2023 Research Partnerships Grant winners
This project, which is entitled “Cultural Pluralism, Community Federalism, and the Form of the State in Cameroon,” will receive $18,488 from the Centennial Center to study the prospects of “community federalism” in Cameroon. Brewing tensions culminating in the outburst of violence in the two Anglophone regions of Cameroon, namely the North-West and the South-West, (with 6 000 deaths and more than 1 million displaced since 2016) have rekindled an old debate on the form of the State. This crisis has, by and large, particularly revived the issue of managing cultural diversity in a Cameroonian society that is deeply multicultural, or at the very least, multiethnic. Several trends have so far emerged from this issue. While some advocate for a return to a federal form comprised of two States (Anglophone and Francophone), others favor the implementation of a broader federalism making each of the ten regions of Cameroon a federal State. A number of actors have sought ways to reinforce the powers of the central government and reject federalism as a fit-all solution to issues plaguing the Cameroonian Postcolonial State. Another category of actors, strongly opposed to any type federal government and to a more centralized State, seeks to rest the construction of the State of Cameroon on the multiple ethnic communities that currently constitute the country by proposing the implementation of what they term community federalism, transforming each community into a federal state.
The present project, informed by these approaches and particularly by the latter, purports to explore this link between cultural pluralism and the form of the state in postcolonial Cameroon in relation to the issue of community federalism. It intends to answer the question of whether the sociological complexity of Cameroon, infused with a great deal of ethnotribal and ethnolinguistic diversity, can actually allow for the implementation of federalism shaped by communitarianism and what would be its challenges with regard to the culture of peace, understood as a positive, dynamic and participative process fostering dialogue among communities. By giving a “voice” to the actors, the aim will be to understand the “social processes” based on the experiences of these actors.
The project is led by Edmond VII Mballa Elanga, an Associate Professor at the University of Douala, who is joined by a team of seven other academics and civil society leaders in Cameroon. The Research Partnerships on Critical Partnerships on Critical Issues program is an initiative of the APSA Presidential Task Force on New Partnerships. The Task Force’s work aims to deepen ties among political scientists, between political science and the public, and to strengthen the contributions of political science to the public good. Research Partnerships on Critical Issues grants are made possible thanks to the generous support of the Ivywood Foundation.
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