Synopses & Reviews
"... a truly authoritative source." --Foreign Affairs
"... a valuable book for policy makers, multinational corporations, international organizations, and scholars who are interested in state formation in post-colonial Africa." --African Studies Review
Focusing on what the Zairian state is and does, Schatzberg examines how scarcity and insecurity have become twin motors of a dialectic of oppression, resulting in coercion, corruption, exploitation, and fear.
Review
"[T]his book... [is] a highly valuable work on the political system of the Mobutu regime's Second Republic (1965-90)... Schatzberg's work is a significant contribution to this study." --Developing Economies Indiana University Press
Table of Contents
Preface
Acronyms
1. Introduction
2. Triple Helix: State, Class, and Ethnicity in Africa
3. The State as Ear: Information, Coercion, and the Political Police
4. The State as Bandit: Armed Forces, Coercive Force
5. The State as Family, Mobutu as Father: Political Imagery
6. The Insecure State, I: Resistance Within--The Magistrature
7. The Insecure State, II: Resistance Without--Religious Groups
8. The Dialectics of Oppression
Notes
Bibliography
Index