Gradualist Lawfare, Urban Politics, and Local Power in Angola

Angola is among a handful of African countries where local elections are yet to materialize. Gradualist Lawfare, Urban Politics, and Local Power in Angola situates the persistent deferral of local elections in Angola within wider debates around the contested nature of local government in African cities. Advancing the notion of 'gradualist lawfare', this book examines how recurrent legal changes have often been insincere when it comes to the promise of local elections, instead creating the conditions for their perpetual postponement. Following more than a decade of in-depth field work, Croese examines the various uses and effects of gradualist lawfare through an ethnographic study of the workings of urban neighbourhood-level committees in the Angolan capital of Luanda. The study of these committees offers the reader useful insights into the operations of a wider category of state-sanctioned 'local power' that allows authoritarian regimes to resist the effective devolution of political power. By examining the use of gradualist lawfare in the making and unmaking of local power, this book bridges the literature on autocratic legalism with contributions from socio-legal and urban studies, shedding a new light on the global rise of authoritarian lawmaking in cities and the politics and potential of efforts to (re)claim local power from below. Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, gender and political representation, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, comparative political thought, and the nature of the continent's engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The focus of the series is on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest. Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman (University of Birmingham), Peace Medie (University of Bristol), and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (Sciences Po, Paris).

Sylvia Croese is Assistant Professor in the Department of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She was previously based in South Africa, where she remains a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand and a Research Associate with the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. Her work examines the intersection of urban politics, planning and governance in African cities.