An incoherent state‐identity approach to African regional disorder

Abstract

AbstractIn contrast to the conventional literature, which suggests that African disorder underlies religious factors, strategic resources, and ethnic conflicts, this paper offers an analytical account of structural patterns in “State identity.” A new concept model of state identity is proposed through a designed framework for the identity‐building process and is justified by social theories and psychoanalysis. This study argues that historical and traumatic social parameters formed an incoherent state identity due to an interruption in the group‐nation state evolutionary process. No existing study articulates the construction of a self‐identity within the state's integrative process, its development (or interruption thereof) in a sub‐categorical identity, and its causal relation to conflicts; hence, the current study fills that gap.