This book has grown out of a concern that ethnic politics was a primary factor shaping the success or failure of the renewed efforts at democratic development and political reform that emerged in Africa in the 1980s. The recognition of ethnic differences and the amelioration of ethnic conflicts through both institutional reform and policy initiatives appeared to be crucial to the reconstruction of African states and the establishment of stable and enduring democratic processes. At the same time, it was equally apparent that the ethnic communities of Africa were not atavistic survivals of a pre-modern world, but dynamic social creations of the colonial and post-colonial eras in which the state played an important and often determining role in the definition and development of ethnic communities and identities. The intimate embrace of ethnicity and the state raised a host of both empirical and normative questions regarding the effectiveness and legitimacy of varying institutional means for accommodating or overcoming ethnic diversity; the relationship between nation-building and assimilation or multi-cultural recognition; how to deal with ethno-regional differentiation due to uneven socio-economic development; and the proper relationship between individual and collective rights in liberal democratic theory and practice. There were no obvious answers to either the practical or the normative concerns about what both worked and should work in the diverse sociocultural and political contexts of African states.

To address these concerns we decided to assemble a group of scholars who approached the issues from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives including history, law, sociology, anthropology and philosophy as well as political science. We were particularly interested in bringing political theorists focused on the normative issues of rights and democratic principles, and political scientists specializing in the comparative analysis of institutional systems like federalism, together with Africanists concerned with the empirical analysis of the African experience of ethnic politics and democratization.