Neo-Liberal Globalization, the State and Conflicts: Some Remarks on Sub- Sahara Africa
This article interrogated, in theoretical cum descriptive fashion, the linkage(s) between neo-liberal globalization, the state, the arena of politics and conflicts, using sub-Sahara Africa as a research backdrop. Drawing from secondary data sourced mainly from textbooks and journals; and leaning on dependency theoretical platform, it found out that neo- liberal globalization has affected states in the global system differentially. While the developed states of the north had developed various strategies to deal with the enigma and had even made huge success of it, the dependent, post-colonial states in Africa have been at the mercies of this technologically driven post- cold war phenomenon. Merciless, it argues that globalization has dented the integrity of these states in manner that made them to lose legitimacy in the eyes of citizens under their confines. The outcome of such state of affairs was the relocation of legitimacy from them to the sub-state movements, which, in most cases, have now become the new sites of conflicts in the region. The article recommended two action areas for reversing the trends. First, at the national level, the state, the epicentre of the socio-economic space, needs to be reconstituted. It is expected that a genuinuely democratic nation-states could serve as building blocks for continental integration. Second, sub-Sahara African states must move the integration process beyond rhetoric.
