The Contagion of Political Unrest in Independent Black Africa

Abstract

social communication network. The geographic scale within which such diffusion processes occur is localized. While less extensive, there also are some empirical studies that have dealt with the diffusion of innovations within regional and national settings [3; 9; 18; 23]. Characteristically, such studies are concerned with the spread of new techniques, organizations, or ideas over large geographic areas; often the adopting unit is a business, a city, or some other institution. Another distinguishing feature of diffusion processes at this geographic scale is that innovations are thought to filter down the urban hierarchy. By contrast, those at the international scale are extremely small in number, and even fewer deal with the spatial diffusion of political phenomena. However, an excellent opportunity to assess such a diffusion is provided in sub-Saharan Africa where a series of changes in governmental regimes had been brought about by explicit or implicit uses of force. Most of the countries in the sub-Saha-