Tim Kelsall

Biographic Data

ID88344
NAMETim Kelsall
GIVEN NAMESTim
FAMILY NAMEKelsall
SIGNATUREKELSALL T
AFFILIATIONSNewcastle University
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS32
TOTAL CITATIONS239
WORKS AS AUTHOR25
WORKS AS EDITOR7
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1995
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2024
H-INDEX9

  • The Political Settlements Dataset

    Open AccessNicolai Schulz, Tim KelsallARTICLEInternational Interactions2024References: 4

    Political scientists have long sought to understand power dynamics across the Global South, but efforts to systematically capture political power have been limited, and existing datasets have faced conceptual and measurement challenges. The Political Settlements (PolSett) dataset was developed to address these issues. This original expert survey-based dataset includes over one hundred political economy variables coded for forty two countries from…

  • Africa’s Wars of Liberation

    Stephen Elli, Stephen Ellis et al.EDITORCHAPTERCharlatans, Spirits and Rebels in…2022

    This chapter offers some preliminary reflections on the ways in which scholars have considered African wars of liberation. It discusses a tendency on the part of historians to interpret violent resistance struggles in Africa as episodes in some ultimately teleological process, liberating Africans progressively from colonial, neo-colonial or national oppression. Yet given the disappointing results of each of these successive "liberations", there a…

  • Witch-Hunting in Central Madagascar 1828–1861Madagascar 1828–1861

    Stephen Elli, Stephen Ellis et al.EDITORCHAPTERCharlatans, Spirits and Rebels in…2022

    This chapter tells the story of a poison ordeal administered en masse by the Imerina state in nineteenth century Madagascar. The chapter proceeds in two stages: first by describing "witchcraft" or mosavy as a category of local religious thought and then by analyzing its relation to and role in larger social processes, which included political centralisation, massive population movements, war, disease and state decay. It argues that the great witc…

  • The Political Elite of Imerina and the Revolt of the Menalamba . The Creation of a Colonial Myth in Madagascar, 1895–18981Madagascar, 1895–1898

    Stephen Elli, Stephen Ellis et al.EDITORCHAPTERCharlatans, Spirits and Rebels in…2022

    This chapter provides a painstaking reconstruction of the revolt of the Menalamba in the two years following the French invasion of Madagascar in 1895, one of the most puzzling and fascinating of all resistance movements. The most mysterious aspect of the rising has always been the question of who, if anyone, was its leader. Using previously unopened archives, the chapter tells the story of the French suppression of the uprising and prosecution o…

  • The Occult Does Not Exist

    Stephen Elli, Stephen Ellis et al.EDITORCHAPTERCharlatans, Spirits and Rebels in…2022

    In recent years, it has become common for academic writers to use "the occult" as an analytical category to which various types of mystical belief and activity that are quite widespread in Africa are assigned. This includes those often described as "magic" and "witchcraft". It is notable that all these concepts generally go undefined. The present article argues that much of the current academic vocabulary used to describe and analyze the invisibl…

  • Writing Histories of Contemporary Africa

    Stephen Elli, Stephen Ellis et al.EDITORCHAPTERCharlatans, Spirits and Rebels in…2022

    This essay argues that historians need to engage with the history of contemporary Africa both as a way of throwing new light on Africa's more remote past and as a way of understanding the present. The paper discusses two types of problems involved in such an enterprise. The first is the identification of the most fruitful themes for investigation. The second is the sources that may be used.

  • Religion and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa

    Stephen Elli, Stephen Ellis et al.EDITORCHAPTERCharlatans, Spirits and Rebels in…2022

    This chapter argues that religion and politics are both systems of ordering the power inherent in human society, in the process of which elements of authority and hierarchy tend to emerge. As such, religion and politics are closely related. In the modern Western tradition these two systems of harnessing or manipulating power have been subject to sharp organizational and intellectual distinctions which conform to the separation of politics and rel…

  • Charlatans, Spirits and Rebels in Africa

    Stephen Ellis, Solofo Randrianja et al.EDITORBOOKCharlatans, Spirits and Rebels in…2022

  • Charlatans, Spirits and Rebels in Africa

    Tim KelsallBOOKCharlatans, Spirits and Rebels in…2022

  • Using political settlements analysis to explain poverty trends in Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania

    Open AccessBlessings Chinsinga, Ezana Haddis Weldeghebrael et al.ARTICLEWorld Development2022Cited by: 2References: 13

  • Towards a universal political settlement concept

    Open AccessTim KelsallARTICLEAfrican Affairs2018Cited by: 17

    Journal Article Towards a universal political settlement concept: A response to Mushtaq Khan Get access Tim Kelsall Tim Kelsall Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 117, Issue 469, October 2018, Pages 656–669, https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/ady018 Published: 17 May 2018 Article history Received: 24 April 2018 Published: 17 May 2018

  • Inclusive healthcare and the political settlement in Cambodia

    Tim Kelsall, Seiha HengARTICLENew Political Economy2015Cited by: 4References: 1

    Over the past 15 years Cambodia has made significant strides in expanding effective access to free healthcare for the poor, thanks largely to ‘Health Equity Funds’ (HEFs), a multi-stakeholder health-financing mechanism. HEF operators have helped expand access, incentivise health staff, and lobby on behalf of poor patients. However, despite their successes, they have been unable convincingly to address some of the deeper-seated problems of the Cam…

  • Business, Politics, and the State in Africa

    Tim KelsallBOOKBusiness, Politics, and the State…2013

    In recent years Africa appears to have turned a corner economically. It is posting increased growth rates and is no longer the world's slowest growing region. Commentators are beginning to ask whether emerging from Africa is a new generation of 'lion' economies to challenge the East Asian 'tigers'? This book goes behind the headlines to examine the conditions necessary not just for growth in Africa but for a wider business and economic transforma…

  • Neo-Patrimonialism, Rent-Seeking and Development

    Tim KelsallARTICLENew Political Economy2012Cited by: 8References: 2

    This contribution summarises research conducted by the Africa Power and Politics Programme, which finds that contrary to standard policy advice, neo-patrimonial governance can under certain conditions be compatible with a growth-enhancing investment climate

  • Anti-developmental patrimonialism in Zimbabwe

    Martin Dawson, Tim KelsallARTICLEJournal of Contemporary African…2012Cited by: 8References: 8

    Research on investment1 1. This is an abridged version of M. Dawson and T. Kelsall (2011) Anti-developmental Patrimonialism in Zimbabwe. Working Paper 19: Africa Power and Politics Programme. The unabridged version of the paper is now available online at: http://www.institutions-africa.org/filestream/20111110-appp-working-paper-19-anti-developmental-patrimonialism-in-zimbabwe-dawson-and-kelsall-nov-11 climates and economic growth in developing co…

  • Neo-patrimonialism, Institutions and Economic Growth

    Open AccessDiana Cammack, Tim KelsallARTICLEIDS Bulletin2011References: 4

    For significant periods Malawi's economy has performed as well or better than might have been expected given its geographical location and natural resource endowments. Underlying these promising episodes is a pattern of centralised, long?horizon rent management and technocratic integrity. This case study of ‘developmental patrimonialism’ found that the period 1965–79 was one of centralised, long?horizon rent management and a vertically discipline…

  • Rethinking the Relationship between Neo-patrimonialism and Economic Development in Africa

    Open AccessTim KelsallARTICLEIDS Bulletin2011Cited by: 10References: 25

    Is it possible to work with the grain of neo?patrimonial politics to boost investment and growth in Africa? Current donor orthodoxy is that neo?patrimonialism is irredeemably bad for economic development, but evidence from other regions, together with a re?examination of the African record itself, suggests that this may not be true. We present evidence from case studies of Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire, Malawi and Rwanda to show that provided mechanisms c…

  • Culture under Cross-Examination

    Tim KelsallBOOKCulture under Cross-Examination2010

  • Going with the Grain in African Development

    Open AccessTim KelsallARTICLEDevelopment Policy Review2008Cited by: 35References: 29

    In view of the disappointing performance of the Good Governance agenda in Africa, policy-makers are asking whether better results could be obtained with approaches that attempt to 'work with the grain' of African societies. This article explores what this might mean. It identifies a core set of beliefs and values - concerning power, accountability and social morality - that have proved extremely durable and remain powerful drivers of behaviour ac…

  • The presidential and parliamentary elections in Tanzania, October and December 2005

    Open AccessTim KelsallARTICLEElectoral Studies2007Cited by: 3

  • African solutions to African problems? A critique of Our Common Interest

    Tim KelsallARTICLEGlobalizations2006References: 1

    Additional informationNotes on contributorsTim KelsallTim Kelsall is Lecturer in African Politics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and Joint Editor of African Affairs, the Journal of the Royal African Society

  • Politics, anti-politics, international justice

    Open AccessTim KelsallARTICLEReview of International Studies2006Cited by: 2

    The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) is located in a fortified compound in central Freetown. Inside its militarised space a project of global significance is unfolding. Together with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court, the SCSL is an experiment in bringing the rule of international law and governance to regions recently destabilis…

  • Rethinking African development

    Tim Kelsall, Stephen Elli et al.ARTICLEAfrican Affairs2006

    Established in 1973, CODESRIA, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, is the pioneer and premier African social science research organization. Its founders envisaged it as a force to transcend the dispersal and fragmentation of knowledge production on the African continent, to foster a Pan-African community of scholars, to provide an autonomous space insulated from donor and other pressures, to break down gender and…

  • Truth, Lies, Ritual

    Tim KelsallARTICLEHuman Rights Quarterly2005Cited by: 62References: 1

    This article uses an ethnographic description of a provincial public hearing in Sierra Leone to explore the paradoxical fact that in truth commissions, the truth is seldom told. It argues that the truth was not told for a variety of reasons, some of which are related to the special circumstances of the District, some to the problematic relationship of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the Special Court, some to organizational infirmiti…

  • Governance, democracy and recent political struggles in Mainland Tanzania

    Tim KelsallARTICLECommonwealth and Comparative…2003Cited by: 8

    The Governance Agenda rests on the idea that economic and political liberalisation in Africa can be mutually reinforcing; that liberal democracy, in other words, can help legitimise capitalist development. Tanzania, which began liberalising its economy in the 1980s and its polity in the 1990s, is currently regarded by donors as a promising case of economic and political reform. The aim of the present article is to provide a different point of vie…