Political Science as an Obstacle to Understanding the Problem of the State and Political Violence in Africa

Abstract

by Jeffrey Herbst
Princeton University Press, 296 pp.,
$21.95, ISBN 0691010285
The Graves Are Not Yet Full
by Bill Berkeley
Basic Books, 2002, 320 pp., $17.00,
ISBN 0465006426

Some thirty-two years ago, Albert O. Hirschman published an article in the journal World Politics entitled “The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Our Understanding”.1 In that article, he inveighed against what he called “the mindless use of paradigms” in Latin America by North American scholars who imagined that with the use of a single sharp edged analytical model, they could unlock the door to the mystery of underdevelopment in Latin America. By way of illustration, he analysed what were then two newly published books on Latin America: John Womack’s now classic book, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York, Alfred Knopf, 1968), and James L. Payne’s Conflict in Colombia (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968).