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DEVELOPMENT, POLITICS, AND THE CENTRALIZATION OF STATE POWER IN LESOTHO, 1960–75*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2014

John Aerni-Flessner
John Aerni-Flessner*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Abstract

The rhetoric of development served as a language for Sotho politicians from 1960–70 to debate the meanings of political participation. The relative paucity of aid in this period gave outsized importance to small projects run in rural villages, and stood in stark contrast to the period from the mid-1970s onwards when aid became an ‘anti-politics machine’ that worked to undermine national sovereignty. Examination of the democratic period in Lesotho from 1966–70 helps explain the process by which newly independent states gave up some of their recently won sovereignty, and how a turn to authoritarianism helped contribute to this process.

Keywords

LesothoSouthern Africapostcolonialdevelopmentpolitical culture
Type
Economics and Governance
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , November 2014 , pp. 401 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Funding for this research was provided in part by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship program, the SUNY Cortland History Department, the International Seminar on Decolonization, and a grant from the Faculty Research Program at SUNY Cortland. Previous versions of this article were presented at the African Studies Association Meeting and the North Eastern Workshop on Southern Africa, as well as the 2013 International Seminar on Decolonization in Washington, DC. This article is stronger for all the feedback in these venues, as well as for the close read by the anonymous reviewers of The Journal of African History. Author's email: aernifl1@msu.edu

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108 Khaketla, Lesotho 1970, 189.