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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The State, Structural Adjustment and Good Government in Africa
Author:Jeffries, RichardISNI
Year:1993
Periodical:Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics
Volume:31
Issue:1
Period:March
Pages:20-35
Language:English
Geographic term:Africa
Subjects:democracy
economic development
economic policy
civil service
Politics and Government
Economics and Trade
international relations
External link:https://doi.org/10.1080/14662049308447646
Abstract:The 'overdevelopment' of the State, in a particular parasitic form, was a major cause of the economic decline experienced by many countries in Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. The result of both was in turn a weakening of governmental capacity and effectiveness. This weakness has hindered attempts at economic revival via structural adjustment. The World Bank was quite right, therefore, to move in the late 1980s towards a concern with improving governmental capacity. Much more questionable, however, has been its subsequent identification of developmental 'good government' with multiparty democracy and its focus on encouraging the emergence of civil society. Even less intellectually tenable is the tendency of some Africanist scholars to wax optimistic about a new era of hand-in-hand economic and political liberalization, both supported by a reflowering of civil society. This is wishful thinking on a par with 1960s modernization and 'political development' theory, and all the more culpable for failing to learn from the mistakes of the latter. There is no good reason to think that the multiparty systems currently being established will prove any more stable than their predecessors; or that, even if they are, they will prove developmentally more efficacious. Ref. (Spanish translation in: Nova Africa, no. 3 (1998), p. 65-79.)
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