Recent Books
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Africa
Nicolas van de Walle
Legislative Development in Africa: Politics
and Postcolonial Legacies
BY KEN OCHIENG’ OPALO.
Cambridge University Press, 2019, 290 pp.T
his ¥ne study o the role that
African legislatures play in
promoting democracy and govern-
ment accountability deserves to be widely
read. Opalo’s well-informed general
history o the development o legislatures
in the region shows how the origins o
parliaments in the waning days o
colonial rule—as well as their evolution
in the ensuing postcolonial authoritarian
regimes—ensured their institutional
weaknesses relative to the executive
branch, an imbalance that continues in
some countries. Two well-researched case
studies in Kenya and Zambia oer
contrasting examples o how an authori-
tarian past can produce dierent kinds o
legislatures. In Kenya, the executive
branch o the colonial and early postcolo-
nial governments centralized power,
granting the legislature only a modicum
o procedural autonomy. But in the
democratic era, the legislature has
emerged as a relatively strong institution;
being left to its own devices allowed it to
develop organically over time. In Zam-
bia, on the other hand, the regime micro-
managed the legislature and thus pre-
vented it from developing its own
mechanisms o accommodation and
compromise. The result in Zambia, Opalo
argues, is a much weaker institution.half-mile-long, 400-foot-wide Kwang-
bok Street is lined with 30- to 42-story
residential towers, each built on one o
seven designs. Every edi¥ce, every cluster
o buildings, and the city plan as a whole
make ideological statements o¤ fealty to
the leader, national power, and ultra-
modernity. Vast spaces and long vistas
overwhelm the visitor’s sense o individu-
ality. Pyongyang is designed as a people’s
paradise—one with mostly empty streets.
China and Japan: Facing History
BY EZRA F. VOGEL. Harvard
University Press, 2019, 536 pp.
Vogel uses the powerful lens o the past
to frame contemporary Chinese-Japanese
relations. He does not begin with the
horrors o World War II; instead, he
takes the reader back over 1,500 years
to examine the contentious dynamics
that shaped how these two Asian giants
view each other. With scholarly care
and an eye on contemporary policy,
Vogel suggests that over the centuries—
across both the imperial and the mod-
ern eras—friction has always dominated
their relations. China and Japan are
now rich, powerful societies that were
transformed both by Western imperial-
ism and by the ravages o war in the
twentieth century. But they have
struggled to overcome past hostilities,
in particular the memory o the Japa-
nese invasion o China between 1937
and 1945. Vogel insists that the Chinese
must better understand Japan’s unique
strategic challenges and that the Japa-
nese must better address China’s desire
to right past wrongs. Asia’s future
depends on their ability to build a more
forgiving relationship.
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