Abstract
This volume examines the design and impact of courts in African federal systems
from a comparative perspective.
Recent developments indicate that the previously stymied idea of federalism
is now being revived in the constitutional arrangements of several African countries.
A number of them jumped on the bandwagon of federalism in the early 1990s
because it came to be seen as a means to facilitate development, to counter the
concentration of power in a single governmental actor and to manage communal
tensions. An important part of the move toward federalism is the establishment
of courts that are empowered to umpire intergovernmental disputes. This edited
volume brings together contributions that first discuss questions of design by
focusing, in particular, on the organization of the judiciary and the appointment
of judges in African federal systems. They then examine whether courts have had
a rather centralizing or decentralizing impact on the operation of African federal
systems.
The book will be of interest to researchers and policy-makers in the areas of
comparative constitutional law and comparative politics.