https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

Explaining cross-country differences in growth rates requires not only an understanding of the link between growth and public policies, but also an understanding of why countries choose different public policies. This paper shows that ethnic diversity helps explain cross-country differences in public policies and other economic indicators. In the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, economic growth is associated with low schooling, political instability, underdeveloped financial systems, distorted foreign exchange markets, high government deficits, and insufficient infrastructure. Africa's high ethnic fragmentation explains a significant part of most of these characteristics.

https://williameasterly.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/17_easterly_levine_africasgrowthtragedy_prp.pdf

Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions

The East Asian miracle: Economic growth and public policy: By the World Bank. (New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 1993. 389 pp. $19.95, paper.)

Capitalism and Freedom

Focusing on the examples of Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Zaire, this text demonstrates how African rulers hold on to power while severed from foreign aid and subjected to collapsing economies and disappearing bureaucracies.

Warlord Politics and African States

African states are not, in any real sense, capitalist states. Elsewhere, the state has played a crucial role in facilitating capitalist expansion, but in postcolonial Africa one finds a form of neopatrimonialism - personal rule - that introduces a variety of economic irrationalities. Productive economic activities are impeded by the political instability, systemic corruption and maladminstration associated with personal rule. In extreme cases, a downward spiral of political-economic decline is set in motion that is difficult to halt and reverse. Is personal rule simply a euphemism for ineptitude and mismanagement? The authors argue that it is not; it operates according to a particular political rationality that shapes a ruler's actions when, in the absence of legitimate authority, he is confronted with the challenge of governing an unintegrated peasant society. Neopatrimonialism is essentially an adaptation of colonial-inspired political institutions to peculiar historical and social conditions. This book focuses on the political factor as an important cause of Africa's economic ills. It analyses the social conditions impelling political adaptation and the consequences of personal rule for economic life, and surveys creative responses to the predicament African people now face.

The Politics of Africa's Economic Stagnation

List of tables Acknowledgements Glossary Map 1. Disappointments of independence 2. Why capitalism fails 3. Colonial roots of the contemporary crisis 4. Class, tribe and politics 5. Anatomy of personal rule 6. The downward spiral 7. Survival strategies Notes Index.

Social Democracy in the Global Periphery focuses on social-democratic regimes in the developing world that have, to varying degrees, reconciled the needs of achieving growth through globalized markets with extensions of political, social and economic rights. The authors show that opportunities exist to achieve significant social progress, despite a global economic order that favours core industrial countries. Their findings derive from a comparative analysis of four exemplary cases: Kerala (India), Costa Rica, Mauritius and Chile (since 1990). Though unusual, the social and political conditions from which these developing-world social democracies arose are not unique; indeed, pragmatic and proactive social-democratic movements helped create these favourable conditions. The four exemplars have preserved or even improved their social achievements since neoliberalism emerged hegemonic in the 1980s. This demonstrates that certain social-democratic policies and practices - guided by a democratic developmental state - can enhance a national economy's global competitiveness.

/pdf/social-democracy-in-the-global-periphery-origins-challenges-19fs6cn9qs.pdf

Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects

historical conditions doom democratic experiments in that region.' Certainly, democrats there face formidable long-term structural hindrances: the low level of economic development and the accompanying high levels of poverty and illiteracy; the failure of many new democracies to reverse the economic decline of the 1980s and generate rising prosperity in the 1990s; and deep ethnic or communal cleavages which undermine mutual trust. Some historical legacies also impede democratisation. Scholars differ on the question of whether precolonial political traditions are conducive to modem democratic institutions.2 Regardless, two other legacies appear quite burdensome. The first is the limited experience of multiparty democracy on which the new democracies can build, though the extent of such experience varies widely. And the second is the prevalence of personalism, clientelism and corruption in the preceding authoritarian regimes (if not much earlier), and the tendency for these stratagems to surface anew to undermine the institutionalisation of democratic norms and procedures.3 Finally, a contradition inherent in the widely pursued structural adjustment programmes further bedevils democratic experiments. Adjustment policies exact a high price from precisely those organised urban groups-university students, professionals, civil servants and workers-who usually formed the core of the pro-democracy movements. As these influential early supporters of democracy experience a deterioration rather than an improvement in their living standards, they become disillusioned with politicians and democracy itself. Cynicism and protest soon encumber the new democracies. Although these are indeed onerous conditions, their impact on democratisation requires some clarification. They do not prevent a transition to democracy by means of a reasonably 'free and fair' electoral contest. Such a contest can be successfully arranged even in a poor underdeveloped country suffering from ethnic/regional tensions, rampant clientelism and limited democratic experience. There are two requirements: that domestic and external forces compel recalcitrant autocrats to accept political reform; and that donors provide the resources and electoral technology to run a national election. Democratic transitions respond, in a sense, to a 'technical fix'. But democratisation, when it occurs in a hostile environment, tends to stall at this stage. The 'second transition' that

Richard Sandbrook

Papers

The Politics of Africa's Economic Stagnation

The Politics of Africa's Economic Stagnation

Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects

Transitions without consolidation: Democratization in six African cases

The state and economic stagnation in Tropical Africa