Hyden, Goran 1938- (Sten Gustav Vilhelm Goran Hyden)

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Hyden, Goran 1938- (Sten Gustav Vilhelm Goran Hyden)

PERSONAL:

Born July 23, 1938, in Nykoeping, Sweden; son of Sten G.E. and Ida-Marie (a nurse) Hyden; married Melania Kobulungo (a nursing officer), January 29, 1966; children: Michael, Jane, Erik. Education: University of Lund, B.A., 1961, M.A., 1964, Ph.D., 1968; attended Oxford University, 1962, and University of California, Los Angeles, 1962-63. Religion: Lutheran. Hobbies and other interests: Playing squash.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Baastad, Sweden. Office—Department of Political Science, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Lund, Lund, Sweden, lecturer in political science, 1963-64 and 1966-68; Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, lecturer in political science, 1965-67; University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, senior lecturer in government, 1968-71; University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, professor of political science, 1971-77; University of California, Berkeley, visiting lecturer in political science, 1977-78; Ford Foundation, Nairobi, program advisor, 1978-80, representative, 1980-85; Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, visiting fellow, 1985-86; University of Florida, Gainesville, professor of political science and African studies, 1986-99, distinguished professor of political science, 1999—. Associate director for Africa, Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program, Brown University, 1986—. Consultant to World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and Swedish International Development Agency. Military service: Swedish Army, Infantry, 1957-58.

MEMBER:

Swedish Writers Society, African Association for Public Administration and Management, Society for International Development.

WRITINGS:

Politik och samhaelle i Afrika (title means "Politics and Society in Africa"), Cavefors, 1967, 2nd edition, 1969.

Political Development in Rural Tanzania, East African Publishing House (Nairobi, Kenya), 1969.

Efficiency versus Distribution in East African Cooperatives, East African Literature Bureau [Uganda], 1973.

(Editor, with Anthony Rweyemamu) A Decade of Public Administration in Africa, East African Literature Bureau [Uganda], 1975.

Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1980.

No Shortcuts to Progress, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1983.

(With Julius Court and Kenneth Mease) Making Sense of Governance: Empirical Evidence from Sixteen Developing Countries, Lynne Rienner Publishers (Boulder, CO), 2004.

African Politics in Comparative Perspective, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

EDITOR

Governance and Politics in Africa, L. Rienner (Hong Kong, China), 1992.

Human Rights and Governance in Africa, University Press of Florida (Gainsville, FL), 1993.

Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Africa, University Press of Florida (Gainsville, FL), 1993.

Agencies in Foreign Aid: Comparing China, Sweden, and the United States in Tanzania, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Dele Olowu and Hastings W.O. Okoth Ogendo) African Perspectives on Governance, Africa World Press (Trenton, NJ), 2000.

(With Denis Venter) Constitution-Making and Democratisation in Africa, Africa Institute of South Africa (Pretoria, South Africa), 2001.

(With Michael Leslie and Folu F. Ogundimu) Media and Democracy in Africa, Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, NJ), 2002.

(With Ole Elgstrom) Development and Democracy: What Have We Learned and How?, Routledge (New York, NY), 2002.

Reporter for Svenska Dagbladet.

SIDELIGHTS:

Goran Hyden was born and raised in Nykoeping, Sweden. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Lund, as well as attending classes at both the University of Oxford in England and the University of California at Los Angeles. A writer and educator, Hyden serves on the faculty of the University of Florida, where he is a professor of political science. His primary areas of research and academic interest include comparative politics, African politics, the global perspective on democratization, and the role in Africa's development of various foreign aid agencies. Hyden has written or edited numerous books on African politics, governance, and development.

In his African Politics in Comparative Perspective, Hyden provides readers with a broad overview of African politics, including information on policies and the available written resources that apply to them. He covers various weaknesses in the national institutions and the holdover of old ideas that still color modern politics. In addition, he analyzes the relationship between the African nations and the countries with which they routinely interact. Hyden also discusses the general knowledge available at an academic level regarding Africa and its politics, and looks forward at the potential changes the nations face, both internally and in regards to their global relations. Nicolas van de Walle, in a review for the Political Science Quarterly, commented about Hyden's effort: "This is a lively and informative review of a substantial amount of scholarship on African politics, which deserves to be read by all serious students of the continent." Michael Jennings, writing for the Journal of African History, opined that "at the heart of Hyden's work is a call for Africanists to show the world why Africa matters in any understanding of modern global politics. It is a bold assertion of sub-Saharan Africa's relevance to the contemporary world."

Hyden served as the editor for Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Africa. The book offers readers a collection of ten papers, along with a lengthy introduction and conclusion, all of which focus on the relationship between the growth of the population in Africa and its agricultural resources, with a particular focus on the regions of East Africa and Nigeria. Extensive field research was performed to back up all of the findings, although in some cases, where the papers were previously published in other volumes, the research is not as recent as in other instances. Because of the different points of view included in the volume, the book provides information on a range of diverse agricultural systems across the regions, and equally diverse levels of increased production to match the needs of the growing population. Anthony O'Connor, in a review for the Geographical Journal, remarked: "The picture so clearly presented here is one of survival, coping, resilience; but not generally one of improvement or of anything that could really be seen as ‘development.’"

Hyden commented: "My vocational interests are rural development, public administration, management, and politics. I was involved in administering the Ford Foundation program for eastern and southern Africa, and am currently associate director for Africa of the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program, in which support of new initiatives aimed at strengthening progressive development measures, particularly at the community level, forms a significant ingredient. In applying my own judgment to this work, I stand guided by my conviction that conventional modes of analyzing development are of limited value and must be substituted by fresh looks at the African situation."