Research Articles (Political Studies)

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Seven quality choicepoints for ARJ: Ambition is welcome!
(Sage, 2025) Bradbury, Hilary; Wheeler, Joanna; Divecha, Simon
Action Research has developed and published actionable knowledge since 2003. Our intention is to support learning for transformations among people, organizations, communities and societies at multiple levels, inner and outer: personal, organizational, methodological, conceptual/discursive. In seeking also to support a community among international scholar-practitioners, we share authors’ blogs and host journal symposia. Action Research is not a method, but an orientation to inquiry, with diverse schools, labels, theories and practices. We honor the original working definition from the founding of the journal: Action research is “a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes, grounded in a participatory worldview which we believe is emerging at this historical moment. It seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of individual persons and their communities,” Today, in the face of our eco-social crisis, Action Research highlights what is transforming and how lives - of all beings – are being improved. The journal’s seven quality choicepoints articulate our understanding of action research. We use these for assessing and developing articles. In sharing them we make the review process more transparent.
Imagined homes, concrete houses, and bureaucratic subjects: Citizen-state encounters in Eastridge, Cape Town
(Sage, 2025) Clacherty, James
Eastridge is a low-cost housing development in Cape Town constructed and managed by the Cape Town Community Housing Company, a state-owned but privately managed company. The residents of Eastridge, most of whom have been living in their houses for 23 years, were recently declared ‘unlawful occupants’ in houses they expected to be the legal owners of years ago. Through a protracted struggle to receive permanent legal title over their homes the residents of Eastridge encounter the state in ways that are destabilising and violent at the same time as being intimate and mundane. Using ethnographic and oral history data gathered from three households in Eastridge I explore the ways in which families encounter and navigate the complex network of institutions, sites, agents, and artefacts that make up the imagined ‘state’ (Wafer and Oldfield, 2015). I argue that these everyday encounters with the state produce both the specific identity of the imagined state as well as particular forms of citizen subjectivity. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the landscape of political possibility through which citizens navigate by investigating the everyday encounters between citizens and the state. This is done through an analysis of everyday practices of homemaking, family relations, and getting by from day-to-day in a context of uncertainty.
Substituting for the state: the sovereignty impacts of diverse citizens’ off‐grid infrastructure strategies in South Africa
(John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2025) Anciano, Fiona; Culwick, Fatti Christina; Lemanski, Charlotte
In South Africa, citizens in both low‐ and high‐income areas are increasingly providing their own services to mitigate the unreliability, unaffordability and inaccessibility of state services. This article examines diverse case studies across socio‐economic and residential typologies to explore shifts in service provision responsibilities from the state to the citizen. Applying an interdisciplinary approach, this article considers the political impacts of these strategies, arguing that the ways in which citizens supplement and substitute for the state contests and (re)negotiates spaces of sovereignty. While urban studies overwhelmingly analyse these actions through the lens of informality, we argue that sovereignty (the supreme authority of a state to govern itself without external interference) offers a less binary analytical lens. State substitution is increasingly a daily act for many, not only in low‐income settlements but also among elites. The article further examines state responses to citizen‐led actions in supplementing or substituting services, demonstrating how they range from inaction to permissive negotiation and, rarely, repression. Thus, the political impact of service substitution requires deeper reflection, raising questions regarding the nature of the state and the social contract.
The false optimism of electrification: why universal electricity access has not delivered urban energy transformation in South Africa
(Elsevier Ltd, 2025) Lemanski, Charlotte; de Groot, Jiska; Haque, Anika Nasra
Universal access to energy is a global priority, increasingly delivered through grid-tied and off-grid infrastructure. However, energy policies frequently conflate universal access with extending and subsidising networked electricity, resulting in technology-dominated approaches. Rapid urbanisation in the global south has outstripped infrastructure capacity, where urban dwellers' access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable forms of energy are precarious. This failure to reflect human needs and societal expectations alongside technical considerations is threatening the sustainability of urban energy transitions. This paper draws from qualitative data with low-income urban dwellers and municipal policymakers to critically examine South Africa's energy access policies. We demonstrate how prioritising ‘electricity for all’ via grid connections fails to deliver universal access to affordable energy. First, the state's emphasis on extending and subsidising networked electricity prioritises proximity to grid connections rather than access to energy services, and permanently excludes households living in un-serviceable structures/settlements. Second, limited community participation produces a policy that ignores low-income households' urban practices and creates perverse incentives to distort energy consumption. We argue that delivering an urban energy transition that is economically feasible, locally appropriate and socially desirable requires policy expansion beyond physical delivery, working with targeted communities on policy development, knowledge exchange, and capacity building.
International collaboration and connections through design thinking: a case study of the global classroom for democracy innovation (GCDI)
(2024) Matthew Wingfield; Laurence Piper; Mukisa Mujulizi
This paper is based on the collaborative development of the global classroom for democracy innovation (GCDI), and its month-long virtual pilot workshop, the 'climate change design jam’. The GCDI is an integrated learning partnership between three international universities located in Canada, South Africa, and Sweden, and civil society partners the vancouver design nerds (VDN). Each partner brought unique skills to the GCDI, as new processes and methods for virtual, global student engagement and dialogue were co-designed. The GCDI hosted the climate change design Jam over four consecutive weeks in March 2022. By employing a design thinking methodology, it facilitated online student project development around the interconnected and broad topics of climate change and democracy. Students and student facilitators were guided through the process of design thinking to develop grounded projects that address climate change issues locally and internationally. This paper argues that fundamental principles of fostering genuine connections (both 'online' and 'offline') between students can act as a useful foundation from which project development can be based. Further, this paper illustrates that when faced with 'wicked problems’ such as climate change and challenges to democracy worldwide design thinking methods and collaborative approaches can act as a catalyst for action (Manzini, 2015). Exploring political theory, democracy, and civic agency through dialogue and co-design provides students with innovative approaches to research, critical thinking, and activism. This pilot series provides insight into student engagement across international contexts, and thus the development of cross-cultural and collective intelligence which can be formative for similar projects in the future (Behari-Leak, 2020).
Staying the course: lessons from South Africa for irreversibility of nuclear disarmament
(Routledge, 2024) Pretorius, Joelien
To conceptualise irreversibility of nuclear disarmament, it is better to think about nuclear disarmament as a historical process than a historical moment. I apply a path-dependency lens to do so in the case of South Africa. During the formative phase of its nuclear disarmament, narratives of intent were employed to take advantage of windows of opportunity brought about by historical contingencies and conjectures. It allowed South African decision-makers to set the disarmament course and take the first steps down this path. Timing and sequencing of decisions, actions and announcements played an important role in locking in the behaviour of actors that could have reversed the process in this crucial stage. The choice to stay the disarmament course has since been informed by cost-benefit and normative drivers to reach an equilibrium point. This point reflects a circumscribed understanding of irreversibility of nuclear disarmament for South African policymakers, namely demilitarising fissile material and putting it under international safeguards. This is the status of South Africa’s highly enriched uranium (HEU) today. For South Africa to move towards a broader understanding of irreversibility that includes relinquishing HEU and giving up the right to uranium enrichment will require “coordination” of similar efforts in a broader move to nuclear disarmament by nuclear-armed states.
Complexity, depoliticisation, and African nuclear ordering agency: a meso-level exploration
(Routledge, 2024) Pretorius, Joelien; Vaughan, Tom
The regional nuclear ordering terrain in Africa is increasingly complex, with proliferating and deepening institutional relationships to the institutions of the global nuclear order. Applying a ‘complexity lens’ to this regional institutional apparatus may therefore seem like an intuitive way to understand its role in global nuclear ordering at large, and Africa’s place within it. However, one important concern when thinking about complex multinational regimes is depoliticisation. This has been examined in contexts of global development as well as nuclear order and we show this as a key feature of meso nuclear ordering in Africa. A complexity lens is useful to analyse the characteristics of the African regional institutional terrain. However, a complexity lens can perpetuate this depoliticisation if it does not acknowledge the political thrusts which underlie conceptions of ‘order’ and ‘disorder’.
Exploring barriers and facilitators to knowledge transfer and learning processes through a cross-departmental collaborative project in a municipal organization
(Emerald, 2023) Sunnemark, Fredrik; Westin, Wilma Lundqvist; Assmo, Per
This study aims to explore barriers and facilitators for knowledge transfer and learning processes by examining a cross-departmental collaborative project in the municipal organization. It is based on a R&D collaboration between University West and a Swedish municipality. Design/methodology/approach: To explore the barriers and facilitators, the data collection was made through observation of the project implementation process, as well as 20 interviews with public servants and external actors. To conduct a systematic qualitative-oriented content analysis, the article constructs and applies a theoretical analytical framework consisting of different factors influencing knowledge transfer and learning processes within a municipal organizational setting.
Whites and democracy in South Africa
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023) Piper, Laurence
In this wide-ranging book, Professor Roger Southall interrogates the attitudes ofwhite South Africans in respect of politics, democracy, and race relations in thecountry. The book is organised into three sections: thefirst is historical, focusingon South Africa as a white-dominated settler society that transitioned to a formalnon-racial democracy, and the attitudes of white South Africans in regard to thishistory. The second section deals with white attitudes towards democracy after1994, unpacked in relation to policy, party, and identity concerns. The thirdfocuses on the future of white people in South African politics.There are ample interesting and rich insights in this text, many of which couldhave been further developed in relation to the volume of supporting contextualand theoretical content. Of these, however, two arguments stand out. Thefirst isthat, despite benefitting from a racist settler society historically, ordinary whiteSouth Africans have largely embraced democracy today.
Political identity as temporal collapse: Ethiopian federalism and contested ogaden histories
(African Affairs, 2023) Matshanda, Namhla Thando; Thompson, Daniel K
Since the 1980s, analyses of African political identities have emphasized identity manipulation as a governance tool. In the Somali Horn of Africa, however, politicians’ efforts to reinvent identities confront rigid understandings of genealogical clanship as a key component of identity and political mobilization. This article explores how government efforts to construct a new ‘Ethiopian–Somali’ identity within Ethiopia’s ethnic-federal system are entangled with attempts to reinterpret clan genealogies and histories. We focus on efforts to revise the history of clans within the broader Ogaden Somali clan group and trace the possibilities and limits of these revisions in relation to legacies of colonialism as well as popular understandings of Ogaden identity. Drawing on feldwork and archival research, we show that political struggles over Somalis’ integration with Ethiopia orient around Somali clanship, but that clanship is not a mechanical tool of mobilization, as it is often portrayed. We suggest that genealogical relatedness does not equate to political loyalty, but genealogical discourse provides a framework by which various actors reinterpret contemporary events by collapsing history into the present to imbue clan, ethnic, and national identities with political signifcance.
Implementing accountability and transparency in supranational organisations: a comparison of the European Union and the African Union, 2001-2020
(Journal of African Union Studies (JoAUS), 2021) Baba, Awonke; Mngomezulu, Bheki R.
Despite discernible efforts by African political leaders to serve their people since the demise of colonialism and apartheid, African institutions are generally claimed to be ineffective. This indictment is partly due to their reliance on foreign donors and multilateral institutions for their financial survival. Another reason is failure by African leaders to implement their cogently thought through policy decisions as well as lack of unity which comes from the colonial legacy. The aim of this paper is to interrogate these perceptions using the African Union (AU) as a case study. To achieve this goal, the paper traces the history of the AU and juxtaposes it with the European Union (EU) to establish points of divergence. The paper uses institutionalismas its grounding theory. There is a general tendency in the scholarship to summarily dismiss African institutions without providing a closer analysis of what is at play. This paper aims to fill this lacuna by enumerating factors that weaken the AU as an institution. The key argument is that the lack of transparency and accountability in the AU cannot be understood in a vacuum. Thus, context is deemed critical in the analysis. The paper then proffers ideas on the way forward
African peacekeeping and African integration: Current challenges
(RUDN University, 2020) Gottschalk, Keith
Peacekeeping and economic union are the two most important dimensions of African integration. The first section of this article aims to analyse some current challenges to African peacekeeping, peacemaking, and African integration. The continuing Libyan civil war epitomizes the diplomatic stalemates and military stalemates which form the limits of current African peacekeeping. It exposes the North African Regional Capability and North African Standby Brigade as paper structures which do not exist operationally, and so limit the capacity of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council. The military intervention of states outside Africa can polarize conflicts and escalate civil wars. Africa’s colonial epoch serves as a warning of the potential dangers of foreign military bases in Africa. In parts of West Africa, states sub-contract peacemaking and anti-terrorist operations to unsupervised local militias, which are lawless at best, and commit ethnic killings at worst. African integration fares better in the economic dimension.
Globalization, the latest mode of production in the world system: How regional powers have intensified and expanded capitalism
(Common Ground Research Networks, 2018) Nelson-Richards, Melsome Mordechai; Mutizwa-Mangiza, Shingai
This article examines globalization as a mode of production, tracing it from the pre-capitalist mode in Africa and linking it to the capitalist mode and, finally, the globalization mode. It is intensified and directed by the USA and the European Union through global foreign direct investment, treaties, conventions, and other initiatives by the European Union. It concludes that Asia, free from civil strife for five decades (unlike Africa), and with less stranglehold by capitalism and implementing progressive policies, has fared much better.
Book review: Building a capable state: service delivery in post-apartheid South Africa
(SAGE, 2019) Piper, Laurence
Written by long-standing research practitioners Ian Palmer and Nishendra Moodley, as well as one of South Africa’s leading academic urbanists, Professor Sue Parnell, Building a Capable State tackles the hard question of whether the post-apartheid state is up to delivering rights-based, sustainable development, and more specifically the task of providing local services like water, electricity, roads and housing. Somewhat surprisingly, after 10 years of maladministration and even deliberate sabotage under the Zuma administration, the answer is a qualified yes. Today South Africa’s citizens, especially poor citizens, are substantially better off than they were in 1994.
Power in action: Democracy, citizenship and social justice by Steven Friedman
(2019) Piper, Laurence
Steven Friedman has long been one of South Africa’s premier public intellectuals, making invaluable and thoughtful contributions on the political issues of the day. In Power in Action, he zooms out from everyday issues to reflect on politics and democracy more generally, but it’s a view deeply informed by quotidian struggles and also by the South African experience. At its heart, Friedman’s argument is that contention and agency are what bring political change, and that making democracy real means that the poor and marginalised must confront the state in an organised way and on an ongoing basis. Only by challenging government every day through collective action will ordinary citizens claim the power to influence decisions that affect their daily lives – which for Friedman is the fundamental meaning of democracy.
Political violence in KwaZulu-Natal
(CPLO, 2018) Krelekrele, Thembela
After 25 years of democracy, political violence remains one of the greatest challenges that continuously undermine South Africa’s constitutional state. The province of KwaZuluNatal accounts for the majority of political violence that occurs in South Africa and, especially around election time, fear and anxiety loom as political assassinations increase. The 2016 local government elections brought an end to the single dominant party situation in some major metros and rural municipalities, but the process that preceded the elections was marked by numerous political killings in KwaZulu-Natal.
Response to Prathama Banerjee's sovereignty and ascendancy: south Asian reflections
(Academia, 2018) Piper, Laurence
In this fantastic, wide-ranging but closely argued paper Prathama Banerjee makes the case that the concept of sovereignty is not a universal concept, but rather that it has a particular, substantive meaning developed in Europe over many centuries. Furthermore, this substantive meaning can be contrasted with alternative notions of 'rulership' in South Asia that Banerjee terms variously 'overlordship' or 'ascendancy'. At the heart of this contrast is the degree to which political power is imagined as absolute and unqualified versus accounts where the power of the political leader is imagined as qualified, counterbalanced , networked and nodal. At the moment of colonialism in south Asia, Banerjee concludes, this latter conception of political power was supplanted by the colonial imaginary and reproduced in post-colonial rule, with indigenous traditions forgotten. In developing this contrast between the European conception of sovereignty and the south Asian theory of ascendancy, Banerjee is doing far more than a history of ideas or an exercise in comparative political theory. This is because she is not only analyzing the evolution of ideas down time (both accounts of sovereignty and ascendancy are also arguments about how to understand political practice). Nor is she simply comparing different theories of state or kingly power, although this kind of exercise sits at the heart of this paper. Rather, through reconstructing a version of sovereignty and contrasting it with a new theory of 'ascendant' rule, Banerjee is advocating for 'thinking across traditions' to become 'a composer and assembler of a new theory from different sources and different histories'.
Explain initially the main driving forces of this globalisation process of manufacturing since the 1980’s? Use thereafter a multinational company (MNC) to illustrate what main positive and negative factors a company takes into consideration when deciding where to locate its production facilities?
(Academia, 2017) Ranchod, Mischal
Globalization constitutes the economic shift in companies from domestic (home) to global (host) economic systems. Global trade liberalization facilitates globalization through free-trade, reduced tariffs and quotas with more open economic policies emerging.
A realist perspective of president trumps first un general assembly speech
(Academia, 2017) Ranchod, Mischal
On 19 September 2017, president of the United States of America (USA), Donald Trump, took the podium at the New York-based institution of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). In his speech, Trump provided global leaders and diplomats with a radically different angle to view world politics, creating a divide between the “righteous many” and “wicked few.” He deters away from the mainstream issues of climate change to more realistically humanitarian concerns, where nation-states are currently being impacted and threatened by international or domestic terror.
Why treating water scarcity as a security issue is a bad idea.
(The Conversation Africa, 2018) Pretorius, Joelien
Helen Zille, the Premier of the Western Cape in South Africa, has made two startling claims about the water crisis in the province. She says there will be anarchy when the taps run dry, and that normal policing will be inadequate. She stated this as fact. Neither claim has any basis in truth. But they reflect an “elite panic”: society’s elite’s fear of social disorder. We see this when public officials and the media draw on stereotypes of public panic and disorder, or, in Zille’s words, “anarchy”

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