1st Edition

Dreams of Power The Role of the Organization of African Unity in the Politics of Africa 1963-1993

By K. van Walraven Copyright 1999
    498 Pages
    by Routledge

    498 Pages
    by Routledge

    Originally published in 1999, this book was the first study to provide a systematic reconstruction of the OAU's ideological ground-work. It is based on OAU documents; a corpus of African perceptions of OAU functioning collected from governmental and non-governmental newspapers and publications from more than thirty African countries; and on interviews held with African diplomats and OAU officials. It was also the first study to pay attention to the OAU's role in the political psychology of state elites, which comes to the fore in the areas of OAU co-operation discussed in this book: the OAU's internal functioning; the former struggle against apartheid and colonialism; conflict management; and the OAU's role in representing collective African viewpoints in global fora. This study was originally a Ph.D. thesis, which was considered to be among the best three dissertations in political science in The Netherlands in 1997.

    1. Introduction, Methodology and Theoretical Perspectives.  2. The Structures of African Politics: Domestic Conditions, Foreign Policy and International Relations.  3. Some Historical and Ideological Perspectives.  4. The Formation of the Organization of African Unity.  5. The Internal Functioning of the OAU.  6. The OAU and the Struggle Against Colonialism.  7. The OAU and the Management of Africa's Political Order (I).  8. The OAU and the Management of Africa's Political Order (II).  9. Conclusions.

    Biography

    K. van Walraven