John Olushola Magbadelo

How Democracies Die is an explicit account of carefully arranged historical facts about the processes and observed failings of democratic institutions in selected countries of reference, including Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela –an analytical narrative of the anti-democratic values and attitudes that the authors believe are responsible for the eventual liquidation of democratic governance systems in those countries. The impetus behind this very timely publication is the perceived threat that the authors feel, rightly or wrongly, that the Trump Presidency posed for American democracy –an expressed concern that is palpable throughout all the pages of the book.

Africa has been experiencing an appreciable measure of economic growth since 1995. This palpable improvement in the African condition has meant that the Afro-pessimism of the previous decade had to be jettisoned for the more positive narrative captioned as Africa rising. Made in Africa by Carol Newman, et al. is the outcome of a research program on Learning to Compete (L2C) sponsored by the African Development Bank, the Brookings Institution, and the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) with the objective of identifying why there is so little industry in Africa despite the impressive record of economic growth being posted by the continent.

This new text on Political Science is a very advanced intellectual discourse on selected topics in the discipline. It is written by established and renowned scholars who have over the years distinguished themselves as resourceful promoters of the discipline across the globe.

At no other time in the history of the world has the crisis in the global economy become a serious concern as it is currently the case. The promise of globalization at its inception, which was widely expected by both developed and developing countries as the resultant outcome of a process that would promote beneficial interdependence among countries of the world, seems to be ebbing and fizzling away in contemporary times.

Over the years, the term ‘globalization’ has acquired notoriety in all forms of intellectual exchanges in the social sciences and other disciplines. But, its common usage and definitions have ubiquitous references in matters bordering on trade or economic relations among countries of the world.