Publication

This paper is a theoretical contribution to the debate about statehood in Sub-Saharan Africa. The author argues that Eurocentric international relations theories fail to make sense of African states. To rectify this, the author proposes a synthesis between the theories of Robert W Cox and Mahmood Mamdani. According to him, adding Cox to Mamdani contextualizes Mamdani's African state in space and time, whereas adding Mamdani to Cox shows how African states respond to outside pressures and in the process (re)constitute the world order by adding inside-out pressure. The author uses the case of Angola to illustrate this theoretical synthesis.