Subnationalism in Africa: Ethnicity, Alliances, and Politics. By Joshua B. Forrest. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004. 279p. $55.00.

Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from states that are too weak to deliver services or even basic order to their peoples. Things really are falling apart, and challenged by a wide variety of locally based resistance movements or popular indifference, control by the center cannot hold. Joshua Forrest, author of solid monographs on Guine-Bissao and Namibia, takes on the challenge of describing and explaining the whole “process of political mobilization by regionally-based forces” (p. 1) that defy central authority, and for which he coins the term “subnationalism.” By this he includes a wide panoply of movements seeking autonomy, redress for grievances, secession, revenge, or old-fashioned plunder, so long as they are based on a population or region that is a subset of the juridical nation.