The importance of new civil society organisations for creating and maintaining democracy in Africa has been greatly overstated. Scholars and donors holding the conventional view claim that new autonomous, interest‐specific and rule‐respecting associations can liberalise authoritarian states and sustain democratic governance. But they idealise the Western practices from which they borrow and overlook the defects in the outdated pluralist argument …
The conventional notion of civil society
African Ambiguities
African Ambiguities“No-party Democracy” in Uganda Nelson Kasfir (bio) Have Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) invented a form of “no-party democracy” more suitable for Africa than Western-style multiparty competition? Under the NRM government, Uganda has made remark-able strides in recovering from the insecure, lawless, and economically immobilized regimes that came before, even if some sections of the c…
Civil Society and the State in Africa
This seminal book examines the potential value of the concept of civil society for enhancing the current understanding of state society relations in Africa. The authors review the meanings of civil society in political philosophy, as well as alternative theoretical approaches to employing the concept in African settings.
Popular sovereignty and popular participation
In the contemporary era, constitutional legitimacy is based solely on the notion of popular sovereignty. The extraordinary movement for democratisation in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Far East and Africa has been energised by popular participation. But neither by definition, nor by causal relation, does popular participation necessarily produce popular sovereignty. In recent times, popular involvement has frequently been a direct …
Are African Peasants Self-Sufficient
Explaining Ethnic Political Participation
Most concepts of ethnicity are unsuitable for political analysis because they ignore either subjective or objective aspects, and because they ignore the fluid and situational nature of ethnicity. The approach flowing from the concept proposed here permits the observer to examine empirical variations that tend to be treated as rigid assumptions by modernization analysts on the one hand and class analysts on the other. The concept is applied to a s…
Guerrillas and civilian participation
Guerrilla organisations vary greatly in their relations with civilians living in territories that they control. The NRA presents a rare, though not unique, case of a guerrilla group whose commitment to popular support deepened into democratic village management during the course of its civil war. The significant causal factors in deepening this commitment were its ideological conviction, relative military strength, dependence on civilian material…
African Ambiguities
African Ambiguities“No-party Democracy” in Uganda Nelson Kasfir (bio) Have Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) invented a form of “no-party democracy” more suitable for Africa than Western-style multiparty competition? Under the NRM government, Uganda has made remark-able strides in recovering from the insecure, lawless, and economically immobilized regimes that came before, even if some sections of the c…
Introduction
In this special issue we broaden the academic debate on rebel governance by examining additional armed actors – militias, police and foreign intervenors, and the ‘layers’ of governance they add. We develop the notion of ‘multi-layered’ governance to capture the complexity of these cases. We consider ‘mediated stateness’ as a special case of multi-layered governance. We discuss ‘polycentricity’ as an equivalent concept, but deem multi-layered gove…
Are African Peasants Self-Sufficient
Civil society, the state and democracy in Africa
The importance of new civil society organisations for creating and maintaining democracy in Africa has been greatly overstated. Scholars and donors holding the conventional view claim that new autonomous, interest‐specific and rule‐respecting associations can liberalise authoritarian states and sustain democratic governance. But they idealise the Western practices from which they borrow and overlook the defects in the outdated pluralist argument …
The conventional notion of civil society
State, Magendo, and class formation in Uganda
Relating class to state in Africa
Southern Sudanese Politics Since the Addis Ababa Agreement
Journal Article SOUTHERN SUDANESE POLITICS SINCE THE ADDIS ABABA AGREEMENT Get access NELSON KASFIR NELSON KASFIR Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 76, Issue 303, April 1977, Pages 143–166, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a096834 Published: 01 April 1977
Departicipation and political development in black African politics
Conflict and Collaboration
Development Administration in Africa
(1969). Development Administration in Africa: The Balance Between Politics and Administration. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des etudes africaines: Vol. 3, Rural Africa, pp. 94-103
Kingdom, State and Civil Society in Africa
Civil society is one of several Western political and social concepts that have not traveled successfully to Africa. Revived in response to the search for democracy in Eastern Europe during the late Soviet era, Western donors promoted and funded new civil society organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, regarding them as an essential grounding for African democratization. Most of these new civil society organizations had little in common with African…
Démocratie de « mouvement », légitimité et pouvoir en Ouganda
La démocratie de « mouvement » théorisée et mise en place par Y. Museveni est parfois considérée comme une authentique démocratie à l'africaine et comme une alternative viable au multipartisme. Mais ce système politique innovant a surtout permis au NRM de légitimer son pouvoir et de le conserver, même si son introduction a contribué à l'émergence d'une « culture démocratique
Popular sovereignty and popular participation
In the contemporary era, constitutional legitimacy is based solely on the notion of popular sovereignty. The extraordinary movement for democratisation in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Far East and Africa has been energised by popular participation. But neither by definition, nor by causal relation, does popular participation necessarily produce popular sovereignty. In recent times, popular involvement has frequently been a direct …
Prismatic Theory and African Administration
Are there prismatic societies in Africa? That such a question can now be asked is as much a measure of changes in the study of administration as it is a recognition of new patterns of government emerging from African independence. During both the colonial and the current period, students of African bureaucracy have contributed little to administrative theory. Before independence, scholars concentrated on formal studies designed to raise efficienc…
Legacies of Victors’ Rebel Governance
Insurgents who achieve state control through military victory or elections after peace settlements can introduce ideas and structures of civilian governance they developed during their rebellions. Some come close to fulfilling their prospective legacies while others abandon them despite commitment to them during civil war. Characteristics of rebel governance and habits of military command enhance or constrain the creation of legacy. Significant f…
Prismatic Theory and African Administration
Are there prismatic societies in Africa? That such a question can now be asked is as much a measure of changes in the study of administration as it is a recognition of new patterns of government emerging from African independence. During both the colonial and the current period, students of African bureaucracy have contributed little to administrative theory. Before independence, scholars concentrated on formal studies designed to raise efficienc…
Development Administration in Africa
(1969). Development Administration in Africa: The Balance Between Politics and Administration. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des etudes africaines: Vol. 3, Rural Africa, pp. 94-103
Departicipation and political development in black African politics
Civilian Participation Under Military Rule in Uganda and Sudan
The Shrinking Political Arena
Political Participation
The Shrinking Political Arena
Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda
Southern Sudanese Politics Since the Addis Ababa Agreement
Journal Article SOUTHERN SUDANESE POLITICS SINCE THE ADDIS ABABA AGREEMENT Get access NELSON KASFIR NELSON KASFIR Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 76, Issue 303, April 1977, Pages 143–166, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a096834 Published: 01 April 1977
Conflict and Collaboration
The Shrinking Political Arena
Explaining Ethnic Political Participation
Most concepts of ethnicity are unsuitable for political analysis because they ignore either subjective or objective aspects, and because they ignore the fluid and situational nature of ethnicity. The approach flowing from the concept proposed here permits the observer to examine empirical variations that tend to be treated as rigid assumptions by modernization analysts on the one hand and class analysts on the other. The concept is applied to a s…
State, Magendo, and class formation in Uganda
Relating class to state in Africa
Uganda’s Uncertain Quest for Recovery
Essay| April 01 1985 Uganda’s Uncertain Quest for Recovery Nelson Kasfir Nelson Kasfir Professor of Government, Dartmouth College Nelson Kasfir has carried out research and written extensively on Ugandan politics. He is now working on a project on peasant behavior in western Uganda. He recently edited Class and State in Africa (London: Frank Cass, 1984). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current History (19…
Are African Peasants Self-Sufficient
Popular sovereignty and popular participation
In the contemporary era, constitutional legitimacy is based solely on the notion of popular sovereignty. The extraordinary movement for democratisation in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Far East and Africa has been energised by popular participation. But neither by definition, nor by causal relation, does popular participation necessarily produce popular sovereignty. In recent times, popular involvement has frequently been a direct …
Civil Society and the State in Africa
This seminal book examines the potential value of the concept of civil society for enhancing the current understanding of state society relations in Africa. The authors review the meanings of civil society in political philosophy, as well as alternative theoretical approaches to employing the concept in African settings.
Civil society, the state and democracy in Africa
The importance of new civil society organisations for creating and maintaining democracy in Africa has been greatly overstated. Scholars and donors holding the conventional view claim that new autonomous, interest‐specific and rule‐respecting associations can liberalise authoritarian states and sustain democratic governance. But they idealise the Western practices from which they borrow and overlook the defects in the outdated pluralist argument …
The conventional notion of civil society
African Ambiguities
African Ambiguities“No-party Democracy” in Uganda Nelson Kasfir (bio) Have Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) invented a form of “no-party democracy” more suitable for Africa than Western-style multiparty competition? Under the NRM government, Uganda has made remark-able strides in recovering from the insecure, lawless, and economically immobilized regimes that came before, even if some sections of the c…
Démocratie de « mouvement », légitimité et pouvoir en Ouganda
La démocratie de « mouvement » théorisée et mise en place par Y. Museveni est parfois considérée comme une authentique démocratie à l'africaine et comme une alternative viable au multipartisme. Mais ce système politique innovant a surtout permis au NRM de légitimer son pouvoir et de le conserver, même si son introduction a contribué à l'émergence d'une « culture démocratique
Civil Society and Democracy in Africa
From Guerrillas to Government
Reviewed by: From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front Nelson Kasfir Pool, David . 2001. From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Oxford: James Currey; Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. 206 pp. $22.95 (paper). The Eritrean People's Liberation Movement (EPLF) capped the longest guerrilla struggle in Africa, and perhaps the world, with victory in 1991, and since then as the People's Front…
Sudan's Darfur
In causing civilian atrocities on such a massive scale, has the Sudanese government adopted a policy of cultural annihilation, or has it decided to crush a rebellion to protect its dominance
Political science (36 works) · Law (29 works) · Politics (27 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Economics (14 works) · Political economy (14 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (12 works) · African history and culture analysis (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works)