African democracies are distinguished by the character of their political parties. They are easily labelled as illiberal civilian autocracies. These features coupled with emerging so-called dominant ruling parties, demonstrate the inclination towards a new form of 'modern' democratic authoritarianism. In other words, the ruling dominant parties are appearing to be a 'reincarnation' of the one-party system and military rule that held sway for about three to four decades in Africa (from the 1960s). In the process of this transformation, African ruling parties have been grossly destabilising opposition and perceived dissenters through

Good governance has now become a passion as all governments and regimes appropriate and/or misappropriate the term for development or populist reasons. However, democratic good governance is the catalyst for development. The idea of reinventing government is necessary in order to confront the dynamics and challenges of development in the era of globalisation. This is the main thrust of this review article. The article reviews three major books, the focus of which provides analytical insight towards reinventing government for achieving the MDGs and other development agenda. The books argue that to redesign and reinvent governments for development, attributes of democratic good governance must be articulated, localised and contextualised based on individual country's historical-political experiences and socio-economic capabilities.

Political parties are the custodians of democracy. Following the return of democracy to Africa during the 'third' and 'fourth' waves, political parties are undergoing structural changes (from military and one-party authoritarianism to liberal multiparty systems) for the development of sustainable democracy. This paper is not about institutionalised political parties or party systems, it is about understanding the historical development of political parties and their transformational nature in relation to the development of democracy in Africa. The paper therefore identifies some critical challenges that are threatening the institutionalisation process of the parties. These include party funding and finance, party ideology, the dominant-party syndrome, ineffective civil society opposition and problems of fragile electoral institutions. The paper argues that though these problems are part of the wider socio-political and economic dilemmas inherent in Africa they are more pervasive and have a devastating affect on political parties as instruments of modern representative democracy. The paper thus contends that, given the main concerns and attributes of good governance, it is the only panacea that can wholly address the institutional problems of political parties as well as other structural and institutional obstacles to the development of sustainable democracy in Africa. Good governance is presumed here to be the ideal and pragmatic solution to such institutional obstacles.

The upsurge of democracy during the third and fourth waves democratic epochs has led to a "proliferation of alternative conceptual forms…involving democracy 'with adjectives'" (Collier and Levitsky, 1997:430). Clientele democracy, though similar with neopatrimonial democracy, is distinguished in both concept and substance. At the heart of the development of different democracy are the nature and character of political parties. The character of political parties in turn is highly influenced by the pattern of party funding, which accordingly determines the system of candidate selection and nomination and the overall organisation of political parties. This paper argues that political parties as conditio sine qua non to modern democracy significantly contribute to the development of "clientele" democracy in Nigeria. This is evident in the nature of political party funding and candidate selection (both for party offices and general elections). In this context, this paper examines the various aspects of political party funding and strategies for candidate selection in Nigeria. The paper contends that the system of party funding and candidates' selection in the country are reconstructing a new form of democracy that can arguably be called "clientele" democracy, in which godfatherism is the defining political technique of political party activities. The godfathers, in addition to serving as major party funders, also fully control their political terrain, through which they control both parties and the electorates. The paper argues that this practice is undermining political party institutionalisation in Nigeria.

The Polity Press, Bristol, 2007, xvii-317pp., ISBN: 978 1 86134 907 1, £70.00 (hb).Public policy analysis is a distinct field of scientific study of policies. It is a research enterprise shared by universities, think-tanks, advocacy groups, NGOs and governmental institutions. This coupled with it being multi-disciplinary make research and theorising distinctively unique and difficult. The increasing development interventions further compounded the field and increased the need for new scientific multi-purpose instrument(s) of explaining and analysing public policies for increasing knowledge and improving the quality of public services. This book is a response, as the authors acknowledged, to the current 'myriad of challenges facing public sector actors'. The book contains 12 chapters, divided into three parts.Part I overviews different schools of policy analysis and identified their major shortcomings. Part II deals with issues of concept of public policy, policy actors, policy resources that actors mobilise in the formulation and development of policies, and institutional designs influencing the activities of policy actors. These issues are sine quo non for excellent and comprehensive formulation, implementation and/or evaluation of public policy.Part III presents the 'new' analytical framework of public policy analysis. Using theoretical and empirical evidence from France, Switzerland and the UK and from variety of public sectors disaggregates the major components of the model. Scholarly analysis of all relevant components of public policy and with divergent theoretical perspectives distinguished the framework from earlier models of policy analysis. The strength of the model lies in its integrative nature, and essentially in serving as a manual for all members of policy community.The central idea in any public policy analysis studies is understanding public policy itself. Thus Knoepfel et al. stress that while the conceptualisation of a problem is only public when it is on political agenda, the political agenda setting is dynamic and characterised by competition and change. Policy programming is an important stage of policy analysis and it can only be complete when political-administrative arrangement (PAA) and political-administrative programme (PAP) are identifiable. This is because PAP incorporates both public and private policy actors. Policy implementation is a crucial stage in public policy cycle. They emphasised that this is the determining stage of success and/or failure of a policy. Even though this is a laudable claim, however, the failure or success of a policy may not be judged only on the basis of the policy implementation stage. The logical connections between and among stages of policy cycle and differentiated elements of each stage that are linked to other elements of other stages of policy cycle demonstrate that a failure of a policy cannot be determined and explained by a single stage or element.Having analysed the criticality of policy implementation stage, Knoepfel et al. argue that in order ...