States Flashcards
(31 cards)
What is the state
A form of organised domination that delivers order
and public goods
- neoclassical economics says
its something that corrects market failures
How are resources distributed?
1) The market where it is exchanged for goods and services
2) Hierarchies where someone at the top distributes it
3) Team/networks circulate resources
What are roles of the state?
- Importance of state in the provision of “Public Goods” (Goods that are non-rival and non-excludable) (e.g. knowledge, Defiance, infrastructure
- “Governing” the market
What are determinants of the state’s role in development?
1) Ideas and intentionality
• Nationalism
• Various “socialist” ideologies (Ujamaa, African Humanism etc) • Developmentalism and “catch- up
• Economic ideas – “Big” Development ideas
2) Interests
• New bureaucratic classes
• Private capital seeking state support • Individual leaders – problems of national heroes
3) Institutions
• One-party state
4) Industrialisation
5) International context
What are the origins of the state?
• in the Sub-Sahara African case, with the
exception of Ethiopia the origins of the state are
largely colonial • The nationalist faced the challenge of finding
new capacity to address issues close their hearts
• The need to reconcile the desire to dismantle
the colonial state and to deploy its capacity to
maintain low and order
What was nature of colonial state?
Different levels of extractive capacity
• Labour reserve economy
• Cash crop economy
• Concensions economy
• Differences between Direct and indirect rule (Colonialism on the
cheap) • Differences in the racial attitudes of the colonial masters
What are challenges of new nation states?
Continuation of the colonial institutional order • Neocolonialism and decolonization • Nation-building • Legitimacy • Extending its reach • National Cohesion • Economic Development • International Context and national sovereignty
How are development and democracy linked?
- Ideas about development and democracy
- The linear view of democracy as end point of modernisation
- Democracy could only be possible after passing some threshold of development
What are critiques of POCO state?
- dependence school/ neomarxist school
2. rational choice school
what does dependence school argue against POCO states?
-POCO states failed to break colonial hold
• Betrayal of nationalist ideology by elites
What are rational choice school critiques of POCO states?
- liberal economics is good, so why aren’t African leaders doing what is obviously good?
- Argued that they were Rent seekers blocking good policies
- Introducing policies harmful for development
- Policies that favoured inefficient industry
What is rent-seeking?
- an attempt to obtain economic rent by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth
- Bribing officials to obtain exclusive licence, , spending money on political lobbying in order to be given a share of wealth that has already been created.
What is neopatrimonial critique of state?
-Officials hold positions in bureaucratic organisations
with powers which are formally defined, but exercise those powers . . . as a form . . . of private
property.”
- Neopatrimonialism leads to condoning of corruption
• Elites instrumentalise chaos and create spaces for corruption
• Diversion of public resources to personal use undermines
development
what is the good governance argument?
- In 1989 World Bank identified ”Good Goverance” as main constraints on development in Africa
- describes how public institutions conduct public affairs and manage public resources in the preferred way.
- says bad institutions is why there is no foreign investment despite good policies, and SAPs issue of GG
What is the developmental state?
○ The answer for Africa was some kind of developmental state
Features
1) Ideological aim at catching up and developing
2) Structural features
- building capacity to implement economic policies effectively, embeddedness to society to not be predatory
Issues of neopat argument
○ Part of the discussion of neopatrimonialism and rent seeking was during the decline
○ When it started to recover there were problems for neopatrimonialism theorists who couldn’t explain this recovery
what are the two types of economies?
rentier economy and merchant state
what is a rentier economy?
• A rentier economy is an economy which relies on “substantial external rent”. • Politically salient point is that revenues flow directly into the state treasury without requiring complex negotiations among representatives of the political coalitions that provide the social basis of the regime - normally oils and minerals
what is merchant state?
- states tax populations at large
- the merchant state “rent” is internal to the economy’s overall productive structure. The state relies heavily on domestic taxes and on export and import taxes.
• Politically salient is the fact that the larger position of the state’s revenue is collected directly or indirectly from a large number of producers. In Africa, the export taxes are usually imposed on commodities that are largely produced by peasant households
what is state society nexus?
societal strength defined by capacity of political contestation
merchant state, weak political contestation: malawi
Merchant state, strong political contestation: kenya, senegal
rentier state, weak political contestation: botswana, gabon
rentier state, strong political contestation: zambia, nigeria
state capacity
- varies over time
- determined by structural constraints, initial conditions, interests
-
What does Brett argue?
In both Uganda and Zimbabwe
○ At independence - new governments needed to buy political support by transferring resources from immigrant to African communities, while retaining immigrant capital to sustain growth
○ Africanised the civil service and maintained immigrant business
○ Transfers economically damaging, and due to pressures from population
○ Uganda and Zimbabwe regimes run by elites that had been excluded from capitalist class by foreigners, and planned to use state power to take over civil service and parastatals, and use redistributive taxation to provide services to the poor
○ Regimes discouraged African entrepreneurship, clientelism occurred
growth under corporatist strategies was unsustainable in both countries and market strategies didn’t succeed in Uganda until after 86
□ Periods of responsible and successful development disprove neopatrimonial claims, and regressive periods confirm them
What are three roles of the state?
Brett
1) Make and enforce general social rules and maintain social unity by sustaining institutions that allow conflicting social interests to be expressed and managed
2) Produce public goods by creating an administrative apparatus that supplies private agents with essential services
3) Provide regulatory framework that governs the terms on which private and public enterprises relate to each other, generate livelihoods and provide the taxes required to finance the state apparatus
How important are structural conditions to growth?
Ha Joon Chang
○ Structural conditions seem to act as impediments to development in Africa only because its countries do not yet have the necessary technologies, institutions and organizational skills to deal with their adverse consequences
○ The real cause of African stagnation in the last 3 decades is free-market policies that the continent has been compelled to implement during the period
○ Africa is not destined for underdevelopment
○ Structural conditions = defined by nature, climate, geography and natural resources
