Notes on 'Africa Works: Disorder as a Politcal Instrument' by Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz
1999; James Currey, Indiana University Press: Oxford, Indiana

- Aim of book - to further the understanding of African politics - not thorough analysis/generalization, but theoretical reflection
- "to provide the analytical framework, the instruments, which...can help explain the condition of contemporary Africa" (p.xv)
Much current writing on Africa is weak - "analytically feeble" (p.xv)
- "the acuteness of Africa's crisis is such as to defy the usual parameters of current political analysis" (p.xv)

the goal, therefore, is "to make sense of what appears senseless and arbitary" 

They note that their approach "inevitably involves a degree of generalization" (p.xvi) – their work is not a detailed reference work on Africa, nor a discussion of the prospects of democracy

They argue for 5-dimentional approach: (adapted from p.xvii)
1)	empirically grounded – what appear to be anomalies must not be ignored
2)	use of "universal analytical tools, rather than Africa-specific conceptual instruments" – i.e. an assumption that "political action in Africa can be explained in terms of rational behaviour"
3)	a multi-disciplinary approach is required, to adopt a single approach would be entho-centric in that it assumes African politics is restricted to the "relatively well-defined and self-contained" realm that it does in Western society
4)	their "method is comparative, in that it seeks to provide an analysis of politics which integrates…Africa with the rest of the world" a good test of the effectiveness of this is how understandable it is to non-experts
5)	historical approach, in terms of context and identities

An understanding of historical continuities has two meaning here:
1)	"the present day…disorder in Africa is a crisis of modernity and 2) this crisis of modernity is rooted in the deep history of societies in which it is taking place" (xvii)

they argue that their approach is "purely analytical…not prescriptive or normative" (xvii)

the paradigm of their analysis is called The Political Instrumentalization of Disorder
- definition – "the process by which political actors in Africa seek to maximise their returns on the state of confusion, uncertainty and sometimes even chaos, which characterises most African politics" (p.xviii)

"all African states share a generalized system of patrimonialism and an acute degree of apparent disorder": governmental inefficiency, lack of institutionalisation, disregard for formal rules

disorder does not mean irrational, but "informal, uncodified and unpoliced" (xix), also, uncertainty is important "both a cost and an opportunity" (xix)

like Herbst, Chabal and Daloz restrict their analysis to 'Black Africa' excluding South Africa, and Northern Africa

"analysis of contemporary African politics requires sustained attention to the intricacies in which the present crisis of modernity appears to be worked through the political instrumentalization of disorder" (xx)

attack existing "intellectual sloth" (xx) regarding Africa

book is in 4 parts:
1)	politics, states, society, political elites, in particular "the patrimonial and infra-institutional ways in which power is legitimated" (xx)
2)	how politics is interpreted and affected by culture, identity, violence, religion etc
3)	the 'productivity of economic failure' – analysis of how people use dependence as a resource, "how it is possible for Africans to enrich themselves whilst the continent is failing to develop" (xxi)