an engaging sight: a troupe of dancers displaying pictures of the guests and their hosts on their dresses. These women bear likenesses of Senegal's Leopold Sedar Senghor (wearing glasses), Ivorian president Felix Houphouet-Boigny, and their wives.
Of all of Black Africa's 40-odd nations, none is more out of step than the Ivory Coast. All five of its West African neighbors, for example, are poor, and four are military-ruled; the Ivorians can claim post- colonial Africa's chief economic "miracle"...
eign leaders who visit the Ivory Coast may be greeted in Abidjan by an engaging sight: a troupe of dancers displaying pictures of the guests and their hosts on their dresses. These women bear likenesses of Senegal's Leopold Sedar Senghor (wearing glasses), Ivorian president Felix Houphouet-Boigny, and their wives.
Of all of Black Africa's 40-odd nations, none is more out of step than the Ivory Coast. All five of its West African neighbors, for example, are poor, and four are military-ruled; the...
IFFERENT PATH
The Ivory Coast and its neighbor, Guinea, share many things, among them a common border, a tropical climate, and a colonial history that left a French veneer over an African peasant culture. The two nations won independence, without bloodshed, at roughly the me time: Guinea in 1958, the Ivory Coast two years later. Each was then run by a one-man, one-party regime. Each sought economic growth, mode&- tion, and self-esteem.
Yet Guinea failed. The Ivory Coast was the "African...
Oxford's Hugh Trevor-Roper is often cited to show what little even scholars in the West knew of the "Dark Continent" until re- cently. As Michael Crowder notes in
West Africa Under Colonial Rule
(Northwestern, 1968), European colo- nists truly believed they were civilizing "a benighted people."
In the most complete survey of the subject in English, the two-volume His-tory of West Africa (Columbia, 1972- 73) edited J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, Thurstan Shaw traces &...
John Mueller, in Public Opinion Quarterly (Spring 1988), Univ. of Chicago Press, PO. Box 37005, Chicago, 111. 60637.
As the 1988 campaign progresses, one trend seems clear: Americans are far more tolerant of the opinions of others than they were in the past.
Mueller, a political scientist at the University of Rochester, believes that Americans have become more willing to listen to extreme left-wing groups, and have not increased their distaste for any political group or opinion. Since the 1950s,...
Robert Nisbet, in Chronicles (June 1988), Rockford Institute, 934 North Main St., Rock-ford, Dl. 61103.
When did the federal government begin to be the center of American life? The answer, says Nisbet, an emeritus professor at Columbia University: World War I. While the economic effects of the war were small in the United States, the resulting intellectual changes were vast.
Before 1917, the United States had the "most decentralized" govem-
ment in the West. But upon America's entry...
the Wilsonian moral crusade to "make the world safe for democracy," sought new domestic campaigns. Led philosopher John Dewey, New Republic editor Herbert Croly, and The Nation's Os-wald Garrison Villard, these thinkers each began what Dewey called a "search for the Great Community." If America could unite in war, they argued, why could it not become a national community in an era of peace? The efforts of 1920s intellectuals and novelists dovetailed. While intel-
lectuals invoked...
1980, only 52.6 percent did. But the 1980 rate was not precedent-setting; only 52 percent of eligible Amer- icans voted in the Roosevelt-Hoover election of 1932, and 51 percent voted in the Truman-Dewey battle of 1948.
In 1984, 53.1 percent of Americans voted for president, a slight rise over 1980. The authors predict that because the U.S. electorate is aging, and older Americans tend to vote more often than younger ones, the percentage will increase this November. But nonvoting Americans proba-...
PERIODICALS
FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE
come routine; in Fiscal Year 1987, for example, 31,059 Guardsmen
trained in 35 nations, including West Germany, England, and South Korea.
Moreover, each of four regular divisions in the Army currently is allotted a
"round-out brigade" from the National Guard that would bring the division
to full combat strength in time of war; Newland predicts that more such
arrangements will follow as congressional budget cuts further reduce the
Army's...
Saudi Arabia.
"Arms, Aid, and the Superpowers" Stephanie
G. Neuman, in Foreign Affairs(Summer 1988), Council on Foreign Relations, 58 East 68th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
Can the superpowers continue to dominate the international arms trade? Some specialists contend that the pre-eminence of the United States and the Soviet Union in weapons sales has ended.
Neuman, director of the Comparative Defense Studies Program at Co-lumbia University, points out that the superpowers' share of...