Constructing a Democratic Developmental State in South Africa: Potentials and Challenges

Literature › Works

Omano Edigheji (ed.); Peter B Evans; Thandika Mkandawire; Ha-Joon Chang; Eun Mee Kim; Jonathon W Moses; Seeraj Mohamed; Ben Fine; Anthony Butler; Kenneth Creamer; Simon Roberts; Karl von Holdt; Salim Akoojee; Sam Moyo (2010). Constructing a Democratic Developmental State in South Africa: Potentials and Challenges. HSRC Press, Cape Town.

Type	book
Scope	Post-1994 South African economy
Method	synthesis review
Period studied	1870s–2009
Regions	South Africa, Southern Africa (SADC), East Asia, Norway/Scandinavia
Themes	transition post apartheid, business and state, manufacturing industrial policy, macro fiscal finance debt, comparative theory, agriculture land, education human capital, inequality poverty unemployment
Citation key	ed2010

Argument

The edited volume asks whether and how post-1994 South Africa can build a developmental state that is also democratic and socially inclusive. Contributors argue that there is no one-size-fits-all model; the goal should be human capability expansion supported by competent, embedded and democratically accountable institutions. Comparative chapters (East Asia, Korea, Norway, Africa) supply lessons, while South African chapters diagnose obstacles: mainstream corporate and macro governance, the minerals-energy complex, weak bureaucratic and skills capacity, and unresolved agrarian dispossession. Views range from advocacy (Edigheji, Evans, Chang) to scepticism (Fine, Butler). The apartheid-era material is background only; the main content concerns the post-apartheid state. The text supplied omits the middle, including most of Moses, Mohamed and the start of Fine.

Evidence and method

Secondary literature, comparative case studies (South Korea, Norway, Scandinavia, Japan, France, US, Indonesia, Philippines), South African government and ANC policy documents, Reserve Bank, Treasury, Stats SA and SADC/World Bank/UNCTAD data, and the author's participant observation and interviews in public hospitals (von Holdt).

Findings

• Government and ANC have formally committed to a democratic developmental state. (p. 11)

  the ANC at its National General Council in mid-2005 committed itself to constructing a developmental state that will intervene to restructure the South African economy

• Evans: the central goal of the 21st-century developmental state is capability expansion, not only industrial growth. (p. 48)

  a 21st century developmental state must be a ‘capability-enhancing state’

• Arrighi et al. link South Africa's relative income decline to historical dispossession of Africans from land. (p. 49)

  incomes in South Africa fell from over 25 per cent of first world income levels in 1960 to about one half of that proportion in 2005

• Mkandawire: 1980s–90s African reforms produced a weak regulatory state rather than a developmental one. (p. 59)

  the slew of reforms of the 1980s and 1990s at best produced a maladjusted state – an anaemic regulatory state unlikely to perform the required functions of a developmental state

• Chang finds South Africa's mineral-energy conglomerates constrain state autonomy, while strong party and organisational assets help. (p. 88)

  South Africa has a unique negative political condition for the developmental state as well, in terms of its relative state autonomy: its energy-mineral conglomerates

• Fine argues post-apartheid conglomerates pursued globalisation and financialisation rather than domestic development. (p. 175)

  conglomerates have successfully pressed for their own strategy of corporate globalisation and financialisation and, first and foremost, the export of their domestic resources and control

• Fine sees the electricity crisis as evidence of the absence of a developmental state. (p. 176)

  the electricity does not go off in a developmental state or, at least, this is a developmental outcome that is to be avoided

• Butler argues for consolidation and priority on health, education and public-service capacity over grand state architecture. (p. 198)

  government’s limited human resources and political capital should initially be focused on building human capabilities through health and education investment

• Creamer proposes a macro mix of reconstructive fiscal, stabilising monetary policy and a floating rand. (p. 210)

  reconstructive fiscal policy – stabilising monetary policy – floating exchange rate

• Von Holdt: the post-apartheid bureaucracy departs from Weberian rationality and resembles an intermediate state. (p. 257)

• Roberts: apartheid-era state-supported firms retain entrenched dominance with little local rivalry. (p. 225)

  their local dominance is well entrenched by their being favoured as national champions with no effective local rivalry

• Moyo: SADC states' failure to transform agriculture leaves the region food-insecure. (p. 288)

  Cereal consumption per capita in the region declined by an average of about 15 kg per person, from a peak of 127 kg per person in 1981 to 100 kg per person in 2005