Current thinking on African conflicts suffers from misinterpretations (oversimplification, lack of focus, lack of conceptual clarity, state-centrism and lack of vision). The paper analyses a variety of the dominant explanations of major international actors and donors, showing how these...

This paper analyzes the declining importance of political parties in the Central African Republic (CAR). It argues that the problematic attitude of elites who are fluctuating between violent and peaceful behavior in order to further their own careers is jeopardizing both peace and democracy. The...

Peace agreements form a crucial element of strategies to bring security from outside: they involve third-party mediators during the negotiation stage and often peacekeeping troops to guarantee the agreement at an implementation stage. Peace roundtables usually involve top politicians and...

Little attention has been paid to the factual effect of the state's security forces on the security of African citizens. Reports about security forces - contribution to widespread insecurity are frequent: the protectors become violators and their appearance causes fear, not security. In many...

Football coverage in newspapers is both an arena for and a mirror of political discourse within a society. The paper argues that discourses within football coverage referring to political issues reflect dominant - and, possibly, contesting - 'truths', which themselves are linked to power...

Half a century after independence, African elites, at least those in conflict-ridden countries, often live in constant fear for their life. Real or invented coup attempts, political assassinations, beatings of opposition leaders, the distribution of death lists, etc. have a profoundly...

The concept of 'structural stability' has been gaining prominence in development policy circles. In the EU's and the OECD Development Assistance Committee's (OECD DAC) understanding, it describes the ability of societies to handle intra-societal conflict without resorting to violence. This study...