Two events in the nineties focused attention on the beginnings of democratisation in Africa. The first was the arrest on Christmas day 1997 of Kenneth Kaunda, the founding father of present-day Zambia and its president until 1991. Kaunda, one of the best known African politicians was later detained for his alleged involvement in a half-hearted (if not farcical) and failed coup attempt by junior officers in October 1997. The second was the predictable re-election, in January 1998, of Daniel arap Moi to Kenya's presidency a post he had occupied for nineteen years following a campaign and elections claimed by the opposition to have made free and fair political competition impossible.

Books reviewed in this issue International Relations theory The Eurocentric conception of world politics: western international theory, 1760-2010. By John M. Hobson. The concept of the political. By Hans J. Morgenthau. Edited by Hartmut Behr and Felix Rosch. Mao's China and the Sino-Soviet split: ideological dilemma. By Mingjiang Li. A dictionary of 20th-century communism. Edited by Silvio Pons and Robert Service. International organization, law and ethics Justice and the enemy: Nuremberg, 9/11, and the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. By William Shawcross. Hybrid and internationalised criminal tribunals: selected jurisdictional issues. By Sarah Williams. Sentencing in international criminal law: the approach of the two ad hoc tribunals and future perspectives for the international criminal court. By Silvia D'Ascoli. The new protectorates: international tutelage and the making of liberal states. Edited by James Mayall and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira. Corruption and misuse of public office: second edition. By Colin Nicholls QC, Tim Daniel, Alan Bacarese and John Hatchard. Conflict, security and defence Manhunt: the ten-year search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad. By Peter Bergen. Governance, civil society and cultural politics Sex and world peace. By Valerie M. Hudson, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli and Chad F. Emmett. After secularism: rethinking religion in global politics. By Erin K. Wilson. Political economy, economics and development Finance and the good society. By Robert J. Shiller. Energy, resources and environment Global health governance. By Sophie Harman. Phake: the deadly world of falsified and substandard medicines. By Roger Bate. The European Union as a leader in international climate change politics. Edited by Rudiger K. W. Wurzel and James Connelly. International history Documents on British policy overseas: series III, volume VIII: The invasion of Afghanistan and UKSoviet relations, 1979-1982. Edited by Richard Smith, Patrick Salmon and Stephen Twigge. Marigold: the lost chance for peace in Vietnam. By James G. Hershberg. Ending empire in the Middle East: Britain, the United States and post-war decolonization, 1945-1973. By Simon C. Smith. The sorrows of Belgium: liberation and political reconstruction, 1944-1947. By Martin Conway. The devil in history: communism, fascism, and some lessons of the twentieth century. By Vladimir Tismaneanu. Molotov: Stalin's cold warrior. By Geoffrey Roberts. Europe Hungary: between democracy and authoritarianism. By Paul Lendvai. Turkey: what everyone needs to know. By Andrew Finkel. National and European foreign policies: towards Europeanization. Edited by Reuben Wong and Christopher Hill. Russia and Eurasia Deception: spies, lies and how Russia dupes the West. By Edward Lucas. Restavratsiya vmesto reformatsii: Dvadtsat' let, kotorye potryasli Rossiyu. By Vladimir Pastukhov. The political economy of Putin's Russia. By Pekka Sutela. Putin's United Russia party. By Sean P. Roberts. Russian politics: the paradox of weak state. By Marie Mendras. Roads to the temple: truth, memory, ideas, and ideals in the making of the Russian revolution, 1987-1991. By Leon Aron. Power games in the Caucasus: Azerbaijan's foreign and energy policy towards the West, Russia and the Middle East. By Nazrin Mehdiyeva. Middle East and North Africa Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party: inside an authoritarian regime. By Joseph Sassoon. The Saddam tapes: the inner workings of a tyrant's regime, 1978-2001. By Kevin M. Woods, David D. Palkki and Mark E. Stout. The Syrian rebellion. By Fouad Ajami.The battle for the Arab Spring: revolution, counter-revolution and the making of a new era. By Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren. Lebanon: the politics of a penetrated society. By Tom Najem. Lebanon adrift: from battleground to playground. By Samir Khalaf. Sub-Saharan Africa Catastrophe: what went wrong in Zimbabwe? By Richard Bourne. South Asia Pakistan on the brink: the future of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the West. By Ahmed Rashid. The future of Pakistan. By Stephen P. Cohen and others. Religion and conflict in modern South Asia. By William Gould. East Asia and Pacific Maonomics: why Chinese communists make better capitalists than we do. By Loretta Napoleoni. Korean unification: inevitable challenges. By Jacques L. Fuqua Jr. Escape from Camp 14: one man's remarkable odyssey from North Korea to freedom in the West. By Blaine Harden. Latin America and Caribbean Haiti: a shattered nation. By Elizabeth Abbott. Fixing Haiti: MINUSTAH and beyond. Edited by Jorge Heine and Andrew S. Thompson. Bolivia: refounding the nation. By Kepa Artaraz. The Amazon from an international law perspective. By Beatriz Garcia.

Discussions surrounding the prospects for development in Africa revolve around a number of arguments that make important assumptions about both the situation on the continent and the effects of the policies being adopted. Whilst most of the debate concerns the modalities of more effective development policies or more appropriate foreign aid programmes, this chapter looks at the approaches taken in thinking through these questions. It reconsiders the main concepts, theories and models used by observers, practitioners and scholars alike to assess the extent to which the analytical instruments we use are deficient. Revisiting the ways in which we conceptualize development and aid may be a useful step in contributing to a better understanding of the realities that often baffle or elude us.

Under the guise of an article on culture and public service in Africa, Jean-Pierre Oliver de Sardan 1 has produced a withering attack on what he deems to be a pernicious "scientific ideology": Africanist traditionalist culturalism (ATC) 2 .His article is one of the sharpest critiques of the use of culture for political analysis by Africanists.As one of the targets of his ire, I am naturally concerned to take his assessment seriously but the aim of this article is not to defend the two volumes he most censures 3 .Rather, I would like to take up some of the intellectual and analytical issues raised by his considered critique to try to move the debate forward.My ambition, therefore, rests on the hope that students of Africa -here an anthropologist and political scientist -can have a dialogue that will serve what I take to be our common purpose: understanding contemporary Africa better.Sardan's basic argument is that the study of public services in Africa is not best served by reference to "African culture", for two fundamental reasons.First, because there is no such thing as "African culture", or "tradition", which can usefully be marshalled to provide a locally plausible explanation of how public services operate.The whole notion is either too ahistorical or too vague.For him, it is the type of lazy explanation given by those who do not trouble themselves with the empirical research required for meaningful explanation.Second, the very use of a concept such as "African culture" is nothing other than a resort to a biased, Western, and patronising view of Africa.As though those who seek to explain the continent's present condition had nothing better to do than to fall back on the tired, indeed racist, clichés about the "heart of darkness".For Sardan, such an approach condemns us to ask the wrong questions and thus to misunderstand Africa's "modernity".Although I think that Sardan's work shows that he is not as reluctant as he claims to be to take into account cultural factors, a point to which I return below, I shall try to delineate as plainly as I can the assumptions upon which his argument is constructed.I hope in this way that some clarity in what appears to differentiate us may serve to move the debate constructively forward.My response is in four parts.