Alfio Cerami makes us painfully aware of the pivotal importance of wide-ranging social welfare programs for democratization projects everywhere. He deftly demonstrates how 'emergency welfare regimes' produce different outcomes in diverging contexts of Sub-Saharan Africa and offers valuable theoretical insights that would be of great interest to scholars, policy experts, international NGOs, and a growing number of students of this long-neglected region. - Tomasz Inglot, Professor in Political Science, Minnesota State University, USA
Welfare state studies only rarely embrace the development of social policy in Africa. In this highly stimulating book Cerami not only shows how to describe and understand Sub-Saharan permanent emergent welfare regimes, he is also able to demonstrate the necessity of combining insight from a variety of approaches including welfare state analysis and political science, but also to combine it with enormous insight into pitfalls and dilemmas for Africa's development, and suggestions for future path-ways. - Bent Greve, Professor in Welfare State Analysis, University of Roskilde, Denmark
A milestone. This study sheds not only vivid light on a largely blind spot of the welfare regime research hitherto. It also connects the broad empirical analysis on Sub-Saharan Africa with an ambitious concept building on the nexus of development economics, social protection and democratization. Alfio Cerami's profound study reveals once again the close relationship between public welfare and the conditio humana in contemporary societies wherever they are located.
- Raj Kollmorgen, Associate Professor in Sociology, University of Magdeburg, Germany