The United Nations and Democracy in Africa: Labyrinths of Legitimacy (Studies in International Relations) - Tapa dura

"Zoe Wilson's innovative study shows how recent critiques of mainstream development thinking have been incorporated into the programs and policies of UN agencies as what she terms 'minor discourses', in a complex and uneasy jumble with the older, 'top-down' models that continue to be dominant. Her analysis of the political effects of this apparent confusion sheds a powerful light on how and why UN interventions based on what seem to be the most benevolent principles so often turn out badly for the 'ordinary people' they are intended to benefit."

James Ferguson, Professor and Chair, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University

This book explores UN bureaucracy and the development dysfunction it sows in four 'most different' African countries: Angola, Botswana, Namibia, and Tanzania. Wilson's original purpose for researching this book was to uncover new solutions to some of the United Nations' most vexing implementation problems. Yet, as research unfolded, it became clear that the reasons for those problems lay tangled up in bureaucratic and philosophical quagmires of a much more fundamental nature. The United Nations and Democracy in Africa is the documentation not only of these bureaucratic and philosophical absurdities that find expression through development practice, but also the journey of the author from ardent defender of the UN to profound sceptic.