| On the developmental state |
From UNCTAD
Economic Development in Africa
2007
Reclaiming Policy Space
Domestic Resource Mobilization and
Developmental States
"Developmental states" are the key to boosting domestic
savings and productive investments in Africa, contends Economic Development in
Africa 2007
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Latin
American Politics and Society - Summer
2001
State developmentalism without a developmental state: The public
foundations of the "free market miracle" in Chile
By Kurtz, Marcus
If export orientation is a goal in a sustainable development strategy,
this study argues that public interventions at the sectoral level in a
variety of markets can produce economic reorientation that pursues
international comparative advantage faster and at lower cost than free
market forces can. Pervasive failures in information, credit, input,
distribution, and insurance markets can render strictly market-based
adjustment both slow and costly. Although Chile's export boom and high
growth rates have been associated with its free market economic policies,
this article, based on a comparison of the fruit, fish, and forestry
sectors, contends that new forms of public intervention were crucial
catalysts in shaping a sustained export response.
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Thandika
Mkandawire - 1998
Thinking About Developmental States in Africa
One remarkable feature of the discourse on the state and development in Africa
is the disjuncture between an analytical tradition that insists on the
impossibility of developmental states in Africa and a prescriptive literature
that presupposes their existence. States whose capacity to pursue any national
project is denied at one level (theoretical or diagnostic) are exhorted, at the
prescriptive level, to assume roles that are, ex definicione, beyond
their capacity or political will. Such states are urged to "delink", to reduce
themselves, to stabilize the economy, to privatize the economy, to engage in
"good governance", to democratize themselves and society, to create an "enabling
environment" for the private sector, etc.
In other words, to do what they cannot
do. What we then have is, to paraphrase Gramci, the pessimism of the diagnosis
and the optimism of the prescription. Obviously such a contradictory position is
unsatisfactory. To attain some congruence between diagnosis and prescription, we
need to retrace our steps back to the diagnosis. We shall argue that neither
Africa’s post-colonial history nor the actual practice engaged in by successful
"developmental states" rules out the possibility of African "developmental
states" capable of playing a more dynamic role than hitherto.
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Mark Beeson - 2004
The rise and fall (?) of the developmental state: the
vicissitudes and implications of East Asian interventionism
What are developmental states? Why might we want one?
The idea of the DS is most closely associated with Chalmers Johnson and his seminal
analysis of Japan’s very rapid, highly successful post-war reconstruction and
(re)industrialisation.3 Johnson’s central contention was that Japan’s quite remarkable
and historically unparalleled industrial renaissance was neither a fluke nor inevitable,
but a consequence of the efforts of a ‘plan rational’ state. A plan rational or DS was
one that was determined to influence the direction and pace of economic development
by directly intervening in the development process, rather than relying on the
uncoordinated influence of market forces to allocate economic resources. The DS
took it upon itself the task of establishing ‘substantive social and economic goals’
with which to guide the processes of development and social mobilisation.4 The most
important of these goals in Japan’s case, of course, was the reconstruction of its
industrial capacity; a process made easier by a widespread social consensus about the
importance of economic development.
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A. K. Bagchi - 2000
The past and future of the developmental state
Like most human institutions—the family, the village, the city, the state,
customs, laws, the nation—the developmental state was born long
before anybody thought of naming it. There are debates about when it was
born, whether all developmental states (as they are usually characterized)
are properly labeled, and whether there have been developmental states
overlooked literature. In this paper, it will be claimed, inter alia, that indeed
there were developmental states long before economists, political scientists
or historians recognized them as such, and that not all developmental states,
as conventionally labeled, have been true members of the select club of
developmental states. |
From Third World Quarterly
L. Boer
(1997)
Feature Review: The State
in a Changing World
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Two Africas? Two Ugandas? An African "Democratic Developmental State"?
Or another "failed" state?
By T. M. Shaw - 2004
…neither Africa's post-colonial history nor the actual practice engaged in by successful 'developmental states'
rule out the possibility of African 'developmental states' capable of playing a
more dynamic role than hitherto (Mkandawire 2002: 289)
…the spread of the term ‘global civil society’ reflects an underlying social reality.
What we can observe in the 1990s is the emergence of a supranational sphere
of social & political participation in which citizen groups, social movements,
and individuals engage in dialogue with each other & with various governmental
actors – international, national & local – as well as the business world…global
civil society both feeds on & reacts to globalization (Anheier, Glasius & Kaldor 2001: 4 & 7)
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Economic development and the anatomy of crisis
in Africa: from colonialism through structural adjustment
By H. Stein - 2000
Africa is mired in a developmental crisis, not the common narrow monetary or financial crisis
portrayed in the standard literature but a crisis of a more profound and protracted nature.
A developmental crisis refers to the generalized incapacity of an economy to generate
the conditions necessary for a sustained improvement in the standard of living.
The problem is basically structural in nature. The antecedents lay in the colonial period
and in the inability of post-colonial governments to fundamentally transform the economies
inherited at independence. While structural adjustment has exacerbated the underlying
weaknesses of African economies, its greatest crime is located in its inherent inability to
structurally and institutionally transform African economies. The major reason can be
found in its roots that lie in neo-classical economic theory with its misplaced emphasis on
balancing financial variables in a hypothetical axiomatic world. Adjustment is simply incapable
of either assessing the nature of Africa’s problems or putting in place the policies that
will put African countries on a trajectory of sustainable development. 1
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Botswana's "Developmental State" and politics
of legitimacy
By I. Taylor - 2002
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A democratic developmental state in Africa? A concept paper
By O. Edigheji - 2005
...the question of the democratic developmental state is not
sufficiently on the agenda in Africa. It has also received little attention in academic
discourse. Against this background, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), Johannesburg, South
Africa and the Partners in Development for Research, Consulting and Training (PID), Cairo,
Egypt are undertaking a research project on the democratic developmental state in Africa. It
will address the following pertinent issues:
• Can African states be both democratic and developmental under conditions of
globalisation?
• What are the indicators and mechanisms for democratic developmentalism?
• What are the prerequisites for the establishment of democratic developmental
states and do these prerequisites exist in Africa?
• What are the prospects of introducing such democratic developmentalism under the
present conditions of globalisation?
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The developmental state, democracy and glocal
society in Africa
By D. W. Nabudere - 2006
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Sub-Saharan Africa
Financing the developmental state: tax and revenues issues
By A. Sindzingre - 2006
This paper focuses on the concept of the developmental state, the conditions of its consolidation, especially
in the perspective of the modes of financing it requires. The issues of taxation, public revenue and spending,
are examined, because they constitute crucial elements in the building of viable developmental states,
and are problematic in least developed countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. The concept of the
developmental state stems from the analysis of fast-growing Asian economies. Its elements are presented,
particularly the fact that they rely on low levels of taxation and public spending, at least at the
early stages of their development. The principal elements and constraints regarding taxation in
Sub-Saharan Africa are then analysed, in particular its dependence on commodities and external
trade, as well as the effects of the programmes of international financial institutions, in particular trade
liberalisation, which appear to be mixed. The constraints that affect aid in the building of
developmental taxation systems and states are also examined. Aid provides incentives that may
undermine tax structures and key state institutions of recipient countries, such as policy
credibility and political legitimacy. Firstly, it is shown that the key features of developmental
states are the capacity for a state to credibly commit and intervene, more under the form of
policies that are directed towards growth than taxation policies. These states relied on a series
of ingredients: intervention of the state in the economy via credible policies oriented towards growth,
capacity to address coordination failures and to reallocate factors of production, coalitions between
the state, private firms and the civil society. These ingredients cannot be disentangled from
political dimensions, growth having being instrumental in the building of legitimacy. Secondly,
it is argued that for a policy or an institution to be effective, it needs to be credible
and result from endogenous processes. These conditions for developmental states and institutions
are currently to be built in most Sub-Saharan African countries. The difficult question remains
as to whether foreign aid, given the intrinsic asymmetry of conditionalities, aid dependence and
budget constraints, can contribute to the building of developmental states and policies that could
be credibly committed towards growth.
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Growing out of the developmental state:
East Asia welfare reform in the 1990s (draft)
By I. Peng and J. Wong - 2004
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The developmental state and educative advance in East Asia
By M. Abe - 2004
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Private tutoring and demand for education
in South Korea
By S. Kim and Ju-Ho Lee - 2004
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The managerial revolution and the developmental state:
the case of U.S. agriculture
By L. Ferleger and W. Lazonick - 1993
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The Search for
Policy Autonomy in the South: Universalism, Social Learning and the Role of Regionalism
By Norman Girvan
This paper argues the need for the South to secure greater autonomy in development
policy... It utilizes a political economy analysis in the historical context of
decolonization and contemporary globalization... in the 1950s, the new subdiscipline of
development economics made a significant contribution to policy autonomy in the global
South by legitimizing the principle that their economies should be understood within their
own terms and by providing justification for policies that built up its industrial
capabilities...However, the marginalization of development economics and its policies in
the 1980s resulted in a marked discontinuity in the accumulation of policy experience in
much of the South and the squandering of much of intellectual capital developed in the
earlier period. Neoclassical economics and neoliberal policies ruled out the notion of an
economics sui generis for the developing countries. Nonetheless, developments since the
late 1990s have shown that the triumphalism was premature, as global social movements,
financial crises, contradictions in the World Trade Organization (WTO) process and the
shifting political climate in the South have served to undermine the Washington consensus
and have re-opened space for academic enquiry and policy experimentation in the South and
North.
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The Developmental Agenda in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization
By E. Yeldan - 2005
“Is this the end of economic developmental state?” was the
opening title of a modeling exercise by Adelman and Yeldan in the
Global Trade Policy Analysis
face=Arial>meetings of Odense, June 1999. Referring to the recent Asian crisis
as a point of reference, the authors utilized a smooth-functioning neoclassical
model with fully flexible commodity and financial markets to show how the
neoliberal global agenda severely restricts the autonomy of the developing
countries to pursue strategic policies to attain development targets.
Accordingly, with the recent attempts towards full liberalization of the capital
account under pressures from the US and the IMF (the so-called Washington
consensus), governments lost their autonomy in designing a strategic mix of the
exchange rate and interest rate instruments for promotion of industrialization
targets. Thus, in Grabel’s words:
“These changes, coupled with the ensuing investor euphoria,
led to a general speculative appreciation of asset prices, extremely high real
interest rates, and an overall shift in aggregate economic activity toward
financial trading and away from industrial activities” (Grabel 1995:
128).
The assessment that the process of
neoliberal globalization is associated with successive financial crises has
further been a recurrent theme in much of the literature on international
finance and open economy macroeconomics. Notwithstanding the original
proposition of a (Tobin’s) tax on short term capital flows, the detrimental
effects of unregulated flows of financial capital have been the topic of active
debate in Stiglitz (2000), Rodrik (1997), Calvo, Leiderman and Reinhart (1996),
Grabel (1996), Diaz-Alejandro (1985), and Velasco (1987); and also constituted
one of the main themes in all of the last five annual Trade and Development Reports of
UNCTAD.
In this paper, I attempt to address to
the ideas provided in this literature and try to deduce implications for a
renewed development policy. |
The Need to Rethink Development Economics
By T. Mkandawire - 2005
Up until the 1970s, problems of welfare and unemployment in the
developed countries, and those of poverty and underdevelopment in the developing
ones, were interpreted through the lenses of the corpus of knowledge recognized
as Keynesian economics and “development economics” respectively. But the oil
crisis, “stagflation” and subsequent indebtedness of the developing countries
severely put to test the models and the theories that had underpinned their
welfare and development policies.
>Although there was little in common between the actual
analytical content of Keynesian doctrine and that of development economics, the
two approaches shared critical views of neoclassical economic theory, and the
related acceptance of state intervention. They also had in common the
understanding that the economy described by neoclassical economists was a
“special case”, and there were many other economies that could be “stylized” by
entirely different models because they were characterized by different
structural features. Furthermore, they shared the view that the state could play
an important role in addressing these structural features, which often resulted
in “market failures”. Both were induced by the need to solve policy problems and
were not merely formal theoretical disciplines whose modelling was based on
“real economies” trapped in a particular equilibrium (unemployment or
underdevelopment) from which they had to be extricated. These positions opened
them to attack from neoliberalism.
For two decades, starting from the
beginning of the mid-1970s, the status of development economics in both academia
and policy circles was not enviable. The “death” of development economics was not
merely an academic “paradigm shift”. It was given official sanction by the
United States government. The US representative to the Asian Development Bank is
reported (Newsweek 13th May, 1985) to have announced that the “United States
completely rejects the idea that there is such a thing as ‘development
economics’” (cited in Toye, John 1987: page 73). Development economics became,
as John Toye remarks, “an Orwellian un-thing” in the eyes of the most powerful
nation. The Spartan certainty of the ascendant neoliberalism as to what was
required left no room for specialized knowledge of the problems of development.
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The Neo-Liberal Doctrine and the African Crisis
By M. Nissanke - 2005
The core model of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs)
undoubtedly reflects a revival of neo-liberal orthodoxy in mainstream economics
as well as in popular global economic policy debates in the 1980s. In this
sense, SAPs are an application of the neo-conservatism of the Thatcher-Reagan
era to development economics- a product of the neo-liberal ’counter-revolution’.
The legitimacy of ’development economics’ as a distinct subject discipline was
seriously challenged in the process.
The
ascendancy of the neo-liberal school in development economics has not only
impoverished the development policy debate with its monolithic understanding of
the essentially multi-dimensional process of socio-economic development, but
also inflicted irrecoverable costs and pains to low-income countries by imposing
its doctrine in the form of conditionality to Structural Adjustment Loans. While
its supremacy as applied to developed and emerging market economies has been
gradually questioned after a series of global financial crises in the 1990s, its
application to low income developing countries has been surviving as the core
component of loan conditionality.
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The "Washington Consensus" and Development Economics
By M. Weisbrot - 2005
The disappearance of development economics, and replacement of
economic development strategy with a simple code for liberalizing international
trade and capital flows, has undoubtedly contributed to the economic failure
experienced by the vast majority of low to middle income countries over the last
two decades. Thandika Mkandawire and others have summarized some of the
analytical capacity and tools that were lost in this neo-classical and
neo-liberal resurgence. In many ways it is similar to the loss of knowledge in
the natural sciences due to clerical influence during the Middle Ages; so it is
a great thing that the UNRISD has taken up this project not only to recover lost
knowledge but to lay the foundation for real progress in both practice and
theory.
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Thoughts and Proposals on Reviving Development Economics
By J. Y. Lim - 2005
There are three main factors that caused the decline of
development economics, especially during the eighties and nineties. These
reasons are:
1.
the hegemony of the neoclassical non-interventionist and monetarist/rational
expectations schools in mainstream economics during the seventies and eighties
succeeded in removing from the mainstream literature developmental and
interventionist approaches to economics.
2. The core of development economic theories and the dependency theorists’ debates on the
dual economy, works on ‘big push’, ‘balanced and unbalanced growth’ and
‘import-substitution strategy’
all did not employ the ‘elegant’ ‘rational’, optimizing and comparative statics
framework and methodology of neoclassical economics... The
methodology mattered, but we must remember that the historical conditions that
brought about the rise of the endogenous growth models in the eighties and
nineties precisely involved the lack of empirical validity of the traditional
neoclassical growth model, especially with the rise of the East Asian
‘miracles’. (They had to turn to the disgraced theories of development economics
to partly find the right answer.) Another point is that the ascendancy and
dominance now of new Keynesian and new institutional theories that allow ‘market
failures’, institutions and governance structures to enter the mainstream is
their use of neoclassical models and tools as well as the increasingly
fashionable game theory approach.
3. A third
reason which we should not ignore is the entry in the sixties and seventies of
so many other topics in the realm of development economics, which merely
duplicated existing fields in economics but applying them in a ‘Third World’
context. Areas and topics in the fiscal, monetary, exchange rate arenas, labor
economics, international trade, agricultural economics, education and social
sector (population, health, etc.) were all included as part of ‘development
economics’. This...relegated development economics to a status of ‘soft’
economics indistinguishable from sociology, psychology and other social
sciences, and unbefitting of true ‘hard-core’ scientific and analytical
(neoclassical) economics.
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Towards Developmental Democracy: A Note
By A. Olukoshi - 2005
The policies that were at the heart of the structural adjustment programmes were
presented as the core of a new "consensus" on the management of the economy to
which no (viable) alternative exists; in fact, they were more reflective of the
hegemonic influence exercised by the key Western regimes and the multilateral
financial/economic institutions which they control. These governments and
institutions served as the springboard for the spread of neo-liberal policies
around the world, using an array of conditionality and cross-conditionality
clauses to compel developing countries to embrace their preferred options for
the reform of ailing national economies.
Yet, as has been acknowledged even by the World Bank,
structural adjustment has generally failed to achieve the results which its
authors promised it would deliver. (It bears pointing out though that even with
the repeated acknowledgement by the Bank about the shortcomings of its policy
prescriptions, orthodox structural adjustment measures continue to be
administered on developing countries as the panacea to their economic
difficulties).
Amidst the on-going discussions about the limitations of the
neo-liberal philosophical and policy underpinnings of IMF/World Bank structural
adjustment, and against the backdrop of the serious concerns which have been
raised, both before and since the recent East Asian crisis,...various alternatives to
neo-liberalism are beginning seriously to be considered. At the heart of some of
these alternatives is a concern to bring development back into the mainstream of
economic and social policy-making. This note is intended to contribute to this
discussion by suggesting that the quest, which is highly welcomed, for a new
developmentalism should be imbued with and undertaken in a framework that is by
definition democratic. It will draw on the specific African experience for this
purpose. |
Women, Politics and a Development Economics Renaissance
By R. R. Sharma - 2005
"I come to this discourse from the perspective of an advocate, a
lobbyist to be more precise, working to open the minds of U.S. policy makers to
alternative thinking on development, including the role of gender in
development.
"I think there are roughly four steps required to mainstream
a new development economics theory and policy—empirical research, theory
formulation and testing, education of technical experts in the use of new
theory, and the ultimate adoption of the new theory by policy decision makers.
Of these four steps, Women’s EDGE focuses its work on the last: to get U.S.
policy makers to abandon the “Washington Consensus” and embrace a new formula
for development, one which includes gender in its basic equation. Therefore, I
will focus my contribution on how we might “close the loop” between researchers,
economists, and decision-makers.
"And, as you
have already gathered from the name of my organization, I will offer some
thoughts on how the neo-liberal model has affected women and why any new
thinking on development economics must ground itself in the most basic social
organization humans have—male and female." |
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