Cheeseman, Nic, and Blessing-Miles Tendi. “Power-Sharing in Comparative Perspective: the Dynamics of ‘Unity Government’ in Kenya and Zimbabwe.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 48, no. 2(2010): 203–29. doi:10.1017/S0022278X10000224.

This paper draws on the recent experience of Kenya and Zimbabwe to demonstrate how power-sharing has played out in Africa. Although the two cases share some superficial similarities, variation in the strength and disposition of key veto players generated radically different contexts that shaped the feasibility and impact of unity government. Explaining the number and attitude of veto players requires a comparative analysis of the evolution of civil–military and intra-elite relations. In Zimbabwe, the exclusionary use of violence and rhetoric, together with the militarisation of politics, created far greater barriers to genuine power-sharing, resulting in the politics of continuity. These veto players were less significant in the Kenyan case, giving rise to a more cohesive outcome in the form of the politics of collusion. However, we find that neither mode of power-sharing creates the conditions for effective reform, which leads to a more general conclusion: unity government serves to postpone conflict, rather than to resolve it.

Source: Article abstract

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Browne, Evie, and Jonathan Fisher. “Key Actors Mapping: Somalia - GSDRC.” Applied Knowledge Services. GSDRC, November 13, 2013.

This rapid review provides a synthesis of some of the most recent, high-quality literature on the topic of power and influence in Somalia. It aims to orient policymakers to the key debates and emerging issues. This report was researched and written in September 2013, before the attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi that Al-Shabaab said it carried out.

Source: report description  

Bolliger, L.  “Apartheid’s African Soldiers: A History of Black Namibian and Angolan Members of South Africa’s Former Security Forces, 1975 to the Present.” PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 2020.

In this study, I examine the history of black Namibian and Angolan soldiers who fought in apartheid South Africa’s security forces during the Namibian war of independence and the Angolan post-independence civil war from 1975 until 1989. I ask how and why these soldiers got involved in South Africa’s security forces, and what the legacies of that involvement have been, in particular for the individual soldiers and their families. Based primarily on black former soldiers’ own accounts, I argue that their experiences deeply disrupt dominant narratives of heroic struggles of ‘national liberation’ against colonial occupation. While scholars have remained almost entirely silent on the histories of African soldiers of colonial and settler armies during the period of decolonization, nationalist narratives have either ignored or denounced them as ‘mercenaries’ and ‘collaborators’. I complicate such portrayals by highlighting the limits and divisions of the wars of ‘national liberation’ in Namibia and Angola. More specifically, I trace the long history of different forms of ‘collaboration’ during colonial conquest and occupation and examine black soldiers’ complex motivations for joining and remaining in South Africa’s security forces.

Source: excerpt from thesis abstract as culled from https://ora.ox.ac.uk

Behuria, Pritish. “Centralising rents and dispersing power while pursuing development? Exploring the strategic uses of military firms in Rwanda. Review of African Political Economy, 43(150), (2016) 630–647. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2015.1128407

The Rwandan Patriotic Front has achieved significant economic progress while also maintaining political stability. However, frictions among ruling elites have threatened progress. This paper explores the use of military firms in Rwanda. Such firms are used to invest in strategic industries, but the use of such firms reflects the vulnerability faced by ruling elites. Military firms serve two related purposes. First, ruling elites use such firms to centralize rents and invest in strategic sectors. Second, the proliferation of such enterprises and the separation of party- and military-owned firms contribute to dispersing power within a centralized hierarchy.

Source: Article abstract

Barany, Zoltan. “Military Influence in Foreign Policy-Making: Changing Dynamics in North African Regimes.” The Journal of North African Studies 24,no. 4 (July 4, 2019): 579–98. doi:10.1080/13629387.2018.1525004.

The strong political position armed forces enjoy in authoritarian states and the high priority military elites assign to foreign affairs would lead one to believe that in North Africa – a region made up of authoritarian states with the sole, recent, and partial exception of Tunisia – generals had the political standing to exert a major influence on foreign policy decisions. This would not be a correct assumption because in this region the armed forces’ political influence is actually highly variable. Of the five states analyzed in this article (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia) the military is the dominant political institution only in Algeria and Egypt. In the other three countries, the army plays a marginal political role and, by extension, possesses modest foreign policy influence. Moreover, the political clout of these armies is not constant. Since the Arab Spring the political influence of Egyptian generals has considerably increased, that of their Tunisian colleagues has marginally risen, while the status of Libya’s military leaders has diminished.

Source: article abstract

Bakrania, Shivit. “Libya: Border Security and Regional Cooperation.” Applied Knowledge Services. GSDRC, August 3, 2015. https://gsdrc.org/publications/libya-border-security-andregional-cooperation/.

This literature review examines security-related developments that determine Libya's relationship with its neighbors—Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Niger, Sudan, and Tunisia. The report looks at the incentives of the neighboring countries' relationships with Libya and the main challenges in implementing or maintaining these regional relationships or cross-border mechanisms with Libya and the main challenges in implementing them. Finally, an overview is provided of international agency contributions to border management and security in the Sahel and Maghreb.

Source: culled from article overview from gsdrc.org