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8 Can South Africa be a developmental state?
... This is clearly the South African reality. Fine (2008) also argues that although South Africa refers to itself as a developmental state, it departs significantly from being one. A developmental agenda in South Africa was subordinated to macro-economic policies which cater for the interests of conglomerate capital (and specifically the energy-minerals complex). ...
... The centrality of this contradiction to the inability of social work to deliver on this agenda, arises from the neo-liberal nature of the state's economic policies and their consequences. As Fine (2008) argues, the interests of conglomerate capital supersede the interests of development, leading to the vast levels of inequality and poverty and other failures of social justice and basic human rights realization. Midgley (1995, p. 25) defines social development as "a process of planned social change designed to promote the wellbeing of the population's whole in conjunction with a dynamic process of economic development." ...
... Paper and maintains that it calls for South Africans to be afforded the opportunity to play an active role in promoting their own wellbeing and to contribute to the growth and development of the nation and then states later that, "since resources are limited, trade-offs must be made between investment in economic growth and human resources, and the investment in a social safety net, welfare expenditure will only be able to expand as higher economic growth rates are achieved." (White Paper for Social Welfare 1997, p.5) Furthermore, given Fine's (2008) argument that the paralysis in policy making in developmental South Africa is less about an acknowledgement that there is insufficient capability, than about a strategic avoidance of the creation of "the organizational basis for the pursuit of more radical policies," social work should well note the evident contradiction in its mandate to adopt a developmental approach as described in this guiding policy document (White Paper for Social Welfare 1997). ...
... This is clearly the South African reality. Fine (2008) also argues that although South Africa refers to itself as a developmental state, it departs significantly from being one. A developmental agenda in South Africa was subordinated to macro-economic policies which cater for the interests of conglomerate capital (and specifically the energy-minerals complex). ...
... The centrality of this contradiction to the inability of social work to deliver on this agenda, arises from the neo-liberal nature of the state's economic policies and their consequences. As Fine (2008) argues, the interests of conglomerate capital supersede the interests of development, leading to the vast levels of inequality and poverty and other failures of social justice and basic human rights realization. Midgley (1995, p. 25) defines social development as "a process of planned social change designed to promote the wellbeing of the population's whole in conjunction with a dynamic process of economic development." ...
... Paper and maintains that it calls for South Africans to be afforded the opportunity to play an active role in promoting their own wellbeing and to contribute to the growth and development of the nation and then states later that, "since resources are limited, trade-offs must be made between investment in economic growth and human resources, and the investment in a social safety net, welfare expenditure will only be able to expand as higher economic growth rates are achieved." (White Paper for Social Welfare 1997, p.5) Furthermore, given Fine's (2008) argument that the paralysis in policy making in developmental South Africa is less about an acknowledgement that there is insufficient capability, than about a strategic avoidance of the creation of "the organizational basis for the pursuit of more radical policies," social work should well note the evident contradiction in its mandate to adopt a developmental approach as described in this guiding policy document (White Paper for Social Welfare 1997). ...
... It was characterized by a legitimate state, a planned capitalist economic system, a strong bureaucracy, public-private collaboration, and industrialization spearheaded by a pilot government institution. Potentially, it was the best opportunity for developing countries to achieve inclusive sustained economic growth (Fine, 2010;Johnson, 1982). Johnson's study was followed by others investigating the role of the state in the East Asian market economies' pathway to economic development-for example Alice Amsden (1989) on South Korea and Robert Wade (1990) on Taiwan. ...
... The political ideals of segregation and discrimination that were part of state-led development strategies prior to 1994 were not compatible with the broad-based approach of the Developmental State in regard to the autonomous yet embedded bureaucracy, public-private cooperation, legitimacy, and so on. The South African trajectory appears better characterized as dominated by its minerals-energy complex (Fine, 2010). ...
Ever since roughly the turn of the millennium there has been a growing literature discussing the potential characteristics of an African developmental state – if it indeed exists and in that case how it should be defined and exemplified. The basis for this literature has been the analyses of the development trajectory of the East Asian Tigers, but it has expanded into a broader discussion about the role of authoritarian regimes versus democratic states, outcomes versus intentions, and overall ambitions versus concrete strategies. The most common suggestions for African counterparts have been the two growth miracles – Botswana and Mauritius, but also other countries such as South Africa, Rwanda and Ethiopia have been on the agenda. The original developmental state trajectory entails a specific type of social engineering that has so far been rare in Africa. It requires a legitimate state leading a planned capitalist economy with a competent and autonomous bureaucracy spear-heading industrialization efforts in cooperation with the private sector. With such a narrow definition, it is only the development pathway of Mauritius that can be said to fit the criteria while Botswana falls short due to its weak industrialization efforts; long-standing interconnectedness between the bureaucracy, political power, and cattle elite; and lack of dynamic cooperation between the state and a variety of entrepreneurial groups in the private sector. Whether or not we will see more examples of African countries following the specific developmental state trajectory remains to be seen. If not, they may create alternative development paths to economic diversification, transformation and prosperity.
... The debate over the developmental state has led to two schools of thought, namely, the political school and the economic school (Fine, 2010). The political school, on one hand, focuses on state capacity for developmental purposes, that is, the ability of the state to formulate and implement appropriate policies and programmes to promote development. ...
... It is instructive to note that even though Ghana has six institutions (namely, Volta River Authority (VRA), Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Ghana Grid Company (GridCo), Northern Electricity Development Company (NEDCO), Abu Dhabi National Energy Company PJSC (TAQA) and Asogli) producing electricity, they cannot be compared favourably with ESCOM, the only institution producing electricity in South Africa. It has been pointed out that electricity and water do not go off in a developmental state, or at least they are developmental outcomes that are to be avoided (Fine, 2010). ...
Several strategies have been designed and implemented in African countries to promote development. Even though they may have contributed to increased gross domestic product growth over the years, they have largely failed because of a number of factors, namely: ineffective leadership; poor policy implementation; policy discontinuity; slow industrialisation; and an environment not conducive for private sector growth. The failure of these strategies or paradigms has led to the continued search for an appropriate strategy to address Africa’s development predicament. This search has also been exacerbated by the rise of China, East Asia and some Latin American countries as newly industrialising countries, the 2008 global economic crisis stemming from market failure and the renewed interest in the role and nature of the state in the development process, especially its role in reviving the economies of many Western countries with bail-out packages by the state. These developments no doubt point not only to the role of the state in development but also to the kind of state that will promote and facilitate socio-economic development. The kind of state to shoulder the burden of socio-economic development is the developmental state, which according to (Evans, 2008, p. 13), ‘If … it was important to 20th century economic success … will be much more important to 21st century success’. Using Ghana (considered as a non-developmental state) and South Africa (considered to be an emerging developmental state) as case studies, the paper examines the extent or the degree to which the two countries have met or achieved the key seven features of the developmental state. Some recommendations are also made with the aim of consolidating progress thus far and deepening or accelerating the process. In doing so, it is hoped that the lecture will make a contribution to the literature on the concept of the developmental state.
... While this perspective overlaps in some ways with the work of other critical political economists, it is distinctive. Fine (2010), for example, while noting the constraints of macroeconomic policy on the realisation of a South African developmental state, as well as the inherent limits of the developmental state paradigm, concentrates his critique on the absence of the conditions necessary to realise a developmental state: institutional capacity and strategic state/ capital engagements. His approach is grounded in an understanding of the Minerals Energy Complex (mec) -which is about a symbiotic relationship between state and capital and core activities related to mining and energy such as minerals extraction, heavy metals, heavy chemicals and fossil-fuel-generated electricity -and from this perspective recommends policy alternatives. ...
... In the pre−1990 period, the ratio of private to government R&D spending was declining, while in the post-1990 period it was rising. This observation suggests that larger presents of the state in capital accumulation brought the apartheid state closer to a developmental state (Fine, 2010) than the market-based approach suggested by the rising ratio of private to government R&D capital spending in the post−1990 period. In general, the ratio of the private sector to Tsai and Wang (2004) suggest that the impact on TFP and economic growth is transformative when the ratio surpasses two (2). ...
This paper examines the relationship between the structure of R&D fixed capital spending, measured as the ratio of the private sector to public sector R&D capital expenditure, and national total factor productivity. It employs South African data for the period 1965 to 2019. This study employs the non-linear distributed lag modelling framework to cater for non-linearities in the relationship. The findings, first, suggest that the ratio of private sector to public sector R&D capital spending has a positive effect on total factor productivity. Second, the structure of R&D capital spending has large asymmetric effects on national total factor productivity, with negative changes dominating positive changes. Negative changes in the structure of R&D capital spending negatively influence total factor productivity, but positive changes have positive effects. Both in the short run and the long run, cumulative multipliers indicate that negative changes in the structure of R&D capital spending dominate positive changes by a very large margin. The findings imply that the private sector must become more dominant than the public sector in R&D capital spending in the national system of innovation.
... The belated adoption by the Mbeki administration (1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008) of the 'developmental state' nomenclature in the second half of the 2000s represented more an attempt to shore up legitimacy within the ANC than present a serious policy alternative (Fine, 2010). However, it was inadequate to stave off the accession of Jacob Zuma to the Presidency in 2008, supported by an uneasy coalition of ANC factions: one envisaging a shift from orthodox policies, the other eyeing unproductive accumulation opportunities through the state. ...
This chapter traces how policies and institutions flowing from the post-apartheid political settlement in South Africa gave rise to a range of rents and rent-like transfers, which have not, however, been adequately invested to advance structural transformation. Rather, corporate and industrial restructuring has been associated with a ‘high-profit and low-investment’ economy and deindustrialization. Low investment, job losses, and limited black participation in the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy from the mid-1990s spurred the political impetus for a stronger role for the state during the 2000s. The formal introduction of industrial policy in 2007 has had some successes and helped to avert even deeper deindustrialization. However, it has been undermined by unsupportive macroeconomic policies and a weak articulation between policies to advance black ownership and structural transformation. Rising corruption and maladministration have further undermined structural transformation. Implications are drawn from South Africa’s experience for middle-income countries more generally.
... Concerning the Tunisian case, we have identified the transformative socio-economic developments during the Ben Ali era as variegated forms of embeddedness where neoliberalism has coalesced with increased state intervention, especially in the form of state selecting and dictating the flourishing of certain sectors over the others, and social benefits. Some scholars have also described this situation as 'neodevelopmentalism' regarding countries like Brazil and Argentina in Latin America, or have pointed out to the emergence of the neo-developmental state (with the potential of a more democratic governance) in South Africa (Fine 2010;Evans 2010) and less in Russia (Dutkiewicz and Trenin 2011a, b). Within both frameworks, Ben Ali's Tunisia does not seem to be an exception, as it was claimed by Ben Romdhane (2007). ...
This article aims to analyse the impact of structural adjustment programmes, widely known as the ‘neoliberal model’, on the resilience of authoritarianism during Ben Ali’s regime in Tunisia, to uncover the possible outcomes of the embedded neoliberal and the authoritarian blending. To do this, it engages with two sets of broad questions. How did the Ben Ali regime continue to maintain the regime’s tight grip on power in Tunisia during a ‘neoliberal’ transformation which in theory aims at reducing state influence? What does the Tunisian example tell us about the nature of embedded neoliberalism and its links with authoritarianism in general? The article answers these questions through the analysis of the novel social policy institutions of economic restructuring that took place during the Ben Ali era, namely the National Solidarity Fund, the Tunisian Solidarity Bank and the National Employment Fund. It concludes that these new tools under ‘neoliberal’ transformation increased state intervention in both politics and the economy, and reproduced the societal dependence on the state. Such form of neoliberalism has helped to sustain authoritarianism, but at the same time led to its demise when the social contract in which selective social benefits were provided in exchange for political loyalty failed.
... Historically, this has meant cheap and affordable electricity using coal as the dominant resource, in order to sustain mining activities in the country, as part of its industrial and economic developmental plans (Fine and Rustomjee, 1996). As such, changes in the country's electricity system, both past and present, are often entangled in ideological mismatches between the actors associated with the MEC and those actors which foresee alternative options (Eberhard, 2007;Segatti and Pons-Vignon, 2013;Fine, 2010). ...
... e Gini coefficient index for South Africa was 63.4 and the Palma Ratio 7.1 in 2015.https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/ datablog/2017/apr/26/inequality-index-where-are-the-worlds-most-unequal-countries. 28. See for example Johnson (1982), Alice. (1989, and Chang (2002) for a discussion of the developmental state. 29. See for example chapters by Fine. (2010) and Mohamed (2010a) in the book Edigheji (2010). ...
The Anglo American Corporation was the largest, most powerful South African corporation during the Twentieth Century. This article focuses on the offshore listing and restructuring of Anglo in the post-apartheid period. The restructuring and offshore listings of the largest South African corporations were allowed as part of a neoliberal approach to economic policy adopted by the post-apartheid government. The resulting financialisation of the economy and pressure on the restructured and offshore listed corporations to maximise shareholder value combined with neoliberal economic policies further weakened South Africa’s already inadequate industrial structure, caused macroeconomic harm and is associated with poor growth and higher inequality.
... 14 Ben Fine has usefully shown how the South African electricity sector is most certainly not an exemplar of a 'developmental state'. 15 Sampie Terreblanche dismissed the relevance of the term for South Africa, at least partly due to the weakness of the public sector. 16 Yet the performance of the SKA and its parent bodies, the DST and the NRF, seems to approximate the ideal of a developmental stateeven while other parts of the state exhibit contrary imperatives and dynamics. ...
Since the early 2000s, the roll-out of the MeerKAT astronomy project and the subsequent Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project in the Carnarvon area of the northern Karoo has been remarkably rapid and well managed. This article argues that the project, and the Department of Science and Technology in South Africa, have taken on the characteristics of a ‘developmental state’. This is remarkable, particularly in the context of the general problem of high-level government corruption and ‘state capture’. In the process, the SKA project has also shown a significant degree of centralist direction, which has brought it into tension with the constitutional provisions for decentralised municipal leadership in developmental planning. The weakness of the relevant local and district municipalities can be ascribed to the general problems of poor financing and local leadership; in addition, the Department of Co-operative Governance, at both national and provincial levels, has made no meaningful effort to assist the municipalities in grappling with a highly sophisticated scientific project being implemented within their jurisdiction. In particular, the extensive land acquisition by SKA and its requirements for restrictions on radio-frequency interference may have extensive implications for local and regional development. The article engages with theories of a ‘developmental state’ in South Africa, by arguing that it is possible for a single department to adopt such a centralist modus operandi, even though the rest of the state is characterised by dysfunctions.
... These features said to define a Developmental State reflect an unresolved tension in the Developmental State literature between an "economic" school that focuses on the policies pursued in order to forge particular linkages in the economy and a "political" school that focuses on the characteristics of the state necessary to assert itself "autonomously" over social groupings (Fine and Rustomjee 1996;Fine 2010). ...
This thesis examines competing explanations for weak post-apartheid industrial performance through the lens of the restructuring of steel and engineering and the three private and public conglomerates – Iscor, Anglo American and Rembrandt – that dominated these sectors over South Africa’s transition to democracy. The twentieth-century evolution of these groups is illustrative of apartheid accumulation processes rooted in mining and heavy industries like steel, and their exertion of increasing control across the economy. Confined to a subordinate role, conglomerate engineering subsidiaries developed significant but truncated industrial capabilities. Orthodox explanations for weak post-apartheid industrial performance, based primarily on the persistence of market distortions and skills deficits, are found to be unsatisfactory. Rather underperformance is better understood through a political economy framework emphasising the influence of ideology and interests. Advocacy by the largest conglomerates for orthodox policies amenable to unfettered restructuring were legitimated by ideological claims and asset transfers to politically influential black individuals. Unguided by national strategies and performance requirements, industrial restructuring was undertaken by the conglomerates themselves in concert with increasingly influential institutional investors. This process resulted in widespread destruction of engineering industrial capabilities; the foreclosure of opportunities to develop globally competitive engineering firms; underinvestment and ultimately crisis in the steel sector; and weakened manufacturing linkages and multipliers with the rest of the economy. Furthermore, efforts since 2007 to mobilise industrial policy at scale to promote diversification from heavy industry has been impeded by these lost opportunities and the political economy conditions that spawned them.
... Depending on the yardstickof assessment, scholars have maintained varying positions in this regard. Some modestly consider South Africa as a DS, while others disagree (Edigheji, 2010;Fine, 2010;Bond, 2008). ...
In highlighting the 'strong state' features of the classical developmental state (DS), civil society's role for the realisation of developmental outcomes is often under-represented if not entirely side-lined in the DS literature in Africa. Given the renewed interest in the rising notion of democratic developmental states (DDS), civil society as an integral part
of democracy must have some significance for aspirational developmental trajectory in Africa, and especially in South Africa. This article presents an analysis of the role of civil society in the project of a South African developmental state. A trend assessment is conducted with the view to illuminate where the civil society organisation (CSO) stands,
and in the pursuit of the developmental state in South Africa's young democracy. The study identifies a number of strengths as well as challenges currently facing CSOs in South Africa with regard to their contribution towards the realization of the democratic developmental state.
... Be it from a liberal or a regulationist perspective, the end of apartheid is seen as an opportunity to align the South African economy to the pre-defined model of the dominant capitalist market economy. Indeed, as stressed by many critics (Fine 2010), the alignment of South Africa on the liberal Washington consensus was very quick, whereas the Marxists economists were hoping that the transition would lead to a reduction of inequalities and a more redistributive regime and initially adopted a developmentalist perspective to this end. ...
In this paper, the author examines the different uses and meanings of the usual expression “post-apartheid.” It has been used extensively in the social sciences, political discourse and the media since the mid-1980s. But what does it refer to, and has it always meant the same thing over the last 20 years? To answer that question, the author reviews the different ways she has used the notion in her research into workers’ forms of thinking and political subjectivities in South Africa since 1996. She distinguishes between its use as a chronological marker, an academic concept open to various problematics and epistemological decisions and a notion used by interviewees under various acceptations. She concentrates more specifically on the sequential implications of the adverb “post” in her work and argues that there have been political sequences in what she (with others) has named “post-apartheid.” She concludes that she intends to stop using this term in order to concentrate on identifying the current political sequence in South Africa.
... Public administration scholars such as De Visser (2010) and Cameron (2010) who paid particular attention to the functionality of municipalities, have directed attention towards the inefficiencies of municipal bureaucracies, arguing that political appointments and ANC interference in the running of municipalities have promoted widespread bureaucratic incompetence and inefficiency. Here analysts and academics begin to question not only the capability of the state to deliver on its constitutional 'developmental' mandate (Butler 2010;Von Holdt 2010;Fine 2010) but also the way in which the ANC has managed to conflate the party with the state (Booysen 2015). 5 While scholars are beginning to take more interest in local government research, which adds valuable insight to the understanding of the dynamics and challenges of local democracy, they have provided little insight about the complexities of representative local democracy to explain the everyday experiences of councillors in the process of council decision-making from the perspective of elected representatives using ethnography. ...
Research over the last decade on local government in South Africa has highlighted that some municipal councils under the political leadership of the Africa National Congress (ANC) have shown weak political leadership, coupled with strong patronage systems, rent-seeking and corruption which have had an impact on the institutional functionality of municipalities in South Africa. Although patronage politics have been predominantly used to analyse the dynamics of post-apartheid local government ANC politics and councillor representation, this prevents us from understanding the representational focus of ANC councillors in decision-making processes. This paper offers an ethnographic insight into experiences of ANC councillors and the political complexities involved in council decision-making. Using ethnographic research, this paper will analyse how a political decision by the ANC provincial party, which was supported by the ANC regional party at local level – to erect a statue of Nelson Mandela in one of the municipalities in the Northern Cape – generated tensions amongst ANC councillors who strongly viewed their primary role as promoters of better ‘service delivery’ rather than approving the allocation of scarce municipal resources for erecting a statue. The paper reveals how the dominant presence of ANC sub-regional structures at local level contribute to the complex interaction of both ANC party political and municipal organisational rules and norms that influence and shape councillors’ choices in decision-making.
... While this perspective overlaps in some ways with the work of other critical political economists, it is distinctive. Fine (2010), for example, while noting the constraints of macroeconomic policy on the realisation of a South African developmental state, as well as the inherent limits of the developmental state paradigm, concentrates his critique on the absence of the conditions necessary to realise a developmental state: institutional capacity and strategic state/capital engagements. His approach is grounded in an understanding of the Minerals Energy Complex (MEC) -which is about a symbiotic relationship between state and capital and core activities related to mining and energy such as minerals extraction, heavy metals, heavy chemicals and fossil-fuel-generated electricity -and from this perspective recommends policy alternatives. ...
This article situates the Marikana massacre, in which 34 mine workers were gunned down by police in South Africa, in the context of what the South African state has become, and questions the characterisation of the post-Apartheid state as a "developmental state". This contribution first highlights what is at stake when the post-Apartheid state is portrayed as a "developmental state" and how this misrecognition of the state is ideologically constituted. Second, it argues for an approach to understanding the post-Apartheid state by locating it within the context of the rise of transnational neoliberalism and the process of indigenising neoliberalism on the African continent. Third, it examines the actual economic practices of the state that constitute it as an Afro-neoliberal state. Such economic practices are historicised to show the convergence between the post-Apartheid state and the ideal type neoliberal state coming to the fore in the context of global neoliberal restructuring and crisis management. The article concludes by recognising that South Africa's deep globalisation and globalised state affirm a form of state practice beyond utilising market mechanisms that includes perpetrating violence to secure its existence. Marikana makes this point.
... The idea/l of South Africa as a developmental state has been dusted off by the ANC As pointed out above, the capacity for companies to play a developmental role is determined by a confluence of factors, the most important of which is arguably the macro-economic environment. The question posed by Fine (2008): "Can South Africa be a developmental state", is accordingly of pivotal importance when one pursues the argument that companies should shoulder a larger burden and play a more developmental role. ...
Thesis (MPhil (School of Public Management and Planning))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. The negative impact of poverty on development and security in South Africa has been exacerbated by high food prices. However, high food prices have also had a positive effect in that it galvanised civil society into coalescing and finally playing an activist role. Looking at the development of corporate social responsibility and how it was shaped by external influences exerted on it by society, the thesis argues that high food prices might be one of those triggers that might change the implementation of corporate social responsibility from that as a business tool to one that is more developmental in its intent. This argument is one that has been proposed by developmental theorists, but has been resisted by companies for various reasons herein discussed. In the same way that corporate social responsibility is shaped by external factors, development is also determined by the macro (economic) policies and state capacity in which the company operates. State incapacity has led the citizens looking at companies increasingly to fulfil a more developmental role. In this regard there are problems attendant to the private sector assuming the responsibilities of the state and the thesis argues that the private sector should rather play a complementary role to development interventions of government. The combination of the factors highlighted above has led to increased pressure on the private sector to play a more developmental role, and there appears to be a degree of acknowledgment from the private sector. This thesis looks critically at some approaches to corporate social responsibility and uses one particular company to illustrate, not only some of the critical factors of successful engagement with development through CSR, such as leadership and context specific interventions, but also to show that development and, particularly, poverty alleviation is compatible with running a profitable organisation.
While South Africa shares some characteristics with other middle-income countries, it has a unique economic history with distinctive characteristics. South Africa is an economic powerhouse with a significant role not only at the southern African regional and continental levels, but also as a member of BRICS. However, the country faces profound developmental challenges, including the ‘triple challenges’ of poverty, inequality and unemployment. There has been a lack of structural transformation and weak economic growth. Ongoing debates around economic policies to address these challenges need to be based on rigorous and robust empirical evidence and in-depth analysis of South African economic issues. This necessitates wide-ranging research, such as that brought together in this handbook. This volume intends to provide original, comprehensive, detailed, state-of-the-art analytical perspectives, that contribute to knowledge while also contributing to well-informed and productive discourse on the South African economy. While concentrating on the more recent economic challenges facing the country, the handbook also provides historical and political context, an in-depth examination of strategic issues in the various critical economic sectors, and assembles diverse analytical perspectives and arguments that have implications for policymaking.
Following the contested 2005 election, the Ethiopian state enhanced its repression of dissent and tried to gain legitimacy through delivering on development targets by branding itself as a “developmental state” until the election of a reformist Prime Minister in 2018. In line with its developmental aspiration, the Ethiopian state engaged in large-scale inner-city slum redevelopment between 2009 and 2017 by displacing thousands of households to the periphery. Based on six months of qualitative research, this article interrogates the way the Ethiopia state framed the inner-city redevelopment using Bob Jessop's “Strategic-Relational Approach.” The article argues that the Ethiopian state framed slum redevelopment to project itself as a developmental and to enhance state control of the inner-city. At the same time, the state used inner-city redevelopment, to minimize the cost of the intervention through dispossessing inner-city residents and leasing the land at a higher premium. However, since 2012, there is a tendency to use the redevelopment for the accumulation of high-end developers by framing the redevelopment as a means to build the “Diplomatic Capital Africa.” Overall, the Ethiopian aspiring developmental state used slum redevelopment not only to facilitate accumulation but also to consolidate its tight grip on power.
In 1994, the first democratically elected government in South Africa faced the significant task of shaping new institutions and delivery transmission mechanisms capable of developing and implementing policies aimed at inclusive socio-economic growth and development. Evidence shows that the South African public sector is generally not yet able to be a key driver of development, at least not to the extent required to reduce poverty and inequality to the levels envisioned in the National Development Plan.
The study argues that comprehensive public sector reform based on the principles of New Public Management was inappropriate given the unique South African political and institutional context and that incremental approaches to development are more likely to achieve results. This leaves room for the emergence of islands of effectiveness where public entrepreneurs or multi-stakeholder governed arrangements could be employed as alternative or complementary delivery transmission mechanisms.
Operation Phakisa, an adaptation of the Malaysian Big Fast Results methodology, introduced a radical new approach to improving government impact. The Operation Phakisa methodology made certain assumptions about (or perhaps deliberately ignored) prevailing principal-agent relationships in South Africa and the readiness of these relationships to be challenged and transformed.
Through the development and application of an analytical framework, the study examines the role of islands of effectiveness (using the Oceans Economy Operation Phakisa as a case study) as possible alternative or complementary delivery transmission mechanisms. While the Oceans Economy Operation Phakisa did not create sufficient scope for multi-stakeholder governance arrangements, some initiatives, most notably the Oil and Gas initiative, did benefit from public entrepreneurs that were able to navigate complex political and institutional realities to achieve results.
Based on the outcome of the analysis, the study concludes with recommendations that could enhance the effectiveness of future iterations of Operation Phakisa.
Históricamente, las aproximaciones tradicionales al concepto de Estado desarrollista se han caracterizado por un enfoque unidimensional centrado en los éxitos económicos de las naciones del este asiático durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX. En concreto, este concepto se ha asociado a aquellos países que desarrollaron una serie de políticas públicas industriales con un gran impacto en términos de desarrollo económico.
The automotive industry is used as a case study to examine why the attempts by the post-apartheid state to channel private investment along the lines of developmental states under conditions of globalisation have been not successful. Instead of building a developmental state, the post-apartheid state elite has built a nanny state which simply provides handouts to transnational companies.
Shortly after the turn of the twenty-first century, the world found itself in the midst of a remarkable resource commodity boom: investments and terms of trade in extractive industries were at record levels. The voracious demand for natural resources of emerging powers, most notably China and India, as a result of their sustained economic growth has kept commodity prices buoyant. The boom of 2003 is unlike any previous resource booms that have occurred since the end of World War II. The boom of 1950–1960s rested on the massive industry build-up in response to the Korean War and did not endure past the next cycle of economic downturn. Likewise, the 1973–1974 oil boom which was fuelled by widespread harvest failures, the collapse of the Bretton Woods currency system and OPEC’s market management, tripling the price of oil, reached its nadir as the world economy entered a protracted era of recession (Radetzki, 2006). The 2003 boom has proven more durable. Investments continue to pour into resource-rich countries, especially those of the Global South owning significant untapped mineral, oil and hydrocarbon reserves. What is all the more striking is that the 2008 global financial crisis has hardly slowed down the rate of growth and foreign investment in resource-rich states.
Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, welche Auswirkungen Reprimarisierung und der Umgang mit ihr auf die Verfolgung von Entwicklungsstrategien haben. Überdies wird analysiert, inwieweit Strategien regionaler Integration und Kooperation vor dem Hintergrund subregionaler Asymmetrien mit der Rohstoffexportorientierung in Zusammenhang stehen bzw. andere Entwicklungsstrategien begünstigen können. Als theoretische Basis dient die Regulationstheorie, die mit politökonomische Theorien nachholder Industrialisierung sowie zur Rolle des Geldes/Finanzialisierung und der geopolitischen Dimensionen der Rohstoffe ergänzt wird. Darauf aufbauend werden Brasilien, Venezuela und Chile als Fallbeispiele dargestellt, die unterschiedliche Strategien der Reprimarisierung verfolgen: (1) Brasilien setzt auf Agrobusiness als Teil einer Strategie der entwicklungsstaatlichen Industrialisierung, (2) Venezuela hingegen auf Erdölexporte mit partieller Sozialisierung der Erdölrente. Beide Staaten suchen nach politischen Lösungsansätzen jenseits des Neoliberalismus. (3) Chile wird dazu kontrastierend als stärker wirtschaftsliberal orientiertes Land mit traditionell dominantem Kupfersektor gewählt. Es wird argumentiert, dass trotz Reprimarisierung der Exportstruktur wesentliche Unterschiede in den Entwicklungsstrategien auszumachen sind. Diese sind vor dem Hintergrund nationaler politökonomischer Prozesse sowie im Kontext regionaler Interaktionsmuster zu verstehen.
Seit dem Ende der Apartheid ist Südafrika auf der Suche nach einem Entwicklungsmodell zur Überwindung der gravierenden sozio-ökonomischen Herausforderungen. Nach einer langen Phase der Neoliberalisierung in den 1990er Jahren erlebte die Diskussion zur Mitte der 2000er eine Reorientierung zum Entwicklungsstaat. Neben den akademischen Debatten entwickelte die Regierung auch einen Industrieentwicklungsplan, in dem die Handelspolitik als Säule der Industriepolitik als auch die Rolle des Staates gestärkt wurde. Daher befasst sich dieser Beitrag mit den praktischen und politischen Problemen der Umsetzung einer entwicklungsstaatlich ausgerichteten Handels- und Industriepolitik in Südafrika. Dabei wird skizziert, inwiefern sich Charakteristika des asiatischen Entwicklungsstaates, wie z. B. politische Rahmenbedingen, elitäre Staatsbürokratie, staatliche Intervention sowie Staats- Unternehmens-(Gewerkschafts-) Beziehungen sich in der Industrie- und Handelspolitik wiederfinden.
The nation-as-method approach of Comparative Capitalisms (CC) scholarship has generally taken differential economic growth outcomes between national settings as a core explanandum. The widening of this scholarship beyond its original concern for the Triad nations of Western Europe, North America and Japan draws in countries from across a much greater disparity in economic performance (see also Ebenau, in this volume). This ‘globalizing’ CC work therefore more intently confronts the problematic of how the material conditions of people have improved more rapidly and inclusively in some countries than in others, and it is here that CC scholarship begins to more closely resemble strands of development studies. It is also at this juncture that more statist CC scholars have imported the idea of the developmental state, as the literature surrounding this concept shares the interest of the capitalist diversity field in examining relations between degrees of state-strategic coordination and economic performance (see Storz et al., 2013, p. 219; Gaitán and Boschi, in this volume). But in the pursuit of an institutional formula for wealth creation, this CC work and cognate scholarship on the developmental state overlook the prospect that poverty creation (on which see Blaney and Inayatullah, 2010, p. 2) might actually be constitutive of such a process.
The article evaluates the concept of ‘developmental’ policies, comparing post-communist Russia and Sub-Saharan African (SSA) states. Asian ‘developmental state’ policies have been identified as developmental because of successful industrial policies and leaders’ ability to implement them. The comparison shows that while these features have been absent in SSA, notably due to the trapping effects of commodity dependence, Russia exhibits an original dualistic model where the negative impact of commodity dependence (such as the creation of rents) is compatible with developmental industrial policies. The evidence presented demonstrates the importance of constraints that stem from both economic and political structures, in turn explaining variations in developmental policy effectiveness.
Over the past few years, there has been an increasing discomfort with the inability of the South African economy to grow at a pace capable of absorbing the unemployed third of the country’s workforce and reversing the rising levels of inequality. This has led to a vigorous debate around alternative growth strategies and the need for a so-called democratic development state (DDS) to more effectively facilitate growth and development and, concomitantly, employment. This paper argues that South Africa’s significant mineral assets could give it a unique and powerful lever with which to build a DDS that optimises the mineral linkages opportunities and thereby contributes to sustainable growth, development and employment. However, resources also come with all of the pitfalls of the ‘resources curse’ which need to be countered and/or ameliorated with appropriate strategies, policies and interventions. This paper makes several concrete recommendations on the types of interventions that a DDS could make to optimise the developmental impact of South Africa’s mineral assets by realising the seminal mineral linkages and ensuring competitively priced feedstocks.
The New Growth Path (NGP) is the symbolic policy document of South Africa's newly formed Department of Economic Development. It marks an intended break with the growth path of the first two decades of the post-apartheid era. But does it do so in principle and is it likely to do so in practice? This paper suggests otherwise because of its failure to address, let alone remedy, the key determining features of the post-apartheid economic landscape. These are the (international) financialisation of (domestic) conglomerate capital especially associated with (illegal) capital flight, the complicity of a newly formed black elite, and the continuing reliance upon how these interact with South Africa's longstanding minerals–energy complex (MEC). Without breaking with these features, the NGP in particular, and policy more generally, will seek to temper the gains and organisational opposition of better-off workers for putative benefits to those deprived of employment and basic levels of public provision.
[Évaluer la nouvelle direction de croissance d'Afrique du Sud : cadre pour le changement?] La nouvelle ligne de croissance (NGP) est le document de la politique symbolique du nouveau ministère sud-africain de développement économique. Il marque une pause prévue avec la ligne de la croissance des deux premières décennies survenues après l'ère de l'apartheid. Mais est-ce que cela se confirme dans le principe et dans la pratique? Ce document suggère le contraire, à cause de son incapacité à répondre - sans parler de remède – aux principales caractéristiques qui déterminent le paysage économique de la période après l'apartheid. Il s'agit de la financiarisation (internationale) du capital conglomérat (domestique), en particulier associée à la fuite (illégale) des capitaux, la complicité d'une élite noire nouvellement constituée, et d'un appui persistant sur la façon dont ceux-ci interagissent avec le complexe de longue date des minéraux d'énergie de l'Afrique du Sud. Sans rompre avec ces caractéristiques, la NGP en particulier, et plus généralement la politique, cherchera à tempérer les gains et l'opposition de l'organisation des travailleurs plus aisés pour des avantages supposés aux personnes privées d'emploi et les niveaux de base de la prestation publique.
Mots-clés: La Nouvelle trajectoire de croissance ; financiarisation ; complexe des minéraux d'énergie ; Afrique du Sud
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