AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | The 2012 crisis in Mali: ongoing empirical state failure |
| Authors: | Bleck, Jaimie Michelitch, Kristin |
| Year: | 2015 |
| Periodical: | African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society (ISSN 1468-2621) |
| Volume: | 114 |
| Issue: | 457 |
| Pages: | 598-623 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Mali |
| Subjects: | rebellions rural society rural-urban disparity |
| External link: | http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/114/457/598.abstract |
| Abstract: | In 2012 Mali faced a crisis disrupting nearly twenty years of democratization, a coup and rebel insurgency. This article investigates policy priorities amongst rural Malians living on the border of state and rebel-controlled territory during the crisis. While academic and policy-making communities have focused largely on Mali's recent and sudden regime and territorial breakdown, the villagers defined the crisis in terms of their unmet needs for public services and infrastructure amidst high food and water insecurity. Concern for the sudden 'juridical state' breakdown, the collapse of the democratic regime, was trumped by the focus on long-term 'empirical state' breakdown. Using recent Afrobarometer data on diverse dimensions of empirical statehood, the authors show that the problem of rural neglect emphasized by seminal scholars is persistent not only across Mali, but also across many African countries. The tendency of academics and policy makers to focus on the immediate or more volatile political problems of the coup and rebel insurgency facing the Malian state, while important, risks understating and underestimating the power of slow-moving crises of daily life that are more important to rural citizens. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
