Introduction: State and Development

Literature › Works

Ben Fine; Colin Stoneman (1996). Introduction: State and Development. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1, Special Issue: State and Development. Taylor & Francis.

Type	journal article
Scope	Comparative and methods
Method	synthesis review
Period studied	1980–1995
Regions	Southern Africa, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia
Themes	comparative theory, business and state, transition post apartheid, macro fiscal finance debt, mining migrant labour, manufacturing industrial policy
Citation key	fine1996

Argument

The editors survey the revival of development studies since the 1980s. They argue that it has narrowed methodologically and become more conservative, because Marxist and class-based approaches were excised and the debate was reduced to a state-versus-market dichotomy. They criticise the World Bank/IMF's structural adjustment agenda and the 'economic' and 'political' schools of the developmental state for sidelining class and global factors. They hold that state versus market is a false dichotomy, because class interests are formed and represented through both. They apply this to southern Africa, arguing that South Africa is the key to regional development and that the post-apartheid transition is accommodating an incipient black bourgeoisie while the IMF/WB bide their time.

Evidence and method

Secondary literature review (development economics, political science, structural adjustment studies, East Asian developmental state literature). Selected statistics on sub-Saharan Africa's growth, the number of adjustment programmes, and mine remittances. Brief case illustrations of Zimbabwe and South Africa's RDP. Frames the other papers in the special issue.

Findings

• Development studies' 'resolution' of its 1980s impasse worked by excising Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches rather than resolving underlying difficulties. (p. 3)

  the resolution of the impasse, or whatever, has proved to be one of excising Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches.

• Development studies has become focused on East Asian success and on failure and structural adjustment, narrowing its methodological scope. (p. 3)

  One is concerned with identifying the causes of success in the east Asian NICs; the other is pre-occupied with failure and, consequently, the relationship between development and structural adjustment and stabilisation.

• The authors cite regional costs of apartheid's dislocation and the dependence of Lesotho and Mozambique on mine remittances. (p. 4)

  Remuneration for formal recruitment to the South African mines was equivalent to 65% of Lesotho's GDP in 1992; remittances to Mozambique provided 15.8% of total visible and invisible foreign earniings.

• Campbell's estimate of the regional cost of apartheid's dislocation, cited by the authors. (p. 4)

  estimates the regional cost of apartheid's dislocation to be around $70 billion and two million lives.

• Sub-Saharan growth collapsed after 1973, and adjustment programmes proliferated in the 1980s. (p. 7)

  Growth rates of real GDP fell from 6.4% for 1965-1973 to 3.2% for 1973-80, with the corresponding figures in per capita terms representing a fall from 3.6% to 0.3%.

• The state-market dichotomy is rejected as an analytical starting point. (p. 16)

  From our perspective, this is a false dichotomy to adopt as an analytical starting point. Class interests are formed and represented both through the state and through the market

• Privatisation is a form of state intervention favouring some capitalists, not a withdrawal of the state. (p. 16)

  privatisation is better seen not as the withdrawal of the state in favour of the market, but as a particular form of intervention

• Apartheid is characterised as a class-based intervention in the SADCC view, with markets seen as legitimising its outcomes. (p. 20)

  the policy of apartheid within South Africa was similarly a major class-based intervention and that, consequently, opposing interventions were needed to undo the dependent and exploitative relations thereby established.

• South Africa is not loan-dependent, so the IMF/WB cannot force an adjustment programme on it and have instead made concessions to class forces such as COSATU. (p. 19)

  they have learned to bide their time and cannot, currently, force South Africa into an adjustment programme as it is not loan-dependent.

• The post-apartheid transition is interpreted as accommodating a black bourgeoisie, with capital incorporating a black elite faster than in Zimbabwe despite a stronger labour movement. (p. 22)

  Capital has moved faster than in Zimbabwe to incorporate a black elite, in face of a much stronger and politically influential labour movement.