This timely text reevaluates the contemporary political economy of Africa in the light of continuing economic and ecological crises, changing perceptions and prescriptions, and transformations in global economic and strategic relations. It treats hitherto overlooked issues such as gender and informal sectors and examines proliferating conditionalities, such as democratic structures and military expenditures. It suggests that established perspectives need to be superceded by revisionist approaches and it anticipates disappointment with current structural adjustment programmes, advocating instead a return to various forms of self-reliance.
Both political economy and foreign policy have been transformed in the sixteen states of West Africa at the start of the 1990s because of interrelated external factors (end of the Cold War and start of a New International Division of Labour) and internal factors (national structural adjustment programmes). Sixteen leading analysts of new regional relations, of both cooperation and conflict, offer original revisionist insights into ECOWAS and ECOMOG, debt and democracy, reform and resistance. The mixture of case studies and comparative analyses constitutes a comprehensive overview of West African actors, issues, structures, perspectives and possibilities at the end of the century, with relevance for development discourses and directions in other peripheral regions. Together these offer timely redefinitions and reconceptualisations of central notions like civil society, diplomacy, foreign policy, peacekeeping, security, and self-reliance for political economies and cultures throughout the South.
In 1990 Zimbabwe embarked on economic liberalisation. The country's economic associations, notably that erstwhile proponent of protectionism, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, had successfully lobbied for gradual reform. While state autonomy has often been regarded as a vital condition for reform, in Zimbabwe societal groups have induced an initially recalcitrant government to reconsider its basic policies. After 1980 the government tried to limit political competition. However, because of the perceived need for racial reconciliation following the guerrilla war, it maintained dialogue with settler-dominated interest groups along the pattern of societal corporatism established in the 1930s. By contrast, African associations, particularly labour unions, have regularly been subjected to regimentation. The government, however, has listened more closely to the demands of African farmers, who want to preserve parastatal marketing and governmental determination of prices. In Zimbabwe key urban groups support liberalisation while key rural groups do not. Theories of urban bias must therefore be qualified.
Globalization is transforming the world at an accelerated pace. Integration of the world continues, widening and intensifying international linkages in economic, political and social relations. Liberalization of trade and fmance, lubricated by revolutionary changes in information technology, has resulted in significant economic growth at the global level. On the other hand, the process of globalization is changing the nature of production relations, threatening the traditional roles of the nation-state, and carrying with it far-reaching implications for sustainable growth, development and the environment. Although both developed and developing countries are actively participating in this saga of globalization, nearly ninety countries, as the United Nations' Human Development Report, 1996 indicates, are worse off economically than they were ten years ago, leading to "global polarization" between haves and have nots. The report further indicates that the gap between the per capita incomes of the industrialized world and the developing countries, far from narrowing, has more than tripled during the last thirty years. Further, a majority of the countries benefitting from this globalization drive have seen a rise in inequality and poverty. This failure of market driven globalization to reward the benefits equitably led the United Nations to proclaim 1996 as the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty (IYEP) and the decade of 1997-2006 as the international decade for the eradication of poverty, and to promote "people-centered sustainable development".
This book explores the concept of sovereignty in the post-modern world and its interrelationship to problems and issues facing the Third World. Specifically it examines the theoretical and practical dimensions of sovereignty in the current era, such as its changing dimensions and possible disintegration. These issues are placed into a real-world context by examining their relationships to political and economic development in the Third World.
Most African states experienced only a few fleeting years of democratic rule after independence before succumbing to authoritarianism. During the 1970s and 1980s, Africans and Westerners alike came to view dictatorship to be as much a part of the region’s social landscape as its grinding poverty. Yet the end of the Cold War and the sharpening of the economic crisis at the end of the 1980s have breathed new life into campaigns for democracy in Africa, shaking the foundations of many long-standing autocracies. In some cases, dramatic transitions took place, though the fate of the new democracies is far from certain. This volume explores the origins and evolution of political reform movements in several states of francophone Africa. The authors first make the case for the distinctiveness of francophone Africa, based on the influences of colonial history, language, and France’s contemporary role in Africa, then survey the challenges of reform, including the problems of transition from authoritarianism and consolidation of democratic regimes. Case studies of thirteen former French and Belgian colonies follow, organized by level of reform achieved: peaceful regime change, incremental reforms, repressed reform efforts, and reform in the midst of war.
First published in 1997. An introduction to the theory and practices of development in the third world, tracing the evolution of development theory over 40 years, and examining why so many of the benefits of development are still not shared by millions.
This book is dedicated to the implications of the new regionalism for global security and development. The fourth in the five-volume New Regionalism Series, it features contributions from the UNU/WIDER project on new regionalism.
Political Science Abstracts is an annual supplement to the Political Science, Government, and Public Policy Series of The Universal Reference System, which was first published in 1967. All back issues are still available.
