deeper than official statistics reflect. Variation in regulation and prices creates business opportunities, allowing people to make a living by avoiding levies. These demand constant adjustment to changing environment. The tactical agency survives by constantly manipulating events to turn them into opportunities. Since they have no firm or fixed power base, they are able adapt with speed and flexibility that ensures life and livelihoods. Rather than moving in seamless world, most people move are within a strata and are unable to move beyond the first tier. They do not constitute the nodal points but acting out their agency from a position of subordination. The nodal points are figures of local authority that young miner, for example, must relate to in the diamond fields of Sierra Leone. Their forms differ but these big men constitute the nodal points in the informal network of governance. They are ambiguous and replicate the logic of being outside yet belonging and establish relationships of domination and subordination as people strive to connect to them. Africa, for the author, is a continent of war and conflict but with some notable exceptions they are internal. African states rarely go to war against each other. Africa is a continent of civil war, the majority of these tend to start at the borderlands and rebel movements often tend to fragment into several armed groups. Conflicts in DRC, Mali, Uganda, Liberia and Sierra Leone started at the borderland. Hence understanding them may be able to shed light on paradox of African conflict. The book is based on extensive field work and takes a people centric approach to understand the crisis of African state. It does so by analysing evolving socio economic patterns in the borderlands. While this does help to understand persistence of endemic conflicts and the role of natural resources play but it ignores many other factors. It should be useful reading to scholars studying endemic nature of conflicts and the response of Africa states.

中文翻译：

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非洲民主：成功，失败与政治改革的斗争

比官方统计数据更深刻。法规和价格的变化创造了商机，使人们可以避免征税来谋生。这些要求不断适应不断变化的环境。战术机构通过不断操纵事件以将其转化为机会而得以生存。由于他们没有固定的或固定的权力基础，因此他们能够以快速和灵活的方式适应生活和生计。大多数人不是在无缝世界中移动，而是在一个阶层中移动并且无法移动到第一层之外。它们不构成节点，而是从属地位发挥作用。节点是塞拉利昂钻石田中年轻矿工必须与之相关的地方政府人物。它们的形式不同，但是这些大人物构成了非正式治理网络中的节点。它们是模棱两可的，并复制了在外界但仍在归属中的逻辑，并在人们努力与他人建立联系时建立起统治和从属关系。对于作者来说，非洲是一个充满战争和冲突的大陆，但除了一些明显的例外，它们是内部的。非洲国家很少互相争斗。非洲是内战大陆，其中大多数往往始于边境地区，叛乱运动往往趋于分裂为几个武装团体。刚果民主共和国，马里，乌干达，利比里亚和塞拉利昂的冲突始于边境地区。因此，了解他们也许能够阐明非洲冲突的悖论。该书以广泛的实地调查为基础，并采取以人为本的方法来理解非洲国家的危机。通过分析边境地区不断发展的社会经济模式来做到这一点。尽管这确实有助于了解地方性冲突的持久性和自然资源的作用，但它忽略了许多其他因素。对于研究冲突的地方性和非洲国家的反应的学者来说，这应该是有用的读物​​。