The politics of identity and ethnicity will remain a fundamental characteristic of African modernity. For this reason, historians and anthropologists have joined political scientists in a discussion about the ways in which democracy can develop in multicultural societies. In Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa, the contributors address why ethnicity represents a political problem, how the problem manifests itself, and which institutional models offer ways of ameliorating the challenges that ethnicity poses to democratic nation-building.
Bruce Berman is a professor of political studies at Queen's University, Ontario.
Dickson Eyoh is the director of the African studies program at New College, University of Toronto.
“The contributors to Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa refreshingly and convincingly remind us that ethnic attachments and democracy need not be mutually exclusive.”
~African Studies Review