Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-250) and index.

Introduction: observing the business of power -- The political ma rketplace: politics is business and business is politics -- The Horn of Africa: subcontinental war in three acts -- Darfur: the auction of loyalties -- Sudan: managing the unmanageable -- South Sudan: the boom and bust of a speculative bubble -- Somalia: a post-apocaly pse workshop -- Somaliland: a business-social contract -- Eritrea : a museum of modernism -- Ethiopia: is state-building still possibl e? -- Transnational patronage: shadow globalization and the regional marketplace -- The politics of ideas: perplexed intellectuals and p olicymakers.