| Summary: | This thesis has been pre-occupied with four major interconnected projects. The first
of these was a search for an understanding of the nature of the crisis of structural legitimacy
that currently afflicts the fragmented post-colonial African state, an enquiry that examines
the nature of the very phenomena that the law has sought to regulate. The second was to
understand the nature, and social effects, of the various doctrinal attitudes historically
exhibited by international law and institutions toward the phenomenon of "socio-cultural
fragmentation within established states". In this respect, I have sought to understand the ways
in which certain doctrines of international law and institutions have provided powerful
arguments, justifications or excuses for those states that have deemed it necessary to attempt
to forge coercively, both a sense of common citizenship, and an ethos of national coherence,
among their various component sub-state groups. The third was to chart the ongoing
normative and factual transformation of the traditional approaches that international law and
institutions have adopted toward that problem, and thereby map the extent to which these
institutions have taken advantage of such innovations, enabling them to actually contribute
to the effort to prevent and/or reduce the incidence of internecine strife in specific African
contexts. And the last was to recommend a way forward that is guided by the conclusions
of the thesis: a way in which these institution-driven transformations can be encouraged and
consolidated in the specific context of African states. For purposes of brevity and the
imperative need for focus, these enquiries have been conducted in the specific but somewhat
allegorical context of Africa. It is hoped, however, that even this largely Africa-specific
analysis has contributed to the advancement of knowledge regarding the general question of
the relationship among the doctrines of international law, the activities of multilateral
institutions, and the management of the problems of socio-cultural fragmentation and
internecine strife within established states. === Law, Peter A. Allard School of === Graduate
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