Liberia, Ebola and the pitfalls of state-building
Reimagining domestic and diasporic public authority
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6029902 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robtel Neajai Pailey (0000-0001-9584-6524, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 116 |
| Issue | 465 |
| Pages | 648-670 |
| Publication date | 2017-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0001-9909 • E-ISSN: 1468-2621 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/afraf/adx018 |
| OpenAlex | W2620795157 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Using the Ebola outbreak of 2014/2015 in Liberia as a case study, this article demonstrates that by converting ‘private activities and resources’ for public health service delivery, Liberian domestic and diasporic non-government actors effectively broadcasted public authority at meso- and micro-levels previously assumed to be the exclusive domain of government and international institutions. Moving beyond the structural violence and state-building frameworks, I argue that while Liberia's pursuit of a vertical state-building agenda at the behest of international donors unravelled during Ebola, the public health measures employed by non-government Liberian actors were constituted by horizontal nation-building objectives. This refashioned how we think about public authority in post-war states and beyond. The article provides a systematic documentation of how and why Liberians ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the geographic territory of the post-war state used their individual and collective agency to eradicate Ebola, and why their interventions are important for a larger discussion about the trajectory of post-Ebola recovery. Though it is difficult to prove a causal relationship between the interventions of non-government Liberian actors and the gradual decline in Ebola incidence rates, I underscore important correlations between their public health measures and Ebola eradication.
Agency (philosophy) · Economic growth · Government (linguistics) · Political science · Psychological intervention · Public health · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Global Security and Public Health · Medicine · Nursing · Public Administration
| Citations per year | 0.38 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2018 - 2021 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |