DEUXIÈME ÉDITION REVUE ET AUGMENTÉE. Par-delà l'analyse d'un régime, c'était une réflexion sur l'Etat et la politique en Afrique qui s'esquissait et que l'auteur a prolongée depuis.
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In most works on African political Systems the approach is too gênerai to avoid overestimating the dimensions of either national intégration or social domination. The strength of tradition and the demands of modernization and consensus are assumed to represent sufficient explanatory factors. The reality of politics in Black Africa - and in particular its inhérent dynamism and conflicts - is not recognized. More thorough analyses of African political Systems are therefore needed. This book considers the political System of Cameroon in this fashion. The author has based his work on extensive primary sources, in particular some hitherto unresearched archives of the single party. He shows the stages in the construction of the political régime, its mode of functioning, its relation to social groups. He dispels the oversimplifications of many studies of the Ahidjo government, one of the most controversial in French-speaking Africa, and concludes that Cameroon politics is complex and meaningful : the post-colonial state, although set within the world économie System, can be fully understood only in relation to the pre-colonial societies. Colonisation and dependence are but transitory periods in the black societies' own his tory. Going beyond an analysis of the political régime of Cameroon, this is the beginning of a reflection on state and politics in Africa.