Bücher von René Ngek Monteh

The colonial period and post-independence era are two exciting historical pegs with shared and diametrically opposed narratives on the people and continent of Africa. They are two periods with leverages of continuities and discontinuities. While the colonial period for the most part left the African people as passive recipients of European socioeconomic and political values, colonialism at the same time created strands of resistance that manifested variously as nationalism. The outcome of the nationalist effervescence was the 'termination' of the colonial enterprise and the appropriation of political independence. The independence of most African states was accompanied by a craving to indigenize the political institutions and to orient development along African paradigms. This scholarly compendium of 15 chapters integrates different narratives on the state, stakes, and prospects of the African continent in responding to dynamic socio-economic and political exigencies.

Few concepts are more central to the modern state and, at the same time, more difficult to define than the concepts of political parties, democracy, and elections. Based on primary, secondary, and alternative sources, the author nonetheless try to defy the odds and explain these concepts as clearly as possible in the context of Cameroon from 1948, the year in which the first political party (UPC) was created and went operational, to 2018, the year in which the last presidential elections took place. In this book, political parties are presented as central institutions of a modern democracy at different epochs. The characteristics and functions of parties, the basic elements of their organisation, their political and social context, as well as the problems of party democracy and the specific challenges faced by parties, besides proposed solutions from within the time frame, are the main issues.