Kenya's March 2013 elections ushered in a popular system of devolved government that represented the country's biggest political transformation since independence. Yet within months there were public calls for a referendum to significantly revise the new arrangements. This article analyses the campaign that was led by the newly elected governors in order to understand the ongoing disputes over the introduction of decentralisation in Kenya, and what they tell us about the potential for devolution to check the power of central government and to diffuse political and ethnic tensions. Drawing on Putnam's theory of two-level games, we suggest that Kenya's new governors have proved willing and capable of acting in concert to protect their own positions because the pressure that governors are placed under at the local level to defend county interests has made it politically dangerous for them to be co-opted by the centre. As a result, the Kenyan experience cannot be read as a case of ‘recentralisation’ by the national government, or as one of the capture of sub-national units by ‘local elites’ or ‘notables’. Rather, decentralisation in Kenya has generated a political system with a more robust set of checks and balances, but at the expense of fostering a new set of local controversies that have the potential to exacerbate corruption and fuel local ethnic tensions in some parts of the country.

It is often assumed that political parties in Africa have only weak formal structures and are instead dominated by informal, personalised networks. This paper seeks to challenge this view by presenting a much more nuanced picture of intra-party dynamics. Based on unique survey data from Ghana, it is shown how formal and informal party structures co-exist and interact at the national and constituency level. Because informal relationships are not directly observable and difficult to study, the paper employs a social network approach to map the personal interactions between the Members of the 6th Parliament of Ghana and their respective parties. It is found that the local party organisation plays a strong role in both of the major parties NDC (National Democratic Congress) and NPP (New Patriotic Party). There are, however, also differences between the parties. At the national level, the NDC is strongly centralised and dominated by its national executives. The NPP, in contrast, has an informal power center located in the Ashanti Region. Ethno-regional factions play only a minor role in both parties. By demonstrating that the relative importance of informal relations varies even between parties in the same country, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the variation in party organisation across Africa.

Since mid-December 2013, thousands of people have been killed in armed conflict in South Sudan. The fighting is entrenched in a power struggle between the main political contenders ahead of elections which were scheduled for 2015. This article examines the violence in South Sudan since the North–South war ended with a focus on the consequences of the introduction of electoral politics. Our research contributes to the literature on state-building and peace-building in war-torn societies, by exploring how the extreme levels of violence are linked to three groups of factors. First, the stakes involved in being part of the government are extremely high, since it is the only way to secure political and economic influence. Second, the actors involved in political life are dominated by individuals who held positions within the rebel groups, which increases the risk of political differences turning violent. Third, the institutions important for a legitimate electoral process, and which work to prevent violence, are weak or non-existent.

The transformation of the South African Public Service into a bureaucracy that is broadly representative of the population is one of the most significant public sector reforms to occur since the end of apartheid. Grounded in the theory of representative bureaucracy, this study examines demographic representation in the South African Public Service and how it impacts the organisational effectiveness of national departments. The empirical analysis is based on longitudinal data from 60 national departments from 2006 to 2013. The findings show that as these organisations become more representative by hiring a higher per cent of Africans, of Coloureds, and of Indians, they achieve a higher per cent of goals. The findings for gender representation are more mixed and show that female representation among most racial groups is unrelated to organisational effectiveness.

Are South African chiefs rural and peri-urban despots or have they transformed to legitimate representatives of local interests in the post-apartheid era? This article argues that the legitimacy of chieftaincy in KwaZulu-Natal is not only based on constitutional and legal recognition, but that chieftaincy may rely on different forms of ‘basic legitimacy’. Chieftaincy is neither despotic nor civil but occupies an intermediary position between local citizens and the state. This junction position provides chiefs with specific opportunities to gain power but also requires a navigation between cooperation and conflict in the relationship with the ANC and the state.

What are the reasons for the extraordinary dynamism of many African border regions? Are there specificities to African borderlands? The article provides answers to these questions by analysing the historical development of African state borders’ social and economic relevance. It presents a typology of cross-border trade in Africa, differentiating trade across the ‘green’ border of bush paths and villages, the ‘grey’ border of roads, railways and border towns, and the ‘blue’ border of transport corridors to oceans and airports. The three groups of actors associated with these types of trade have competing visions of the ideal border regime, to which many dynamics in African cross-border politics can be traced back. The article contributes to African studies by analysing diverging political and economic developments in African countries through the lens of the border, and to border theory by distilling general features of borders and borderlands from African case studies.