School of Social and Political Science

Description

The Centre of African Studies is delighted to welcome you to come and hear about the following research, followed by Q&A with the author:

This presentation examines how ideological change is produced and internalized in rebellions that become ruling parties, using the case of Burundi’s CNDD-FDD. While existing scholarship documents post-war ideological shifts, it has paid little attention to how these transformations are transmitted to and negotiated by rank-and-file members, often in contexts of cognitive dissonance between wartime commitments and post-war realities. Bridging this gap, the article links macro-level organizational change with the micro-foundations of ideological engagement. Empirically, it analyzes the CNDD-FDD’s evolving ideology through an original corpus of 120 political songs and their modes of production and diffusion. It shows that ideological change, although stark, does not emerge ex nihilo but is constructed through the resemanticization of wartime ideas, the promotion of loyalty-centered norms, and the creation of interpretive spaces for members. These processes allow ideological shifts to be enforced, appropriated, and stabilized, highlighting ideology as a social and organizational practice.

Keynote speaker: Dr Benjamin Chemouni

Benjamin Chemouni is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Development Studies at UCLouvain, Belgium, and a senior research fellow in the Methodology Department at the London School of Economics. His research focuses on the dynamics of state formation in the African Great Lakes region and the political economy of development. He holds a PhD from the LSE and was formerly a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He is the co-editor of the journal Politique Africaine.