Political Science

Notes on Recent Elections comments made by president Jos6 Maria Sanguinetti, who threatened to expel members of the Colorados party who had broken ranks and campaigned against the reform. It seemed that the leaders of the main parties had already begun to accommodate themselves to the new situation. References

Notes on Recent Elections comments made by president Jos6 Maria Sanguinetti, who threatened to expel members of the Colorados party who had broken ranks and campaigned against the reform. It seemed that the leaders of the main parties had already begun to accommodate themselves to the new situation. References

Notes on Recent Elections comments made by president Jos6 Maria Sanguinetti, who threatened to expel members of the Colorados party who had broken ranks and campaigned against the reform. It seemed that the leaders of the main parties had already begun to accommodate themselves to the new situation. References

The Gambia's presidential election in December 2016 marked the end of an era for Yahya Jammeh, the man who had vowed to rule the country for 'one billion years if Allah says so'. The resulting political impasse following Jammeh's rejection of the results 'in its entirety' and his refusal to step down plunged the country into political uncertainty. This paper explores the end of Jammeh's 22-year rule in Africa's smallest mainland country, focussing on the 2016 polls which he lost to former realtor, Adama Barrow. The election offers relevant lessons to students of political transitions and contemporary election discourse in Africa and provides an analysis of some of the factors that accounted for his defeat.

The 18 October 2001 presidential balloting in The Gambia was riddled with irregularities and problems, ranging from a truncated campaign period designed to favour the incumbent to instances of intimidation and violence against opposition political leaders and supporters. It seems clear that President Jammeh's reelection was aided by padded voter rolls, illicit votes from non-Gambian members of Jammeh's Jola ethnic group who crossed over from Senegal, and an Electoral Commission chairman who manipulated the rules. Together, these irregularities rendered the election fundamentally flawed.

Notes on Recent Elections comments made by president Jos6 Maria Sanguinetti, who threatened to expel members of the Colorados party who had broken ranks and campaigned against the reform. It seemed that the leaders of the main parties had already begun to accommodate themselves to the new situation. References

Reviewer: Abdoulaye Saine "Gender" as a social construct, is a widely accepted unit of social, political and economic analysis among scholars and "development" practitioners alike. Gender scholars usually proceed from the presumption that socially ascribed roles based on sex and binary identities, typically associated with being "male," or "female," are socially constructed and not biologically determined. Coming of age in the 1980s, "Gender" analysis was heavily influenced by "Liberal," "Standpoint," and "Post-modernist/structuralist," Feminist epistemologies, which in turn sparked debate and public policy outcomes centered around: (a) Women in Development (WID), (b) Women and Development (WAD), and (c) Gender and Development (GAD).

On Friday, September 22, 2006, Gambians voted in the third presidential election since soldier-turned-civilian-president Yahya Jammeh came to power in a bloodless 1994 coup d'état. President Jammeh's ruling party defeated two separate, though ideologically and programmatically similar, political/party alliances. Notwithstanding, the 2006 presidential election has not appreciably moved The Gambia any closer to a more democratic political culture. The election resulted instead in the consolidation of authoritarian rule under Jammeh. Clearly, disunity within the opposition eroded both its popularity and credibility and irreversibly changed the dynamics of the election in Jammeh's favor. Jammeh is in a position to use his "mandate" and "victory" to widen political participation, undertake genuine reconciliation, root out corruption, investigate mounting deaths, protect press freedoms, and put the economy on a course to mend itself. But this seems unlikely, given his proclivity for press repression and a lack of commitment to bettering the lives of ordinary Gambians.

Four years ago in these pages, following the disputed 1996 presidential election in the Gambia, the late John Wiseman characterized the "democratization process" in that small West African country as a "moldy loaf." 1 Soldier-turned-civilian president Colonel Yahya Jammeh, who had taken power in a bloodless 1994 coup, engineered the 1996 election to ensure himself victory. Jammeh's decision to stand again for the presidency in 2001, the kind of campaign that he ran, and the type of elections that he conducted form a backdrop against which we can assess the prospects for a return to free government in what was once one of Africa's oldest continuously surviving multiparty democracies. The 18 October 2001 presidential balloting was riddled with irregularities and problems, ranging from a truncated campaign period designed to favor the incumbent to instances of intimidation and violence against opposition political leaders and supporters. It seems clear that President Jammeh's reelection was aided by padded voter rolls, illicit votes from non-Gambian members of Jammeh's Jola ethnic group who crossed over from Senegal, and an Electoral Commission chairman who manipulated the rules. Together, these irregularities rendered the election fundamentally flawed. The Gambia is a former British colony (and current Commonwealth member) of 1.5 million people, four-fifths of whom are Muslim. It has the smallest land area of any African country and is almost completely surrounded by its much larger neighbor, the former French colony of Senegal. After gaining its independence in 1965, the officially English-Abdoulaye Saine teaches African studies and international political economy at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He has published widely on the military, human rights, and democratization in the Gambia and Africa. He gratefully acknowledges funding for this research from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Hampton Fund, and the Office for the

The 18 October 2001 presidential balloting in The Gambia was riddled with irregularities and problems, ranging from a truncated campaign period designed to favour the incumbent to instances of intimidation and violence against opposition political leaders and supporters. It seems clear that President Jammeh's reelection was aided by padded voter rolls, illicit votes from non-Gambian members of Jammeh's Jola ethnic group who crossed over from Senegal, and an Electoral Commission chairman who manipulated the rules. Together, these irregularities rendered the election fundamentally flawed.

This book is a timely addition to the debate on the universal application of human rights. It proceeds from the assumption that enforcing compliance with universal standards is not only difficult, but that the very idea that there should be universal standards is itself controversial and under threat. Using the concept of ' culture ' as an analytical and organisational tool, contributors to the volume seeks to resolve this dilemma by giving specificity and relevance to conventional concepts of ' sovereignty' and ' domestic jurisdiction '. The argument is simple : universal human rights principles and claims can gain acceptance when appropriated contextually, leading to cultural transformation. This approach to human rights highlights what seems to be a central truth : whatever politicians or philosophers may say or do, it is on the strength of popular support for universal human rights that the idea will flourish or die. Conversely, ' globalisation ' and adaptation are similarly changing all cultures to make human rights norms more compatible. Thus, An-Na'im and Hammond argue in the first of eight chapters that blanket rejection of Western rights norms, per se (because they are putatively incompatible with other cultural norms) without alternative formulations, is unacceptable (p. 20). The movement towards establishing the Rights of Peoples partially reflects An'im's and Hammond's perspective. That is to say, The African Charter for Human and Peoples Rights/Banjul Charter strengthens African cultural values, and while it may conflict with some universal values, they argue that these conflicts should be mediated rather than overlooked or suppressed (p. 35). Chapter 1 sets both the philosophical and practical tone(s) on which the remaining seven chapters (mostly case-studies) build. Chapter 2 by Chanock is a critical discourse that unravels the concept 'culture ' and uses the history of imperialism, international debt and world trade as the point of departure for any analysis of rights and cultural transformation in Africa. He contends that politicians in Africa and Asia, who are often resistant to change, have tried to push the rights issue from the realm of both state and society into that of ' culture ' rather than the micro, daily lives of ordinary people (p. 63). The third chapter by Mutua on The Banjul Charter is a lucid exposé of human rights in Africa before colonisation. It also emphasises the role of the individual as bearer of both rights and duties, and as the basis for a rights regime capable of achieving legitimacy in Africa (p. 70). He contrasts this notion of legitimacy to that of ' narrow political elites who barely understand the Western notions they eagerly mimic-and who have lost the anchor in their past ' (p. 92). Mutua insists that Africans must reexamine the assumptions underlying the role and purpose of the state and its organisation.

The manuscript analyzes negative developments in Bulgarian and Romanian politics in the aftermath of the two countries' accession to the european Union, with a special focus on the worsening corruption problem, the destabilization of previously coherent normative frameworks, and the reversal of processes of state building. It also explores the main characteristics of a novel form of elite behavior, post-accession hooliganism, which began to emerge as soon as Bulgarian and Romanian political leaders felt strong and confident enough to disregard the demands of their West european counterparts.