"Late-century Africa has oversupplied civil war," said Robert Bates, the recipient of this year's Peter and Frances Duignan Fellowship at the Hoover Institution. In his lecture "When Things Fell Apart: Politics and Conflict in Late-Century Africa" on January 26, Bates discussed the causes of political disorder in Africa, which he attributed, in part, to economic decline, militarization of society, and insecure elites who abandoned their people.
Bates is the Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard University. Since 1968, he has worked in Zambia, the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Colombia, and Brazil. Bates has focused much of his work on East and West Africa and has published widely on issues of public policy, agricultural policy, and economic policy reform in these regions.
The fellowship, named for Hoover senior fellow emeritus Peter J. Duignan and his wife, Frances, is available to visiting scholars who have distinguished themselves through their research and writing about Africa, the Middle East, and Western Europe; all are areas on which Duignan focused during his career at the Hoover Institution.
