Business and the State in Africa

The dominant developmental approach in Africa over the last twenty years has been to advocate the role of markets and the private sector in restoring economic growth. Recent thinking has also stressed the need for ownership of economic reform by the populations of developing countries, particularly the business community. This book studies the business-government interactions of four African countries: Ghana, Zambia, South Africa and Mauritius. Employing a historical institutionalist approach, Antoinette Handley considers why and how business in South Africa and Mauritius has developed the capacity to constructively contest the making of economic policy while, conversely, business in Zambia and Ghana has struggled to develop any autonomous political capacity. Paying close attention to the mutually constitutive interactions between business and the state, Handley considers the role of timing and how ethnicised and racialised identities can affect these interactions in profound and consequential ways.

Spis treści:
Introduction, the African business class and development
Part I. Institutionalizing Constructive Contestation
1. Ethnicity, race, and the development of the South African business class, 1870–1989
2. The neo-liberal era in South Africa, negotiating capitalist development
3. Business and government in Mauritius, public hostility, private pragmatism
Part II. Business and the Neo-patrimonial State
4. The emergence of neo-patrimonial business in Ghana, 1850–1989
5. State-dominant reform, Ghana in the 1990s and 2000s
6. Business and government in Zambia, too close for comfort
Conclusion, comparatively speaking, the business of economic policymaking.