Constitution-writing and post-independence parliamentary organization in African nations after 1960.

The International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions is recognized as an Affiliated Society with the American Historical Association. Its scholars have participated in AHA annual meetings since 2020.

The International Commission was founded in Lausanne in 1936 and has been continuously active throughout the world since 1945. The International Commission publishes the Journal of Parliaments, Estates and Representation three times a year.  Please see www.ichrpi.info/ for further information regarding the history of the organization and its purposes. The following two topics have been designed to solicit the interest of scholars who work in the areas of political and parliamentary history. The AHA deadline to submit panel participants for these two panels is 15 February 2023. The 2024 annual meeting of the AHA will take place in San Francisco. For further details on this point see www.historians.org/annual-meeting/future-meetings. Please note: it is the intention of the International Commission to include papers that the AHA does not accept in the International Commission panels it will host at San Francisco during the AHA 2024 annual meeting. Put another way, if you propose to the AHA via the International Commission and the AHA rejects the panel, the International Commission will – in all likelihood – accept the panel. So there’s little ‘if’ as in ‘if you’re going to San Francisco’ … We’ll see you there … one way or the other.

Please contact Dr. Peter J. Aschenbrenner, National Convenor (US) for further information. We also welcome the interest of scholars wishing to serve as panel chairs and/or commentators.  

Topic:

CFP: Constitution-writing and post-independence parliamentary organization in African nations after 1960.

Since 1960 48 nations in Africa have achieved independence. This is the largest number of nation-state foundings (in a comparable interval) in world history. War is a well-accepted driver of state-building; many of these foundings were accompanied by or followed by armed conflict. What was the role of parliamentary assemblies when African nations were founded in this interval?  Given the need to establish a monopoly on violence as consolidation of African nations went forward, what contribution did parliamentary assemblies make in pacification measures that enabled nation-building?