Since the 1950s David Apter and Carl Rosenberg have been among the leading American scholars in African Studies. In this volume they, along with other major specialists in the field, explore the new configurations of African politics.

With tentative efforts at a revival of democracy now taking place, it seems appropriate to reasses the theoretical debates ad empirical themes that have characterized postwar Sub-Saharan African politics. Focusing on "new realism" that has emerged among Africanists since the dismantling of colonial rule, the essays are presented as a corrective both to the initial euphoria informing African studies and to the later tendency to place blame for all Africa's political and economic difficulties on the receding specter of colonial oppression.