Nigerian society and political behavior at all levels usually is shaped by patronage and clientage networks. Politically, there are few genuinely independent voters, in the sense that voters in, say, Vermont or Switzerland are completely free to vote for whomever they like. Clients usually vote as their patrons wish, and nearly everybody is both a patron and a client, from the top of society to rag pickers at the Lagos dump. 

The alarums and excursions over South Africa’s economy and economic policy do not stop. December saw the discreditable episode of President Jacob Zuma’s hiring and firing multiple ministers of financ…

Somehow, FISA has become a four-letter word. In the first part of a two-part series on the current debates surrounding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, former General Counsel of the Nationa…

Although the Vietnam War, including the “sideshow” war in Cambodia, has been the subject of thousands of books, post-war Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos have gotten relatively little treatment from Weste…