1. 02/05/2012
In search of a politics of
economic transformation
in Africa
David Booth
Presentation to IOB seminar “Rethinking
State, Economy and Society: Political
settlements and transformation potential of
African states”, Antwerp, 27 Apr 2012
www.institutions-africa.org
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Overview
 The problem: economic transformation and African governance
 What we know ... about the macro-political preconditions
 What we know ... about the micro-political preconditions
 If true, what does this mean for policy priorities and action?
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2. 02/05/2012
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The problem, 1: Africa versus Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia and Sub‐Saharan Africa: GDP per capita (constant 2000 USD), 1960‐2009
1800
1600
1400 Southeast Asia
1200 Sub‐Saharan Africa
1000
800
600
400
200
0
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
Source: Jan Kees van Donge, David Henley and Peter Lewis, ‘Tracking Development in South-East
Asia and sub-Saharan Africa: The Primacy of Policy’, Development Policy Review 30(s1), Feb 2012
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More on Tracking Development (Leiden)
 Paired comparisons:
 Nigeria/Indonesia
 Kenya/Malaysia
 Tanzania/Vietnam
 Uganda/Cambodia
 Primacy of policy:
 Sound macroeconomic management
 Economic freedom for peasants and small entrepreneurs
 Pro-poor, p
p pro-rural public spending
p p g
 Implementation approach:
 Outreach: get benefits to a large number of people
 Urgency: do it quickly, with the resources immediately to hand
 Expediency: laws, rights and ideological precepts take second place
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3. 02/05/2012
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The problem, 2: Economic growth versus
transformation
 Economic headlines of 2010: Africa on the move
 McKinsey report “Lions on the Move”: accelerating growth during 2000s;
not just a resource boom
 Steven Radelet CGA book: steady economic growth and democratisation
since mid-1990s in 17 “cheetah” countries
 Economic headlines of 2011: not just growth but … transformation
Justin Lin K.Y. Amoako UNECA Economic Report 2011
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More on economic transformation:
 Productivity breakthroughs in smallholder agriculture
 Structural change (diversification of production and exports)
 Acquisition of skills and technological capabilities by firms (of a
certain size)
 Anticipation of comparative advantages
 And, therefore, an active state, to
 tackle major infrastructure obstacles (transport, power, water)
 free-up markets
 improve health, education and skills
 facilitate and force firms to grow and upgrade
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4. 02/05/2012
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The problem, 3: What about the politics?
 A 30-year conventional wisdom about Africa has ruled out successful
state interventionism:
 Inevitability of political corruption and managerial inefficiency – “rent
seeking”, “neopatrimonialism”
 “First get good governance” – so that states are accountable to citizens
 That means better public financial management, multi-party elections and
… democratic decentralization
 Global hype around the Arab Spring – renewal of public belief in
democratization as magic bullet
 The trouble is:
 Asian experience does not support the Good Governance orthodoxy or
popular faith in democracy as the solution to all problems …
 … nor does African experience
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The trouble with ‘good governance’: Asia
 In SE Asia, as in NE Asia, a
transformational policy mix was
delivered by very different types of
regimes, and
i d
 few conformed to conventional good
governance
 those that were not ex-communist
would be considered neopatrimonial
 We need to work harder at
identifying what it is about
y g
governance that matters, and what
doesn’t matter, in getting very poor
countries to the next level …
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5. 02/05/2012
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Mushtaq Khan on governance and growth
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What do we know about “rent seeking” and
transformation in Africa?
 In Africa as in Asia, the formula that seems to work for
transformation combines
 A mechanism enabling centralization of control of
economic rents and their deployment with a view to the
(relatively) long term
 Political protection for competent, socially embedded,
sector bureaucracies
 Recent theory tells us why this should be the case
 Contrary to the g
y good-governance orthodoxy, economic
g y
transformation requires the generation and investment of
“rents” – e.g. to finance learning costs of pioneer firms
 The allocation of rents is also the key to political
settlements that maintain peace and a predictable
economic environment
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What else do we know about macro-political
pre-conditions?
 Historically, this “developmental patrimonialism” has
only happened under two types of particular conditions
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Why democracy doesn’t help
 In history, elections and liberal-democratic
institutions have very different effects in
different socio-economic settings
 Until societies have substantial organizational
U t soc et es a e substa t a o ga at o a
capacity, so that promises to deliver public goods
are realistic and credible
 … it will always be cost effective to win elections
with bold gestures plus distribution of private
rewards (and punishments) to voters and clients
 The short-termism that elections generate is
more damaging when countries are divided
into big th i blocs, and th C
i t bi ethnic bl d the Constitution
tit ti
says “winner takes all”
 These issues need to be understood as large-
scale collective-action problems
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7. 02/05/2012
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What have we learned about the micro-political
preconditions?
 APPP Local Governance research: what works to overcome key
bottlenecks in local public goods’ provision?
goods
 Water & sanitation; safe motherhood; public order/security; facilitation
of markets & enterprise
 Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda
 Co-provision is the norm; much informal privatisation as well
 Focus on proximate institutional factors + wider enabling/inhibiting
conditions
 Fieldwork + literature
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What have we learned about the micro-political
preconditions?
 Critical importance of
policy coherence vs.
incoherence
 Caused by politics +
donors
 What motivates better
public goods provision
– not global magic
bullets
 Especially not the magic
p y g
bullet of the “demand side”
and social accountability
 Enabling vs. blocking
local problem-solving
 Ostrom was right!
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Implications for action?
 Getting agriculture and rural infrastructure properly on the agenda
 Getting a greater sense of history about development, democracy
and the realisation of human rights
 No crude trade-offs, but good things don’t always go together
 More steadiness, and less jumping on global bandwagons
 Making democracy safe for development!
 Explore ways of taming competitive clientelism, electoral short-termism
and “winner takes all”
 Stop promoting magic bullets of “demand” and start unblocking local
problem-solving, which i not th same
bl l i hi h is t the
 Conceptually, revisit some of the master-concepts that have guided
governance reform:
 From “best practice” to “good fit”; but also
 Less principal-agent thinking and more on collective-action problems and
solutions www.institutions-africa.org
Africa
p
power and
politics
The Africa Power and Politics Programme is
a consortium research programme funded
by the UK Department for International
Development (DFID) and Irish Aid for the
benefit of developing countries.
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