Other studies on Africa political economy in the mid-1990s have concentrated on the descent into decline or decay, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. These were typified by Lewis (1996) and Joseph (1996), that located the decline within autocratic leaderships. The main explanation offered by both scholars is prebendalism, which involves the conversion and exploitation of state offices into instruments of private accumulation both for self and for constituent and kin groups. According to Joseph, this produces the “rogue states,” but there is no suggestion that it is peculiar to autocracy, since even democratic leaderships have followed the system under colonial rule and perfected it in the post-independence period, as the experiences of the …show more content…
Ware and Dupagne indicate that to conduct such a test, researchers have generally used “(1) critical analysis, (2) empirical analysis at the macro (i.e., country) level, or (3) empirical analysis at the micro (i.e., individual) level” (p. 947). The flow of international or foreign news between countries is another phenomenon that scholars attempt to explain using the framework of cultural imperialism (Meyer, 1988). Other forms of media such as radio and print are usually ignored. Laing (1986) recognizes this when he does an analysis of music using the cultural imperialism perspective. From all these studies done, one could easily make the erroneous conclusion that a plethora of works on cultural imperialism obviously means there is empirical support for the theory. But a careful perusal of most of the literature will reveal that there is not much empirical support for cultural imperialism, because the majority of the research does not support the thesis. One is not surprised that this is the case. This lack of empirical support is definitely expected, as many researchers do not follow a precisely defined set of propositions with specific concepts while designing their empirical test. In fact, there is no model to follow. At best, researchers base their work on their own interpretations of various purported meanings of cultural imperialism. How then can they be sure that they are all measuring or studying the same phenomenon when almost every other researcher has developed his or her own definition and interpretation of cultural