3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Explaining East Africa’s interstate wars, 1977-2000: towards a typological theory?(2020) Ndzendze, BhasoThis dissertation tested the causal relevance of the ‘democratic peace thesis’, ‘economic interdependence’, and the ‘hegemonic stability theory’ to cases of interstate conflict in East Africa: the Ogaden War, 1977-1978; the Uganda-Tanzania War, 1978-1979; and the Eritrea-Ethiopia War, 1998-2000. Quantitative economic and military data as well as archival materials, journal articles, and contemporaneous sources on political history were utilised along with interviews with former mediators, government officials and experts on the societies and economies of East Africa in the making of these determinations and reaching of the respective conclusions. Findings indicate that the democratic peace thesis has an imperfect causal relevance with the interstate conflicts that took place between 1977 and1997. Two of the three cases(Somalia and Uganda)appear to be consistent with the literature which indicate a greater probability of power loss for an authoritarian regime upon losing a war. The dissertation therefore closed a gap by indicating and then clarifying issues within the present literature on the democratic peace thesis; before these, it was not cognizant of the role of what we term here as the institutional legitimacy-information asymmetry problem across regimes in leading up to an outbreak of conflict. With regards to the economic interdependence thesis, the dissertation also found causal validity. Overall, the share of Ethiopia in Somalia’s exports was insignificant, at less than 0.018% (the high mark reached in 1975) at any given point. This thus demonstrates a lack of opportunity cost for Somalia in initiating a war with Ethiopia. As this case demonstrates, while Somalia was an exporting nation prior to the war, these exports were declining in the years leading up to the war and they had already had a minimal share within its total GDP. Similarly, we find that trade between Tanzania and Uganda started to increase gradually soon after independence but subsequently declined after the Idi Amin coup of 1971. Tanzanian people also showed a higher preference for Western and Tanzanian-made products first over East African ones, showing that the literature needs to be cognizant of populations as both a political audience (as is done in the democratic peace thesis) as well as consumers whose procurement choices determine the level of interdependence, or lack thereof. Finally, we noted that Eritrea’s new currency, the Nakfa, made trade with Ethiopia virtually impossible; it also made the border, hitherto managed and handled at the level of the local governments, salient as free movement of goods was now made a matter of dispute. The diversion of exports away from Massawa and Assab to Djibouti further made retaliation against Eritrea less costly for Ethiopia.The pre-war years also coincided with diversification of Eritrean export markets, but overall decline in their aggregate values, further eliminating any opportunity cost for disrupting the status quo. A test of the hegemonic stability theory found it to be congruent with the cases as well. Overall, the findings would appear to be consistent with the hypothesis; the comparative lowness of the Kenyan military budget compared with growths in those of belligerent states in the region appear to have been correlated with interstate conflict outbreaks. This also explains Kenya’s lack of capacity to mitigate conflicts even after they had broken out. Because of Kenya’s proactiveness, however, the US did limit its arms supplies to Somalia, as these could hypothetically have been redirected towards Kenya, against whom Somalia had irredentist claims over the Northern Frontier District. Finding all three theories to be causally relevant, the dissertation thereafter proposes a typological theory by sequencing all variables accordingly to account for the region’s interstate warsItem An opportunity cost Analysis of the Africa-One China Nexus, 2001-2016(2018) Ndzendze, BhasoUnlike in previous timeframes, between 2000 and 2016 no African state switched its recognition from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the Republic of China/Taiwan (ROC); but six switched in the opposite direction. Why was this the case? This thesis investigated the extent to which there was an opportunity cost for those African states (Liberia, Chad, Senegal, Gambia, Malawi, and São Tomé and Príncipe) in recognising the ROC as the “one China” over the People’s Republic of China in the period between 2001 and their respective year of switching, which in turn could explain the direction of the switches. In this thesis, opportunity cost, through time series and multiple comparative trade analyses, was operationalised as a relative economic loss (as measured through relative trade volumes, investment and aid) incurred that could have otherwise been avoided or compensated for by recognising the PRC over the ROC as the One China. The thesis found that in the timeframe studied, on average after three years, five out of six African countries (with the exception of São Tomé and Príncipe) that had previously recognised the ROC saw exponentially increased trade volumes with the PRC once they affected a switch in recognition from the ROC to the PRC (some saw this sooner). This is due to a number of factors; recognising the PRC is concomitant with entering into politically-enhanced bilateral economic relations at the behest of the PRC, at once a centralised state heavily involved in outward investments (thought the CDB and the EximBank) and the world’s second-largest economy. Those states which still recognise the ROC (presently only Burkina Faso and Swaziland) can be said to still do so in large part due to the fact that there has been a continual culling of allies and therefore a decrease in an “aid burden” on the comparatively economically stagnant ROC, since these six states have switched their recognition as well as being the recipients of “special attention” from the ROC government, not otherwise granted to the former allies. Thus while there can be said to be an opportunity cost, it can also be said to be bidirectional; without the one China problem, there would be, all other things being equal, no entities which would be highly motivated to dole out costly aid (at an opportunity cost) in the process of “dollar diplomacy”, especially since Taiwanese aid to its allies has been found in the thesis to increase, at least immediately, after an ally has switched towards the PRC. In other words, the enhanced trade and aid-giving are a means to an end rather than ends in themselves – were the one China issue resolved, there would be marginally fewer motivations for their continuation outside of commercial aims. This was seen, for example, during the 2008-2015 “diplomatic truce,” during which the PRC and the ROC experienced a thaw in their relations and temporarily seemed to be approaching rapprochement, as indicated by the signing of the PRC-ROC Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, and at the same time did not attempt to lure each other’s allies with prospectively higher financial gains for so doing. In that sense, the opportunity cost is clearly there for both the PRC and the ROC as well as for African states as a result. This falls within, as well as practically vindicates, structural realist theorists such as Evera (1999) and Mearsheimer (2001) who assert that states, big and small, are rational agents (seeking to minimise costs and expand benefits), as well as relative gains-increasing actors.