Rethinking Civil Military Relations in Africa: Beyond the Coup D’etat (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2022).
Political science alumni Moses Khisa (2016) and Christopher Day (2012) have coedited and contributed to this collection of studies that explore the nature and significance of evolving relationships between political authority, military power, and society. Civil-military relations across the continent have changed dramatically since the first military coups in the 1960s. The contributors address how useful conventional models are for understanding civil-military relations in the African context. Contributors include several other political science alumni and their mentor William Reno. Erin Damman (2012) coauthors two chapters, “The African Union and the “Good Coup” (with Chris Day) and “Beyond the Coup d’Etat?.” (with Chirs Day and Moses Khisa). Jahara Matisek (2018) focuses on “Military Effectiveness: The African Alternative,” and coauthors with William Reno a chapter “African Militaries and Contemporary Warfare.”
Old & New Battlespaces: Society, Military Power, and War (Boulder, CO: Lynn Rienner Publishers, 2022)
In this ground-breaking book, political science alumni Jahara (Franky) Matisek (2018) and Buddhika Jayamaha (2019) address changing war domains, especially the cybersphere, civil society, and outer space. They interrogate urgent questions about the strategic challenges faced by Western states. They analyze the emergent real-world struggles and warn against believing that better weapons alone will protect us, warning that warfare has dramatically transformed, is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, and almost anything can be weaponized.
Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History (Duke University Press, 2022)
Alumna Rhiannon Stephens (2007) presents a conceptual history of how people living in eastern Uganda have sustained and changed their thinking about wealth and poverty over the past two thousand years. This history shows that colonialism and capitalism did not introduce economic thought to this region and demonstrates that even in contexts of relative material equality between households, people invested intellectual energy in creating new ways to talk about the poor and the rich. Using an interdisciplinary approach to writing this history, she shows how the methods of comparative historical linguistics, archaeology, climate science, oral traditions, and ethnography can elucidate the past where few written historical records do not exist. Stephens challenges much of the received wisdom about the nature and existence of economic and social inequality in the region’s deeper past.
Closed for Democracy: How Mass School Closure Undermines the Citizenship of Black Americans (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Sally A. Nuamah (Institute for Policy Research and political science alumna 2016) investigates the political causes and democratic consequences of mass public school closures in the United States. Her study shows how the declining presence of public schools in large cities has affected poor Black citizens. It documents how these mass school closure policies target minority communities, making them feel excluded from the public goods afforded to equal citizens. The high costs and low responsiveness associated with the policy process undermine their faith in the power of political participation. Ultimately, the book reveals that when schools shut down, so too does Black citizens’ access to and belief in American democracy.