Mamdani specialises in the study of African and international politics,
colonialism and
post‐colonialism, and the politics of knowledge production. His works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of
colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and
genocide in Africa, the
Cold War and the
war on terror, and the theoretical history of human rights. His research as of 2016 took "as its point of departure his 1996 book,
Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Colonialism". In it, he argued that the post-colonial state cannot be understood without a clear analysis of the institutional colonial state. The nature of the colonial state in Africa was a response to the dilemma of the "native question", and he argued that it took on the form of a "Bifurcated State". This was characterised on the one hand by "direct rule", which was a form of "urban civil power" and focused on the exclusion of natives from civil freedoms guaranteed to citizens in civil society, and on the other hand by
indirect rule, which was rural in nature and involved the incorporation of "natives" into a "state enforced customary order" enforced by a "rural tribal authority", which he termed as "decentralised despotism". In this way both experiences reproduced "one part of the dual legacy of the bifurcated state and created their own distinctive version of despotism". Mamdani analysed historical case studies in South Africa and Uganda to argue that colonial rule tapped into authoritarian possibilities whose legacies often persist after independence. Challenging conventional perceptions of apartheid in South Africa as exceptional, he argues that
apartheid was the generic form of a European colony in Africa, encompassing aspects of
indirect rule and association. In his 2004 book
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror Mamdani said that
suicide bombers should be recognized "as a category of soldier" and that it should be "understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism". One academic said this was not an advocacy of suicide bombing but an analysis which blamed '"U.S. foreign policy decisions, especially during the Cold War" to "create the kinds of conditions in which
militant Islamism and
political violence" thrived. His essays have appeared in the
London Review of Books and other publications. According to the CAS, Mamdani's texts "have been core readings for undergraduate and postgraduate studies at UCT and far beyond on the major debates on the study of African history and politics, exploring the intersection between politics and culture, comparative studies of colonialism, civil wars and the state, and genocide in Africa". ==Other activities==