This book presents a series of essays by leading English and French scholas examining the politics, economics, international relations and defects of the literary scene of France and the former territories of francophone West Africa since 1965. The approach is emphatically a thematic one rather than a country-by-country analysis.

Inhalt
Acknowledgements - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction; A.Kirk-Greene - PART 1: POLITICAL SYSTEMS - Decolonisation: French and British Styles; J.Hargreaves - 'Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi': The Comparative Legacy of Chiefs After the Transfer of Power in British and French West Africa; A.Kirk-Greene - Thirty Years of Legal Practice in the Shadow of the State: The Taming of Leviathan; E.Le Roy - Public Administration, State and Society; D.Darbon - Educational Systems, Social Stratification and the Construction of the State; T.D.Bakary - Armies and Politics: The 'Lifecycle' of Military Rule in Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa; M.Martin - The Phenomenon of the One-Party State; K.Ziemer - 'Peristroika' and the One-Party System; C.Toulabor - PART 2: ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL DYNAMICS - Models and Economic Performance; P.Hugon - State Intervention in the Economy; B.Contamin & Y-A.Faure - The Franc Zone: Original Logic, Subsequent Inflexibility and Present Crisis; J.Coussy - PART 3: EXTERNAL RELATIONS - The Foreign Policy of Francophone Africa: Clientelism and After; F.C.Constantin - Francophone Regionalism or Franco-African Regionalism; D.Bach - French Military Interventions: The Case of Chad; R.Buijtenhuijs - Beyond Francophone? The Senegambia Confederation in Retrospect; J.Lewis & A.Hughes - PART 4: LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY - Forty Years of African Literature in French: Can One Replant a Yam Whose Tendrils Are Already Above Ground?; D.Coussy - Literature and Philosophy in French-Speaking Africa; B.Mouralis - Mutual Perceptions in Africa; K.Whiteman - Index