Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2011
Department 1
Africana Studies
Department 2
History
Abstract
Toward the end of the first decade after the decolonization of most African countries, there emerged a scholarly polemic about the weight of bureaucratic politics in the making of foreign policy in the Third World. A mirror of the reigning modernization paradigm that informed most postwar area studies and social sciences, the discussion unintentionally indexed the narcissism of a hegemonic discourse on political development and statecraft. Graham Allison and Morton Halperin—the original proponents of the bureaucratic model—implied in their largely U.S.-centric model that such a paradigm was not applicable to non-industrialized countries since the newly decolonized countries, for the most part, lacked the institutional/organizational base and political tradition needed to conduct a modern foreign policy. Félix Houphouët- Boigny—leader of the newly independent Ivory Coast—was hardly mentioned in the scholarly debates on the bureaucratic model. Yet one can use the conjuncture of his visit to the United States in May 1962 to explore the arguments developed by the protagonists in the polemic that ensued the publication of the Allison-Halperin theory.
Copyright Note
This is the author's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Recommended Citation
Bamba, Abou B. “At the Edge of the Modern? Diplomacy, Public Relations, and Media Practices during Houphouët-Boigny’s 1962 Visit to the U.S.” Diplomacy & Statecraft 22.2 (Summer 2011): 219-238. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2011.576528
Required Publisher's Statement
This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article whose final and definitive form, the Version of Record, has been published in the Diplomacy & Statecraft © Taylor & Francis, available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09592296.2011.576528ticle.