Developmental patrimonialism?
The management of clientelist crises and business-politics relations
Tim Kelsall and David Booth
with Brian Cooksey
Africa Power and Politics Programme
tim.kelsall@gmail.com, d.booth@odi.org.uk,
cooksey.brian@gmail.com
Summary
Mainstream analyses of post-war economic stagnation in Africa focused on the negative
effects of political clientelism on the business environment. African governments have
consequently been advised to take a hands-off approach to business, confining their role to
providing an enabling environment by means of clear and secure property rights, an
independent judiciary, democratic elections, and regular consultations with formal business
associations. Drawing on Asian experience and a re-reading of the African record, our
working hypothesis is that it is not clientelism per se that is bad for business, but rather the
way in which clientelism is organised (or not organised) in specific contexts.
This paper describes an effort to operationalise this idea by means of a systematic
investigation into the differential effects of different types of clientelism on business, in
different country contexts in Africa. The research, being carried out within the framework of
the five-year Africa Power and Politics Programme, was begun in September 2008. It
combines a small-n comparative exercise on politics-business ‘regimes’ in postIndependence Africa with intensive within-country studies focused on key business sectors in
selected African countries in the present period. We are interrogating the way in which
different types of clientelism have contributed to, or at least have not severely constrained,
the solution of critical collective action problems and the provision of essential public goods
in various economic sectors.
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Introduction
1.1
The background
Most African countries entered the post-colonial era with small, externally oriented, foreigndominated business sectors. Most consequently took it upon themselves to try and expand their
industrial and modern sectors, by means of a variety of state interventions in the market, ranging
from creating state-owned-enterprises to enforcing or encouraging partnerships between
expatriate and African businessmen. As well as achieving economic objectives, these policies
tended to create patronage resources that allowed the state to placate various political demands for
jobs, income, and resources. In most countries, the industrial sector grew fairly rapidly, but by the

The Africa Power and Politics Programme, is a five-year undertaking by a consortium of research
organisations based in Ghana, Niger, Uganda, Britain, France and the USA (www.institutionsafrica.org). Our aim is to identify forms of governance that would – if widely adopted – work
significantly better for development and poverty reduction than the arrangements currently in place in
sub-Saharan Africa. One of our working hypotheses or initial ‘hunches’ is that better results are
obtained by economic and political institutions that ‘work with the grain’ of the host society. Another is
that – in Africa as in Asia – it is worth distinguishing among different forms of neopatrimonialism when
thinking about pathways towards development.
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time of the 1970s oil crisis, inefficiencies had become apparent. Many firms could only survive by
means of price-fixing and protection that was highly discriminatory against the agricultural sector,
while other businesses were managed with regard only to predation.
The experience of the 1970s inspired a liberal political critique of the state, in which state
intervention in the market was seen to create clientelistic economic rents, rents which fuelled cutthroat patron-client competition, increasing the pressure on politicians to extract more rents,
leading to a downward spiral of economic decline, further loss of state legitimacy, and eventual
state collapse (Diamond, 1987; 1988; Sandbrook, 1985; 2000). Meanwhile the donor response to
this spiral, contained in the structural adjustment and good governance approaches, was to advise
the state to withdraw from the market, and to concentrate instead on creating an enabling
environment for private investors by means of a transparent and enforceable property rights
regime, supported by an independent judiciary, free press, oversight organs (like audit-offices,
anti-corruption commissions) and a democratic political system (WorldBank, 1981; 1989; 1997;
2000).
We now have reasons to believe that this advice was inadequate, and that the interpretation upon
which it rested was at least in part misconceived. It is clear that the downward spiral of economic
and political collapse identified by authors such as Sandbrook and Diamond did not affect all
African countries. Although none were without problems, some, such as Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire
were much better at managing their business sectors than others. Other countries, like Tanzania,
while economically inefficient were remarkably stable politically. Chris Allen (1995) has
explained this by reference to the fact that the more stable and successful countries were able to
avert clientelist crises by introducing forms of centralised bureaucracy, which, while retaining
clientelism, were by and large able to prevent competition for rents or spoils from assuming its
most damaging form. In addition, some states, like Benin or Ghana, which at one time fitted the
model of clientelist and spoils crisis, were able to regain some stability by introducing centralised
bureaucratic politics. Yet others, like Malawi and Zambia, which lost their grip on centralised
bureaucracy, descended into damaging competition for spoils.
The lesson suggested by this diverse experience is that the degree to which patrimonialism and
clientelism are economically damaging is at least in part a function of the way in which they are
politically organised. At its most simple, it is a difference between the politics of the share-out,
and the politics of the free-for-all. In a free-for-all, development, if it occurs, can only be
accidental. In a share-out, there is at least some scope for making collective decisions in a
strategic way with a view to the long term.
1.2
Aspects of the problem
There are at least three reasons for thinking that the market-liberalisation-plus-good-governance
agenda, as currently conceived, is unrealistic and inadequate. In addition to macro-economic
stability, the conditions for achieving rapid, sustained, transformative economic growth in very
poor countries include i) a minimum of political stability, ii) some degree of security over
property for investors, and iii) solutions to various industry-specific collective action problems.
Political stability is not the least of the requirements, as the last half-century of African history has
repeatedly reminded us. Moreover, it has become increasingly clear that it is unwise to separate
the question of political stability and peace from the ways in which states intervene in the
distribution of the rents generated by business activities. Developing country governments face
powerful political pressures to provide patronage to potentially disruptive groups, business rents
being one source of patronage resources.1 Expecting African governments to cease altogether
from using business as a patronage resource is not only to go against the grain of established
1
As illustrated in different ways and among others by Bates (2008), Cramer (2006), Kaplan (2008) and
Reno (1998; 2009).
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practice. It may also endanger the most essential preconditions for economic progress, the
maintenance of peace.
Security for investors is critical but, as Rodrik has shown, the institutional arrangements that have
successfully fulfilled this function historically have been quite varied (Rodrik, 2007).
Furthermore, as Mushtaq Khan has argued, it is extremely difficult for very poor countries to
finance the generalised definition and protection of property rights. Also, historical experience in
Europe and Asia suggests that it may not be necessary. In processes of development, governments
have frequently protected some property rights, but not others (Khan and Gray, c2006; Khan,
2006).
Finally, economic growth and industrial expansion requires the solution of a variety of collective
action problems that cannot be solved by markets alone, problems like infrastructure provision,
human capital supply, infant industry protection, coordination with up- and downstream suppliers,
ability to penetrate new markets, technology acquisition and learning, and natural resource
acquisition, to name but a few. Good governance approaches tend either to ignore these collective
action problems, or to encourage their solution by means of formal business associations, taking
the developed West as its model. We do not doubt that formal business associations can help with
the solution of industry-specific or nation-wide collective action problems. However, it is surely a
mistake to rely exclusively on the history of the now developed West in thinking about this
problem, particularly that of the last hundred years.
The experience of the formerly very poor countries of East Asia is more obviously relevant.
Informal networks, including relationships of a clearly clientelist kind, played essential roles in
creating the industry-specific conditions for investment and growth in key periods in several such
countries. The literature from Asia suggests that clientelism has been used to achieve economic
and political goals in a variety of different ways; that it has always been important, and that
nowhere has it been eliminated (Khan and Sundaram, 2000). There are, moreover, grounds for
arguing that informal relationships and networks perform important functions in market
economies generally, and certainly more so than is implied by some of the strands of new
institutional economics. So the almost exclusive focus of the good governance agenda on getting
the ‘right’ formal institutions in place in low-income Africa seems to be far from justified (Moore,
1994; 1997).
To summarise, recent research and debate points strongly to the need for a re-examination of the
evidence on the role of clientelism in politics and business relations in Africa. The literature on
the subject is no doubt not definitive. But it indicates clearly enough that there is a gap in current
policy thinking where the varieties of patrimonial and ‘neopatrimonial’ politics are concerned.
Although clientelism always has social costs, which constitute a public bad, these can, in certain
circumstances, be outweighed by the public goods it helps to provide in terms of political
stability, guaranteeing key conditions for investment and solving development-constraining
collective action problems. There are therefore grounds for a working hypothesis that it is not
clientelism per se that is bad for business, but rather the way in which clientelism is organised (or
not organised) in specific contexts.
1.3
Our research and this paper
The Africa Power and Politics Programme is sponsoring research focused on the issues described
above as one of its six Research Streams. A first proposal was approved in September 2008, and
empirical work is scheduled to continue until at least 2011, meaning that the research is still in its
early stages. This paper is therefore a report on work-in-progress. For the authors, it is an
opportunity to share some initial thinking with like-minded researchers and practitioners,
particularly any who share our concerns about the limitations of the prevailing policy paradigms
or who are already engaged in similar avenues of enquiry. We hope for feedback that will help us
avoid mistakes that others have made or have succeeded in avoiding. For our readers, there may
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be some interest in the approach we are proposing to adopt in constructing and refining a body of
policy-relevant theory regarding the management of clientelist crises and business-politics
relations in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper has three further sections, devoted to the main steps we
have taken so far in the direction of a final research design.
As it stands, our working hypothesis is too non-specific to be really interesting. It says too little
about what it is about the organisation/non organisation of clientelism that makes a difference to
relevant outcomes. It does not say, in particular, whether we are dealing with one factor or
several, and if the latter, how they interact. Our task during the last nine months has therefore
been to move in the direction of a more formally stated hypothesis, one that we expect to remain
plausible after fuller exposure to the relevant literature and to warrant further testing and
elaboration through intensive research
We have completed three steps so far. A fourth step is now beginning, with detailed research
under way in one study country, Tanzania, and beginning in two others, Malawi and Rwanda. The
steps are:
 a speedy (and therefore incomplete) review of the literature on post-colonial Asian
experience, including conceptual refinements based principally on Asian cases;
 an equivalent and also, at this point, incomplete review of African literature on politics,
business and development;
 a brainstorming of the results of this work with a view to identifying the elements of a
‘typological’ theory applicable to post-Independence sub-Saharan Africa; and
 intensive research in case-study mode on a subset of countries whose politics-business
regimes, past and present, are reasonably representative of the range of variation in the
variables identified by the theory.
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2.1
Issues from the Asian literature
Concepts
Our scan of the literatures has been primarily country focused. However, we have picked up
relevant conceptual refinements along the way, at least some of which reflect concerns close to
our own and seem likely to help us in our theory building. The contributions by Moore and
Schmitz (2008), Khan and Gray (c2006: 18), and Williams et al. (2009) have proven particularly
suggestive.
Among the helpful concepts advanced by Moore and Schmitz are distinctions between the
investment climate and the business climate; between hand-in-hand government-business
relations and crony-capitalism; and between different forms of predation, including looting, rentscraping, and dividend collection (Moore and Schmitz, 2008).
Khan and Gray usefully distinguish between four types of corruption that centre on different types
of state activity. The first is what they call market restricting corruption. This involves things like
needless red-tape which places unnecessary obstacles in the way of market operations. Although
there may be a political logic to this type of corruption, it is economically damaging and attempts
should be made to remove it.
The second is state-constraining corruption. This refers to corruption that surrounds potentially
beneficial state interventions such as those required for infant industry protection, infrastructure
development, technology acquisition, and so forth. Because this type of intervention generates
rents, a certain amount of rent-seeking and corruption is to be expected. However, the object of
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policy should be to ensure that the amount of rent-seeking and corruption is not so large as to
destroy the potential benefits of the intervention.
The third is political corruption and primitive accumulation. This is particularly prevalent in
developing countries, where the absence of well-developed fiscal capacities and strong serviceproviding bureaucracies encourages regimes to seek legitimacy through the dispensation of
patronage, the source for which is political corruption, and where the absence of capital funds
outside the state encourages the dominant class to use the state for primitive accumulation (nonmarket transfers of assets) (Khan and Gray, c2006: 18). All this is to be expected, but whether or
not it is damaging to development depends on whether political corruption is sustained at a level
that enhances or erodes state legitimacy, and whether primitive accumulation is channelled into
productive or unproductive activity.
The final type of corruption is predation or theft. Predation, extortion or theft are most common
where the capacity of the state to enforce its will is weak – perhaps because of extreme
factionalism and institutional fragmentation. This type of corruption tends to erode production
capacities and threatens the state with descent into warlordism and economic collapse (Khan and
Gray, c2006: 25-27).
Even greater analytical refinement is given by Williams et al, who provide a framework for
understanding what drives power holders to act in ways that generate sustained growth.
Underpinning growth, think the authors, are a variety of prerequisites – capable of being realised
in different shapes and forms – including freedom from expropriation; well-functioning,
competitive, regulated markets; and appropriate investment in public and semi-public goods, such
as infrastructure, human capital and technology acquisition (Williams et al., 2009: 8). The
obstacles to achieving these desiderata can also take a variety of forms, although the authors
provide a useful inventory.
For instance, an investor’s freedom from expropriation can be compromised by predation (theft of
resources) which can in turn be broken down into three subtypes. Private predation implies theft
between private agents. State predation involves theft by public office holders. Looting implies
public office holders stealing public resources. Competitive markets can be compromised by rentseeking. This in turn can be broken down into extractive rent-seeking, which is unproductive, and
dividend collection, which can be re-invested in productive activities (note here the similarities
with Khan and Gray). Adequate and appropriate investment in public and semi-public goods,
meanwhile, can be compromised by patronage spending which directs public resources into
private hands. Patronage spending can take the form of subsidies, public-sector wages, or porkbarrel projects for narrowly targeted groups. On the latter, the authors say: ‘The effect of
patronage spending on growth will depend on a number of factors, including the extent to which it
detracts from public goods and service provision, whether it is very narrowly targeted or more
broadly dispensed, and whether the beneficiaries use the resource transfers in a productive or a
wasteful manner’ (Williams et al., 2009: 12, 15).
According to these authors, there are a variety of factors that can push developing country
governments to nurture growth rather than engage in predation or distributive rent-seeking and
patronage, and a variety of factors that may dispose societal groups to organise around broader
shared interests in public goods (Williams et al., 2009: 17). For example, in economies dominated
by mineral or oil receipts, there is a particular risk of looting. Likewise, in countries where the
main source of revenue is from minerals or foreign aid, there is little incentive to encourage
broad-based economic growth, making the economy vulnerable to predation and rent-seeking, and
public spending more likely to be motivated by patronage considerations. The political system
also exerts an influence. Autocratic regimes are more likely to be concerned with preventing
unrest, democratic regimes with winning votes, the strategies for which will in turn be influenced
by the relative ease of buying votes or rigging elections. The vulnerability of the regime to
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political violence is also likely to have a bearing on growth – the more vulnerable the regime, the
more likely it is to engage in short-term patronage spending rather than long-term growth policy.
To some extent this is linked to the structure of organised interest groups outside the state, which
may encourage more or less growth-oriented policy. Other variables such as public expectations
of government, political attitudes towards business, and the nature of the bureaucracy may also
play a role (‘fragmented and ill-disciplined bureaucracies are likely to take unofficial payments
wherever they can, leading to a tragedy-of-the-commons situation that is particularly damaging to
investment’) (Williams et al., 2009: 23). The authors conclude by urging donors to be more open
to ‘unorthodox, hybrid, and transitional institutional arrangements that are compatible with local
circumstances and politics’ (Williams et al., 2009: 27).
2.2
Countries
Regarding countries, so far we have focused particularly on a small set of countries which have
exhibited what may be considered relatively benign politics-business regimes, at least for a
period, and a smaller set of countries where conditions have been less benign although not
necessarily in every sub-period. We have traced the shift from positive to negative where this has
occurred. In Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, S. Korea and Vietnam, appear to be fairly positive cases,
while Cambodia, and Myanmar appear more negative. In Africa, Botswana, Ivory Coast, and
Kenya appear to be fairly positive cases (at least during certain periods), while Nigeria and
DRC/Zaire appear to be more negative (except perhaps in limited sub-periods).
The questions we asked in the literature review were:
1. How have different types of clientelism contributed to or detracted from securing the
public goods of political stability, macro-economic stability, security for investors, and
economic growth?
2. How have different types of clientelism produced different results in different contexts?
A review of aspects of the experience of the six Asian countries mentioned above was carried out
between Nov 2008 and Feb 2009 by Tim Kelsall and Brian Cooksey. While in each case a range
of sources was located and consulted, we refer here only to the studies that resonated particularly
with our concerns. The following points emerged as particularly relevant.
Indonesia
Indonesia is especially interesting for Africanists in that it is not a ‘natural’ state but a colonial
creation and at least as diverse as any African country. It comprises over 6000 islands, more than
two hundred ethnic groups and four major religions. Summarising in gross terms, Indonesia has
had three periods of (neo)patrimonialism, only one of which was associated with a healthy
investment climate and robust growth. Andrew MacIntyre (2000) argues that we can understand
the difference between the periods if we think of Suharto as having a centralised monopoly over
(complementary) rent-seeking opportunities. Enjoying such a monopoly, Suharto had an incentive
to maximise the rent accruing from these opportunities over the long-term, and consequently to
manage them effectively. This contrasts with a more decentralised situation in which there are
many competing monopolists, each producing a unique yet complementary product (or rentseeking device), and each trying to extract the maximum revenue possible.
MacIntyre concludes that this framework not only helps explain differences between the Sukarno
and Suharto periods, but might also explain the economic successes of other centralised, corrupt,
but high growth regimes. He stresses, nevertheless, that ‘a highly centralized political framework
in no way guarantees effective rent management. Rather, it should be viewed as an enabling set of
conditions, creating incentives for a political leader to promote a pattern of rent-seeking which is
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not too costly to national economic efficiency’ (MacIntyre, 2000: 270). Moreover, he is at pains
to stress that the same institutional arrangements will work differently in different circumstances
and socio-economic contexts.
The Indonesian case also displays a number of other salient features which may be important
elsewhere. The first is that patrimonialism is arguably only successful where the elite is
ideologically united and the masses demobilised (Crouch, 1979). The second is that in order to
survive, patrimonialism must be supported by a disciplined macro-economic core. Both of these
are facilitated, of course, by the centralisation of political power, which is our third finding.
Fourth, political centralisation might be easier when the elite is in some way homogenous, as was
the Indonesian military and bureaucracy, which had shared roots in the Javanese petty aristocracy.
This can be further enhanced, and political opposition reduced, by the creation of a resonant
unifying ideology. Sixth, in addition to this ideological state-making, economic growth in
Indonesia was associated with an extremely violent and repressive political system and large-scale
environmental degradation. Whether these were essential or incidental features of this type of
growth is an interesting question for us. Finally, where the indigenous business elite is
inexperienced, it is only likely to succeed through partnerships with more experienced interests,
for example ethnic minorities or foreigners.
Malaysia
Malaysia is the most successful of the ‘second-tier’ newly industrialising economies of East
Asia.2 Malaysia’s post-independence development path can be traced to European colonialism and
commerce and to large-scale immigration in the 19th century of Indian farm labourers and, in
particular, Chinese mine workers, traders and shop-keepers. At independence in 1957, nearly 40
percent of Malaysians were of non-Malay origin, but these were overrepresented in all fields,
business and commerce in particular. Post-independence Malaysian politics have been primarily
concerned with addressing the inherited imbalance in political and economic power and income
differentials between different racial groups. Malay intermediate classes, including aspiring
capitalists, have successfully asserted their ‘rights’ to rents.
The main policy instruments for industrialisation were state capture of natural resource rents,
giving preferential access to capital and invesment opportunities to ethnic Malays, and direct and
indirect state control of key economic sectors. From the mid 1970s, growth was driven by foreign
direct investment, mostly from Japan and the first-tier ‘Asian tigers’.
Though successful overall, this strategy has not been without serious costs. At certain times,
overly aggressive redistributive policies have led Chinese industrial capitalists to disinvest. Statesponsored public and private investments have sometimes been driven by corruption and
vainglory, leading to waste, dissipation of rents and serious financial losses to the Malaysian state.
Despite these failures, however, the politics of redistribution successfully dampened anti-Chinese
sentiments and maintained the peace for nearly 40 years. The overall growth and diversification of
the economy and the maintenance of social order must be considered major successes in terms of
both economic management and statecraft.
Mahathir Mohamed, the dominant Malaysian politician of the 1980s and 1990s, steered a subtle
course between continued bumiputra economic empowerment and the need to keep the Chinese
business community more or less onside. After becoming Prime Minister in 1981, Mahathir
created clientelist relations with key tycoons in the different racial groups. Bumiputra client
tycoons and companies were created from scratch, while certain wealthy Chinese and Indian
entrepreneurs were coopted (Studwell, 2007).
2
First tier: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong. Second tier: Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand.
7
Mahathir’s redistribution strategy created a class of bumiputra capitalists that served to butress
support for UMNO in the short-run, but may have had some undesirable long-term consequences.
Not all the bumiputra tycoons were ‘rentrepreneurs’ with few business skills (though plenty of
them were). ‘The new Malay business community has developed rapidly, with many individuals
appearing to have developed various degrees of independence from the state.’ On the other hand,
under Mahathir there emerged ‘business-based political factions within the UMNO’ that ‘have
had profound implications for Malaysia’s politics and business’ (Sundaram and Gomez, 2000:
296). These factions have competed for rents, pitting their putative masters against each other, and
undermining the ‘centralised’ rent allocation mechanisms described by Khan. The decline of
UMNO hegemony is best exemplified by the fall-out between Mahathir and his former deputy
Anwar Ibrahim.
Khan describes post-1970 Malay clientelism as ‘centralised’, in which the potentially competing
Malay clientelist groups were consolidated into a unified political structure (UMNO) that
dominated Chinese-Malaysian capitalists, the main source of redistributive rents (Khan, 2000:
99). Rents flowed from the Chinese capitalists to the central political leadership of UMNO in the
form of legal taxes and illegal (corrupt) extractions. These rents were partly redistributed
downwards to political clients in UMNO, for example, in the form of subsidised loans from the
banking system (Chin and Sundaram, 2000). Control of the state apparatus afforded the political
leadership opportunities to award jobs in public sector enterprises. Acording to Khan, these rent
transfers (‘rent-sharing’) with lower level clients ‘maintained the organizational power of the
ruling party’ (Khan, 2000: 99-100).
There are signs that the centralised clientelist model described by Khan is rapidly disappearing.
Economic inequalities within and between population groups, consequent communal and religious
tensions, and inter-élite competition, challenge the continued viability of the Malaysian
development model. As growth has replaced concerns with inter-ethnic redistribution, the
rationale for centralisation has been eroded.
S. Korea
No country has made the transition from agrarian poverty to industrial plenty as dramatically and
as rapidly as South Korea. Political, cultural and linguistic unity, Japanese colonialism and the
cold war are invariably cited as three central historical components of Korea’s path to
development. Cultural homogeneity and lack of a strong pre-capitalist land-owning aristocracy or
centralised monarchy allowed the recently militarised, post-colonial state machinery to take the
leading role in economic development. Not only was there no powerful merchant or industrial
minority like the Malaysian and Indonesian Chinese to negotiate with over rents, there were
hardly any ‘bumiputra’ Koreans either. However, the Korean experience is of more general
interest than these distinctive features may make it appear.
In particular, ‘the institutional framework for high-speed industrialisation was a close relationship
beween the private sector and the state, with the latter in a commanding role’ (Bullard et al.
1998:100). The merger of planning and bugeting functions in one mega-ministry, micromanagement of investment decisions, comprehensive price controls, administrative allocation of
foreign exchange and credit, controlling FDI, limiting inter-firm competition and the creation of
state-owned industries are among the policy approaches that appear counter-intuitively to have
played positive roles during some of the critical phases of S. Korean development.
Opinions are divided on whether rent-seeking undermines Korea’s industrial policy or
development performance. There is evidence of massive corruption in Korea. From our
perspective, the vital issue is whether trends in corrupt rent-seeking have seriously undermined
Korea’s growth path. Chang makes the case that the Korean model of state chæbol relations
served to minimise corruption. ‘First, when a small number of people have exclusive access to
rents, rent-seeking activities will be less frequent and of lesser magnitude, because others may not
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join the rent-seeking contest, knowing that they have little chance of success in influencing the
state. ... Second, since the chæbol as a group have exclusive access, they need to spend few
resources on finding out what kind of agent the present opponent is (e.g. his/her strategy and
belief), because they are frequently confronted by the same adversaries in different rent-seeking
contests. Third, the fact that the chæbol are conglomerates, with stakes in multiple markets, also
reduces rent-seeking costs by the “bundling of issues”. A bargaining solution can be more easily
devised if there are other related bargains which allow more room for arranging side-payments’
(Chang, 2003: 146).
This refers particularly to the heroic era of S. Korean industrialisation in the 1960s and 1970s. As
chæbol grew in importance and profitability, they became increasingly independent of statedirected finance and other controls. Chaebol could access international capital directly. They
began taking over small commercial and merchant banks. No longer dependent on the good will
of the state for their virtual survival, the balance of power began to change, with the result that a
more equitable rent bargaining relationship developed. The result was systematic political and
other large-scale corruption involving presidents, other politicians and senior state functionaries
extracting huge political rent from chæbol and other enterprises (Chang, 1998).
Vietnam
The background to growth in Vietnam includes a number of factors that are unrelated to
governance. The country has relatively equitable land distribution and much of its arable land is
suitable for irrigation, making it amenable to the application of high-yielding technologies. It has
strong rural infrastructure and extension services. In the pre-reform period there was significant
investment in human capital development. In addition, however, the country has had a political
and policy environment that has encouraged growth, although in unconventional ways.
To begin with, much of the growth has come not from private, but from state-owned enterprises.
Second, growth has occurred in a context where property rights have been poorly defined, where
state-business patron-client ties are the norm, and where petty corruption, bureaucratic
encumbrances and red tape are generalised. Finally, Vietnam, confounding the postulates of the
good governance agenda, is a one-party state.
Regarding, state enterprises, Vietnam has by and large rejected multilateral admonitions to
privatise its state-owned enterprises (SOEs), preferring instead to reform the sector. By the mid1980s there were already signs that state managers were employing a significant amount of
entrepreneurial initiative in the way they ran their businesses, and central policy has focused on
encouraging that. Much of the expansion has been based on local governments and locally
operated state enterprises taking advantage of commercial opportunities to attract investment,
acquire assets, expand into new ventures, and to accumulate power and wealth. Many city and
district departments formed land service companies and general trading firms, in addition to
private companies: ‘regardless of ownership type, the boundaries between public and private were
blurred as companies, state or private, benefited from their closeness to regulatory institutions,
which very often were their “controlling institution” or shareholders. Such close relations afforded
companies easy access to licenses, contracts and capital as well as advanced knowledge of
regulatory changes which might affect their business’ (Gainsborough, 2003: 72).
As one might expect in a communist country, the rules relating to private ownership of property
have been ambiguous at best. In agriculture, farmers only have use-rights to land, although these
are stable and long-term (Van Arkadie and Dinh, 2004). Despite this, Steer and Sen conclude that
firms have increasingly been prepared to take on risks in their transactions. This is explained by
the use of informal institutions such as relational contracts and networks, with some recourse to
emerging formal institutions such as written contracts (Steer and Sen, 2008).
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Most of the new business elite have ‘emerged from within the existing system, are currently
serving or former officials, or are the children of the political elite’ (Gainsborough, 2002: 701).
They have had an unrivalled advantage in a regulatory environment still characterised by large
amounts of petty corruption and red tape. In turn, profits from quasi-public business activity feed
into existing party and state patronage systems, factional competition, money politics, and large
scale corruption (Painter, 2005: 268). In 2000, Vietnam was voted the most corrupt country in
Asia.
All this has taken place in a context in which the communist party has a monopoly on political
representation. It is possible, of course, that with a multi-party system a party more strongly
committed to reform, rule of law, and legal-rational bureaucracy would have emerged, and would
have overseen an even more impressive growth period. However, it is equally likely that without
the moderating and integrating umbrella of the single party then the rewards from growth would
have been even less evenly distributed, strong institutions like the police and army would have
been compromised, and the conditions for political stability would have been undermined.
Cambodia
Cambodia is obviously very different from its neighbour Vietnam. The national economy is
growing, but relatively slowly in comparison to its neighbours, with most of the dynamism
centred on non-sustainable natural resource exploitation and foreign-dominated garment
production. Unlike in neighbouring Vietnam or Thailand, rural areas are largely stagnant, and the
rural poor are vulnerable to livelihood dispossession.
Under the ascendancy of Prime Minister Hun Sen since 1997, the country has been stable and at
peace. ‘Hun Sen has built his own independent power base which affords him a position above
party control and with personalized networks that permeate and supersede state institutions’ (Un,
2005: 219). As well as the ever-present threat of coercion, the support of the electorate, and in
particular the rural electorate, is secured by means of a mixture of coercion and patronage in the
form of schools, roads, irrigation projects, and temple-building, much of which is personally
provided for by Hun Sen himself. Where does the money come from? According to Kheang Un,
at least part of the funds ‘derive from “donations” from business strongmen’ (Un, 2005: 224).
The support of the state and party bureaucracy is secured, as in a previous period, by allowing
officials to exploit their positions for private gain. It is said that local officials are allowed to keep
one third of their corrupt earnings for themselves, that they must pass another third up the
hierarchy to their superiors, and that around election time the other third is placed in the hepkhmav or ‘black box’ that funds the election campaign of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party
(Un, 2005: 227). Hughes and Conway note that during election periods the CPP depends on
provincial authorities to get out the vote, and therefore permits it plenty of room for rent-seeking
activities (Hughes and Conway, 2003: 41).
A free hand is given to top officials and politically-connected businessmen to accumulate
resources in land and forestry, and a blind eye is turned to the sex and drug trades (Hughes and
Conway, 2003: 19). The actors in these sectors are then encouraged to make contributions to Hun
Sen’s personal projects or to the CPP. Businessmen are subsequently rewarded with some of the
highest honorific titles in the land, not to mention exploiting their political connections to gain tax
exemptions, access to government monopolies, influence and protection (Un, 2005: 225). A
similar logic applies to the military which, according to Conway and Hughes, ‘is a highly
entrepreneurial operation, engaged in logging, smuggling and other illegal economic activities.
Protection of these activities is the key to power in Cambodia’ (Hughes and Conway, 2003: ix).
The regime is highly corrupt, sometimes spectacularly violent, and prone to conspicuous displays
of wealth and consumption. It seems doubtful that it currently has the strategic vision or capacity
to make the kinds of institutional changes that would facilitate a transition to deeper and more
10
broad-based growth. At the same time, the case of Cambodia shows that if patrimonial, even
shadow-state, processes are managed skilfully so as to create political stability, and providing
other circumstances are favourable, they are compatible with the concentration of domestic
resources in the hands of a few, and with significant and dynamic foreign investment. These
developments, while in the short-run not particularly pro-poor – in fact many are decidedly antipoor – create the potential for more broad-based and dynamic growth in the future.
Myanmar
Like South Korea and Indonesia, Myanmar (formerly Burma) has spent most of its post-colonial
life under military dictatorship. In all three countries, soldiers harassed, arrested and murdered
political opponents, including socialists and communists, shot demonstrating students and
workers, smashed trades unions and throttled the independent press. But while Indonesia has
grown dramatically since independence and South Korea has become a developed country,
Myanmar is stuck in a rut of autocracy and poverty. What went wrong?
Creating a legitimate post-colonial state in Burma, later Myanmar, has proved elusive. There are
over 20 linguistic groups in Burma, excluding dialects. Though the term plural society may not
carry very much intellectual weight, it may be useful to retain the general idea as a basis for
understanding forms of clientelism in the post-colonial period. Specifically, negotiating rents
between political and economic spheres is most problematic in the absence of shared history (real
or imagined), culture, ideology and values. Attempts in the 1950s to use Buddhism to strengthen
state legitimacy were opposed both inside and outside the party that led the country to
Independence.
A subsequent differentiating factor was treatment of economically important ethnic groups. While
Indonesia and Malaysia adopted a strategy of squeezing rents out of economically dominant
Chinese minorities, Myanmar nationalised what little large-scale finance, industry and trade there
was, leading to the exodus of ethnic minorities in these sectors, mostly Indian traders (Taylor,
2009: 342).
Rents can be sourced externally – for example, as profits from trade monopolies, foreign
borrowing, aid loans and grants – or internally, as natural resource rents and surpluses from
industry and agriculture. Both colonial and post-colonial governments extracted rents from
farmers by monopolising trade. But after the military coup of 1962, Burma became less and less
involved in world trade, including rice, as the state moved towards ‘radical economic autarky and
general disengagement from the world’ (Taylor, 2009: 301). As trade-related monopoly rents
declined, the state turned to peasant agriculture as a source of rent.
The trajectory of Myanmar’s non-development reflects the inability of the incumbents of postcolonial power to assert the state’s primacy over social classes and civil society through either
force or persuasion. Myanmar’s military dictatorship failed as dramatically to transform the
country as South Korea’s succeeded. There must be a minimum level of socio-cultural integration,
a real or imagined identity that transcends local identities, for the state to be a viable focus of
national development. A weak military dictatorship cannot forge such an identity.
Put differently, the Burmese example demonstrates the difficulty of establishing viable clientelist
relations between political and economic spheres when the state is considered illegitimate by the
major economic classes. When those in power have to rule by force, there is little space for finetuning patronage relations with business or broader sections of the population. Inefficient and
undercapitalised state-owned banking, commerce and industry do not generate sufficient rents for
development, even with state protection and access to scarce resources. With no external (legal)
sources of capital, the first call on the meagre internal surpluses that are generated is for
reproducing the state apparatus. The transaction costs are prohibitive. By 1988, Taylor concludes
gloomily, ‘the state had accomplished little in terms of lasting reforms or the development of
11
viable institutions other than the army. … Myanmar had both a weak state and a weak society’
(Taylor, 2009: 449).
2.3
Summing up the Asian experiences
Weighing up the evidence from the different case studies, it appears that no two countries have
exactly the same set of growth-enabling institutional conditions. For example, if Indonesia and
Malaysia developed rapidly under a system of centralised rent-seeking, Vietnam shows that
centralised rent-seeking is not a necessary condition (a finding which, if accurate, demands
investigation). If Vietnam grew rapidly with a rather rigid and well-institutionalised ruling party
structure, Indonesia and Cambodia (admittedly a less impressive case) have been extremely
personalised. Thus there appears to be a diversity of paths to growth. That having been said, a
number of commonalities can be found. None of the three countries have had strong systems of
formal property rights, independent business associations, strong judiciaries, or legal-rational
bureaucracies. None has grown rapidly under conditions of vigorous multi-party competition,
and in periods where such competition has been more intense, growth appears to have been slow.
All of the countries have had repressive and sometimes extremely violent political systems. All of
the countries have emerged from some kind of conflagration in which one socio-political faction
emerged as politically dominant (although this is less marked in the case of Cambodia, which had
a negotiated and uncertain transition). Partly as a consequence, a single ethnic group has
dominated the state in each country, and this power-consolidation appears to have created the
space for elites to take ‘the long view’ when it comes to economic and political decision-making.
But the ethnic groups that have dominated these countries’ polities have not dominated their
economies (with the partial exception of Vietnam). Much of the dynamism has come from
foreigners or well-established ethnic minorities. All have encouraged foreign investment and
orthodox macro-economic policies.
3
Africa in the literature
The African literature review was carried out by Tim Kelsall in Nov-Dec 2008. It covered
Botswana, DR Congo/Zaire, Kenya, Ivory Coast and Nigeria as well as some cross-country
literature. About each case, it asked the following questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
How competitive was the political system?
How centralised was patronage?
How competent and/or insulated was the bureaucracy?
What was the balance between primitive accumulation, predation, rent-seeking and
patronage spending?
The most salient points emerging from the country reviews under these headings were as follows.
3.1
Botswana
As the most famous ‘success story’ of post-colonial African development, Botswana has been
fairly intensively studied in a perspective similar to the one we wish to adopt, although almost
invariably as a case in itself, with comparative references remaining implicit, rather than in
explicitly comparative terms. Drawing primarily on the studies by Acemoglu et al. (2003), Holm
(1988) and Samatar (1999), we find the following features of the Botswana experience
particularly noteworthy:

Pre-colonial Botswana was dominated by eight different Tswana-speaking ethnic groups that
had built up their positions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through a combination
of strong leadership, trade and warfare. By the mid-nineteenth century Tswana chiefs were
12
fending off attacks from South African Boers and Zulu – an experience which appears to have
strengthened solidarity and a sense of incipient nationhood – and petitioned the British to
create a Protectorate over the country (Bechuanaland). Later in the century the British
acceded to this request, and thenceforth began to rule with an extremely light touch,
constraining chiefly powers very minimally, and later relying on them as a channel for a
variety of development projects.

Tswana societies were among the most hierarchical in southern Africa, since their kings
exercised almost total domination over political, economic, and religious affairs. The only
real check on their power appears to have been a tradition of adherence to tribal law, which
the chiefs both administered and were bound by.

The party that ultimately emerged victorious in the pre-independence elections – stood on a
platform of reducing chiefly power, and yet at the same time it was intimately linked to
chiefs. Seretse Khama, its leader, was the son of Khama III, one of the most powerful chiefs
of the Bamangwato, the largest of the Tswana chiefdoms. According to Acemoglu et al., ‘The
particular political strength of the BDP coalition was that they could integrate within the party
the traditional rural structures of loyalty between commoners and chiefs. This structure of
traditional loyalty was cemented by the continuation of clientelistic practices such as the
lending of cattle’ (Acemoglu et al., 2003: 97).

The political system that subsequently emerged at Independence is best described as a
dominant party semi-competitive system.

The BDP came to power on a platform of introducing democratic local government and
pursuing capitalist development. The effect of the former has been to remove a great number
of responsibilities from the chiefs, who have now been relegated to the position of salaried
civil servants who play a largely ceremonial role. The latter includes mobilising support for
government development initiatives.

One of the most striking features of Botswana’s political economy has been the relative
autonomy of its bureaucracy. From the very beginning, Seretse Khama resisted calls for an
increased Africanisation or localisation of the civil service, and many key grades, including
some of the most sensitive – permanent secretary in the Office of the President; director of the
Directorate of Personnel – have continued to be held by expatriates or white naturalised
Batswana (Acemoglu et al., 2003: 101; Samatar, 2002: 29). Economic planning is centralised
in the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, an institutional nerve centre which has
acted rather like a Botswanan version of Japan’s MITI (Samatar, 2002: 30-41).

Politics, as opposed to administration, meanwhile, has revolved largely around questions of
ethnicity. The BDP has been seen as the natural representative of the Bamangwato and the
Bakwena, the two largest ethnic groups in the country. With their overwhelming support, the
ruling party is already almost assured of a majority. In addition, it picks up significant support
among the other tribes, in part because of its broad-based development policies, which will be
discussed later.

Ideologically, the BDP has been unabashedly committed to capitalism, and in the early days
was almost entirely composed of large cattle owners – chiefs, ranchers, teachers, and civil
servants - who were more or less the only people with wealth in Batswana society. It has
consistently pursued policies that have resulted in a creeping privatisation and
commercialisation of livestock assets, which has worked to the disproportionate advantage of
the wealthy, although even the poorest tend to receive some benefits.
13

Botswana’s extremely rapid economic growth has not in general fed through into significantly
improved rural incomes, and income distribution is highly skewed. Nevertheless the
government, buoyed by mineral revenues, and with much foreign assistance, has invested
heavily in infrastructure and social goods such as education, health, water, and drought relief.
In addition, the rural sector has barely been taxed (Samatar, 2002: 24).

Over the past decade or so, there is evidence of a relaxation of bureaucratic discipline and an
increase in corruption, and it remains to be seen whether Botswana’s present rulers can
maintain the developmental success story of previous decades. However, if we go on the first
thirty years of independence alone, we can characterise Botswana as country where political
competition has been moderate, clientelism has been quite highly centralised, the bureaucracy
has been highly insulated and competent, there has been some use of patronage and primitive
accumulation (by providing the already wealthy and well-connected access to boreholes, the
Botswana Meat Corporation etc.), but rent-seeking and predation have been very low.

Doubtless this favourable combination, as well as being a product of political skill and policy
choice, has been facilitated by the remarkable degree of unity in the pre-colonial polity, the
fact that there was a ruling class with productive assets outside the state (cattle), a pre-colonial
tradition of compliance with the law, and the comparative underdevelopment of professional
and resident labouring classes in the colonial period.
3.2
Côte d’Ivoire
For its first fifteen years of independence, Ivory Coast was regarded by some observers as an
economic miracle, an open, export-led policy stimulating strong agricultural and manufacturing
growth (Tuinder, 1978). Between 1965 and 1980, GDP grew at 6.8% per year, and the
manufacturing sector at 9.1%! (Riddell, 1990: 152). By the mid-1980s, however, the economy
was in crisis, with falling export receipts, shrinking manufacturing output, and a massive foreign
debt. After a fraught transition to multi-party democracy in the 1990s, the country succumbed to
warfare in 2001. The following points emerge as particularly salient for our enquiry:

Pre-colonial Ivory Coast was a thinly populated territory home to about 60 ethnic groups,
inhabiting a savannah zone in the north, and a forest zone in the south.

The most important features of the colonial period were the creation of an economic
infrastructure to extract agricultural resources from the country and the use of coerced labour,
mostly from the northern region and Upper Volta, on European owned coffee and cocoa
estates. Alongside this expatriate economic development there emerged an indigenous planter
class with roots in the traditional elite that resented these European privileges, and out of this
resentment was born the Syndicat agricole africaine (SAA) (Campbell, 1987: 285), clustered
around Felix Houphouet-Boigny, their most eminent representative (Anyang' Nyong'o, 1987:
208; Medard, 1991: 188).

In time, the SAA became the base for the PDCI, the political party that led the country to
independence, co-opting the other, minor parties, and securing a monopoly on popular
support (Crook, 1990: 221; Medard, 1991: 190). A formal one-party state subsequently
emerged. Ivory Coast under Houphouet is best described as a non-competitive personalised,
centralised political system.

The President took pains to try and ensure some ethnic balance in his cabinet, although he
apparently preferred to appoint less experienced political ‘courtiers’ rather than better
established ‘barons’ (Jackson and Rosberg, 1982: 148). The centre of gravity to this ethnic
balancing act was an Akan core, in particular the Baoule, with an accompanying ideology
14
which stressed these groups’ natural suitability for rule (Akindes, 2004: 14-15) (Medard,
1991: 194).

Alongside the extreme personalisation of power, observers also found Ivory Coast remarkable
for its degree of bureaucratic insulation. According to Jackson and Rosberg, ‘HouphouetBoigny is an anti-politician, an administrator’s politician and not a politician’s politician’
(Jackson and Rosberg, 1982: 145). He chose to govern almost entirely through the agencies of
state created by the French, and ‘largely maintained the capability and efficiency of these
agencies’ (Jackson and Rosberg, 1982: 146). For Crook, the Ivorian state was ‘strongly
disciplined’ and ‘virtually autonomous’ (Crook, 1990: 235).

As in Botswana, Africanisation proceeded very slowly, with expatriates – mainly French –
occupying a high percentage of top and middle grades in the civil service and business up
until the early 1980s at least. From the 1970s, however, this began to change. For several
years the government had been investing heavily in education, having the highest education
budget of any country in Africa (Tuinder, 1978: 19). The system turned out large numbers of
school leavers with paper qualifications and desires for salaried employment. Ivorianisation
was therefore becoming a pressing issue’ (Tuinder, 1978: 7). Much of this desire was
accommodated by an expansion in the parastatal sector, which by the mid-1970s had begun to
grow extremely rapidly.

In retrospect, we can see that this expansion - much of which took place outside the budget
and planning framework (Tuinder, 1978: , 27) - was used by Houphouet as a patronage
resource to placate political clients and an increasingly expectant local population. Moreover,
it seems not to have operated according to the same logic of efficiency as the private sector.

As Campbell says, ‘The state may be seen as the means and political loyalty as the condition
for Ivorian participation in the economy’ (Campbell, 1987: 298). Whereas Medard put it thus:
This ruling class, through straddling, has proceeded to primitive accumulation of both
economic and political power. In both cases, the patriarch has been the supreme regulator
of this double accumulation and, through this, of the [ethnic] coalition. The inherent
contradiction between the logics of extraction and of economic accumulation (the
predatory state) on one side, and the logic of political accumulation through economic
redistribution (the prebendal state), has not been resolved, but has been managed through
a rather moderate use of political coercion, an absence of ideological mobilisation and
through a skilled use of political patronage in a favourable context of economic growth’
(Medard, 1991: 194).

Unfortunately, the balance between political accumulation and economic redistribution
became increasingly skewed as the economy began to slow down, a problem made worse by
the fact that parastatal expansion was funded by means of foreign loans contracted at
commercial rates of interest, which placed an ever-increasing debt burden on the economy.
When the expansion of coffee and cocoa began to slow, and the price to collapse in the early
1980s, this burden became truly crippling.

In the early 1980s, at the behest of international donors, Houphouet reigned in some of the
excesses of the parastatal sector and introduced an element of competition into the PDCI as a
way, says Medard, of letting the public purge unpopular members of the political class
(Medard, 1991: 202-204). However, given the challenges in the external environment, these
measures proved insufficient to halt the economic slide.

The Ivorian population was increasingly youthful, educated, urbanised, but unemployed,
while land pressure in the countryside began to put a premium on the question of
15
‘autochthony’. Increasing political tension, not helped by the uncertainty surrounding
Houphouet’s succession, led in the early 1990s to a democratic transition, which the ruling
party initially survived. However, following Houphouet’s death in 1993, the PDCI fractured
further, and the polity became increasingly divided along ethno-linguistic lines.

To sum up, early Ivorian success was the result of political stability that owed its origins to
the weakness of its indigenous civil society and the relative narrowness and cohesiveness of
its political class, skilfully managed by Houphouet-Boigny. This in turn created space for the
operation of a technocratic planning process, sensible economic policies, and the creation of
relatively robust economic institutions, especially in the agricultural sector. That is to say,
institutions and projects were created in which patronage played a role, but in which
economic considerations appear to have been paramount.

Unfortunately, the planning and policy process was not perfect, resulting in a rather
unbalanced form of growth that proved vulnerable to internal demographic pressures and
external economic shocks. Although tracing the exact sequencing and chains of causation is
difficult, these difficulties coincided with a relatively unconstrained expansion of the
parastatal sector which, while satisfying some clientelist demands, contributed to the
country’s economic problems in the long run. Whether these problems could have been
managed had the external environment, and in particular the price for coffee and cocoa and
the quality of structural adjustment advice, been more favourable, and had a succession crisis
not dovetailed with external pressures for democratisation, is something we cannot know.
3.3
Kenya
Even more than with Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya’s post-colonial experience needs to be severely
periodised before treating any of it as a case study in developmental success. Even more than
Botswana, Kenya has been much discussed as a paradigmatic instance whose specific features
have often been taken either to exemplify or to disprove the viability of capitalist development in
post-colonial Africa. Cutting through the polemics, and eliminating most of the relatively familiar
background, the following seem to emerge as key features of the phases of the experience that
have the best claims as a successful development model:

In the first twenty years of independence, Kenya posted rates of economic growth that were
almost double the sub-Saharan average, and that compared favourably with other developing
countries also (with the exception of China and India) (Sharpley and Lewis, 1990: 206-207).

About forty ethnic groups inhabited pre-colonial Kenya, the largest five (Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya,
Maasai, Kamba, Kalenjin, and coastal tribes) accounting for about 70% of the population. In
contrast to Botswana and the Ivory Coast, a significant number of Europeans settled in Kenya
during the colonial period. Large tracts of land were alienated in the central highlands for
white settlement, with Africans confined to native reserves. Many worked as labourers for
Europeans, or squatted on European farms.

Immediately before Independence, two political parties emerged: KANU, led by Kenyatta,
which drew on mainly Kikuyu and Luo support, and KADU, a collection of the smaller
peoples, led by Daniel Arap Moi. KANU won the elections and in 1963 the country entered
Independence with a strong regionalist constitution. The government quickly made moves to
consolidate its authority, and by 1965 KADU members had crossed the floor, Moi had been
made Vice-President, and Kenya was a de facto one-party state.

There was some political competition, focused on the parliamentary level. Here, the party
loosely screened candidates to contest in multi-member elections for constituency seats. The
resulting contests were intimately linked to the practice of harambee, under which local
16
people would part-supply social services through self-help, expecting their MP to act as an
intermediary with central ministries to secure matching government support. MPs who failed
in this respect tended to be rejected by the electorate, while those who succeeded tended to be
made junior ministers by Kenyatta. This ensured an increased supply of patronage resources
to the constituency, and cemented the loyalty of the MP to Kenyatta (Barkan, 1994: 19).

The President was assisted by ‘an autonomous administrative apparatus’ that, even though
increasingly Africanised (Leys, 1975: 122), functioned in much the same way as the colonial
state had done (Barkan, 1994: 17).

The government’s policy was one of being simultaneously open to foreign investment, while
encouraging Africanisation of the economy. It was government policy to try and acquire
equity in the incoming international firms, by means of a clutch of state agencies, including
the Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation (ICDC), the Development Finance
Company of Kenya, The Kenya Tourist Development Corporation and the State Reinsurance
Corporation. In some cases, the additional leverage government acquired resulted in increased
numbers of Africans filling management positions, where they appear to have operated in
much the same way as their European predecessors.

Another strategy was to directly displace foreigners from certain sectors of the economy. As
we have seen, even before independence there existed a class of entrepreneurial Kikuyu, and
in the early years of independence they used the power of the state to help them take over
Asian retail trade. In addition, Leys has described a ‘spectacular phase of accumulation’
using ‘modern forms of plunder’ such as seizure of farms and urban real estate, and
smuggling to neighbouring countries [cited in Swainson (1987: 150)]. Profits earned here and
in the commercial sector made possible the subsequent leap into manufacturing, which was
again primarily facilitated by the ICDC.

There are disagreements in the literature about just how dynamic this African capitalist class
was. With hindsight, it is apparent that whatever the potentialities of this emergent class, the
opportunity to make it a locomotive of growth had, by the mid-1980s, been lost. According to
Sharpley and Lewis, ‘the failure to undertake some restructuring of incentives in the economy
at a time when foreign-exchange reserves were plentiful was a major missed opportunity in
economic management’ (Sharpley and Lewis, 1990: 210). Insufficient incentives had been
provided to encourage a serious move into exporting, and the individual operators seemed
focused on political lobbying to protect their access to protected markets. Commentators
argued that Kenya desperately needed a new political alliance that could oversee industrial
deepening, inter-industry linkages, and improved technological capabilities (Coughlin, 1990:
242); unfortunately, they also argued that the administrative capacity to oversee these changes
simply wasn’t there (Coughlin, 1990: 248).

It is difficult to know the extent to which Kenya’s increasing problems were the inevitable
working through of patterns begun in the Kenyatta era, and the extent to which they were
attributable to a change in political regime. In 1978 Kenyatta died and, as per the constitution,
although not without stiff opposition from Kikuyu interest groups, Daniel arap Moi acceded
to power. Although the early days of the administration were described by some
commentators as technocratic, it soon became evident that Moi was systematically replacing
Kenyatta’s Kikuyu supporters with representatives from his own Kalenjin and allied ethnic
groups.

By the early 1990s, the Kikuyu business class, stripped of its political privileges, was said to
have been all but destroyed (Tangri, 1999: 73). Given that the manufacturing sector had to be
downsized as a precondition for structural adjustment loans, the balance of political and
17
economic rationality that underlay these changes is, again, not quite clear, though critics of
the regime cried foul.

In the early 1990s Kenya made a transition to multiparty competition, and, amidst increasing
political violence, any semblance of sound macroeconomic management disappeared
(Barkan, 1994: 24).

According to Medard:
The Ivorian and Kenyan experiences illustrate, through their strong points and weak, how
the newly forming African states must maintain a precarious balance. There is no
administrative or economic efficiency without political efficiency; for if the effort to
rationalise the administration and the economy ends in social and political implosion, it
has failed. This political efficiency must be realised largely through good neo-patrimonial
strategy. Conversely, if everything is subordinated to a political logic, as in
patrimonialism, with no consideration of the economic restraints, that strategy will also
backfire (Medard, 1991: 209).

To sum up, Kenya for most of the Kenyatta era appears to have been a personalised,
centralised, semi-competitive regime with an autonomous and insulated bureaucracy. Rentseeking, primitive accumulation and political patronage were high, but took moderately
productive forms, although their productivity may have declined over time; predation appears
to have been rather low, although increasing as the period wore on. The Moi regime in the
late 1970s and early 1990s was personalised, less competitive, more decentralised, and less
administratively effective. Patronage, primitive accumulation, rent-seeking and predation
were all high, and tended to take unproductive forms.

It would be extremely interesting to know the extent to which the institutional changes were
driven by objective conditions – a worsening international economy, the exhaustion of easy
gains, the necessity of building a new ethnic coalition – and the extent to which they were
simply a result of an unforced preference on President Moi’s part. As the polity became more
competitive in the 1990s, the scale of predation, and also of violence appears to have
increased.
3.4
Nigeria
Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy, and was seen at Independence as a source of great promise.
In the 1960s, economy and industry grew quite rapidly, funded mainly by cash crops receipts.
They continued to grow in the 1970s, now fuelled by a boom in oil exports. However, the pace of
this growth did not match that of imports, meaning that by the end of the decade the economy was
facing acute problems of macroeconomic balance (Lewis et al., 1990). These problems were
exacerbated by the economic governance of the early 1980s, and it is fair to say that Nigeria is
still suffering the effects. The following bullet points summarise some of the reasons for Nigeria’s
unfulfilled promise.

Pre-colonial Nigeria was populated by over two hundred ethnic groups, but dominated by
three: the Hausa-Fulani, whose power base was the Sokoto caliphate in the territory’s north;
the Yoruba, on whose basis the Oyo empire arose around Ibadan in the west, gradually
assimilating surrounding groups; and the Igbo, an acephalous people who predominated in the
east. Consistent with the policy of indirect rule, the different groups were given considerable
autonomy, and indeed the colony was governed as two separate entities until 1914. This
pattern continued into the independence period, although with a federalist constitution
superimposed.
18

Colonial economic development centred on creating an infrastructure to serve peasant cash
crop agriculture; by the close of the colonial period, regional crop marketing boards had built
up considerable surpluses, some of which were used to fund public works and industrial
expansion.

The dramatic twists and turns of recent Nigerian history make it hard to detect the elements of
a story about relatively successful political-economic management. Yet the first decades after
Independence do seem relevant to our concerns. Writing in the early 1990s with particular
reference to the early decades, Forrest thought that in Nigeria there was a long term capitalist
dynamic at work, and that while the state has failed to create all of the conditions for capitalist
development, it had created some of them. In spite of the emphasis on prebendalism and
patrimonialism in the Nigerian literature, he took the view that the state had shown some
capacity, ‘to respond to economic crises and sustain accumulation over time through policy
and institutional reforms and new political initiatives’ (Forrest, 1993: 6).

Military governments in particular, Forrest thought, had evidenced a capacity for reform,
which ‘stems from the ability of the military to insulate state institutions and government
more effectively from external pressures, allowing stronger management of conflicting
interests and more effective government and economic control’. In addition, he points out that
there is some long term private capital accumulation that is relatively independent of the state
(Forrest, 1993: 9). That said, he concedes that given the evidence of the loss of economic
control in the latter days of the Gowon regime ‘this argument cannot be taken very far’
(Forrest, 1993: 7), and that unfortunately ‘there has never been a planning mechanism in
Nigeria […] The centre has never effectively controlled investment in the regions or states’
(Forrest, 1993: 141).

It is not clear whether, after the debacles of the Babangida and Abacha regimes, Forrest
would still consider capitalist development to be on track, or what the effect of the most
recent return to democratic governance has meant.
3.5
DRC/Zaire
Congo/Zaire has a reputation for being one of the most resource-rich yet worst governed states in
Africa. However, looking at its history it is possible to distinguish periods of economic
performance that are relatively better and worse over time. The following points seem valid:

Pre-colonial Congo was home to hundreds of ethnic groups and several largish political
entities, most notably the Kongo Empire south of the Congo River, and the Luba kingdoms of
what came to be known as Katanga. In the early years of colonial rule, the colony was
governed more or less as a personal possession of King Leopold of Belgium.

The First Republic was a disastrous period economically as well as politically. We focus
therefore on the period beginning with the second military intervention by Mobutu in 1965.

Callaghy pithily characterised Mobutu as a presidential monarch who ‘has adapted a colonial
state structure and patrimonialized it by creating an administrative monarchy which is used to
recentralize power’ [cited in MacGaffey (1987: 51)]. In spite of this pejorative assessment,
MacGaffey reports that the first five years of the new regime saw some economic growth, a
more realistic exchange rate, a doubling of tax revenues, better wages, and manufacturing
growth of 40% (in 1967-8 alone). The state began to take over ownership of large enterprises,
but left management in expatriate hands. In other areas, it invested unwisely in prestige
projects like the Inga-Shaba power line, or attracted investment that was highly capital
intensive and made little contribution to the economy, like the Goodyear tyre factory
(MacGaffey, 1987: 45).
19

If we compare the First Republic to the first five years of Mobutu’s regime, then, we might
say that the First Republic was a highly competitive, decentralised, non-bureaucratic system
in which patronage, rent-seeking, and predation were all very high, and none of which were
productive. By contrast, the period 1965-1970 was non-competitive, centralised, and more
bureaucratic, patronage and rent-seeking were quite high with mixed productivity, while
predation does not appear to have been particularly high; there was political stability and
growth was moderate.

As in other African countries, Africanisation of the economy became a key objective of
government policy. Schatzberg (xxx) speculates that Mobutu was a sincere economic
nationalist, and that he was encouraged by the positive reactions of other African leaders to
his initial forays in this field. On 30 November 1973, he announced the nationalization of
large sectors of the economy, including big agro-industrial enterprises and about 2000 small
and medium sized wholesale and retail businesses.

Unfortunately, no real planning went into this exercise: there were disagreements and
repeated changes of policy over the question of who the new acquirers would be; the local
state, which was tasked with supervising an orderly transfer of properties, had not nearly
enough capacity; some departing Europeans deliberately sabotaged their businesses. Among
the results were that several huge economic investments were turned over to high ranking
politicians and civil servants, not least Mobutu himself. The result was to create a class of
economically inefficient acquirers personally dependent on Mobutu for continued access to
their economic prebends, which Mobutu tended to shuffle around like musical chairs.
Together with other stratagems, this policy tended to keep the political class loyal to Mobutu,
even as the economy was heading steadily down.

According to MacGaffey’s (1987) description of the class structure of Zaire in the 1970s, we
can characterise the regime in this period as personalised, centralised, non-competitive, with
an ineffective bureaucracy. Primitive accumulation, patronage, rent-seeking, and predation all
appear to have been very high. The country was moderately stable, but arguably only because
of foreign backing. Macroeconomic performance was poor.

By the early 1980s the economy was in an acute crisis, and Mobutu’s strategy appears to have
shifted somewhat. Instead of centralising the distribution of patronage rewards, which were
anyway dwindling, he appears to have permitted regional strongmen and political allies to
build up their own economic fiefdoms. The result was an increasing lack of state coherence
and a population held ransom to representatives of the quasi-state. In a strategy with striking
similarities to Abacha in Nigeria, Mobutu somehow managed to maintain his ascendancy by
playing faction leaders off against each other, while skilfully manipulating foreign diplomatic
and economic contacts. These political tactics, together with other ruses, appear to have
continued into the 1990s, as the country entered a period of apparently endless democratic
transition.
3.6
Summing up the African cases
Several caveats apply to the drawing of conclusions from the foregoing ‘summaries of
summaries’ of African experience. The case selection is limited and to some extent arbitrary. We
are not experts in any of the countries covered, and certainly expect to undertake further reading.
Finally, is not clear to us that all the information we need about the degree of centralisation of
patronage, or the balance between predation and primitive accumulation, is going to be directly
available in the secondary literature – quite a lot has to be guessed at, or inferred from
circumstantial evidence. That having been said, some tentative conclusions can be pulled together.
20
The first is that there are no cases where economic performance was uniformly bad. With the
exception of Botswana, there are also no cases where performance has been uniformly good;
success or failure in one period did not dictate success or failure in others. A second is that none
of the cases was able to make the transition from import-substitution-industrialisation to
export-led industrialisation. It is not entirely clear whether this was because of a lack of will, or
lack of capacity, but it was probably both. In the critical period of the 1970s, none of the countries
appears to have tried strenuously to orient production toward export markets, and none, with the
exception of Botswana, appeared capable of adequately incentivising efficient production
methods for the home market. In consequence, it would seem that a significant strengthening of
state capacity in strategic areas, like planning and statistics, would have been needed for this to
occur.
A third conclusion that seems justified is that regimes where patronage was centralised appeared
to have performed better economically than regimes where it was decentralised. There is
evidence that a centralised patronage system to some extent shielded the bureaucracy from
political pressures, providing some space for decision-making on strategic economic grounds;
indeed, even where the bureaucracy was very weak, as in Congo, centralised patronage at least
helped provide the political stability that permitted some economic growth to occur. We see this
in the centralised patronage of Botswana, the early Houphouet period in Côte d’Ivoire, the period
1965 to 1975 in Kenya, the first few years of military rule in Nigeria and the period 1965-1970 in
Congo, which can be contrasted with the periods of democratic rule in Nigeria, the first republic
and transitional periods in Congo/Zaire, the transitional periods in Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire, and
so on.
Here, our findings largely confirm those of Chris Allen. However, a fourth conclusion is that such
performance is impossible with vigorous, as opposed to deliberately constrained multi-party
competition. During democratic periods economic rationality appears to get overwhelmed by
short-run political considerations. A fifth conclusion is that while it might be necessary,
centralised political patronage is not a sufficient condition for economic development. We see
this in the case of Zaire in the 1970s and Kenya in the 1980s. In these examples patronage appears
to have been successfully centralised by a strong personalistic leader, and yet those leaders
showed little concern for economic development, and permitted their clients to loot the economy.
Whether Mobutu and Moi felt their position was so precarious that they had little choice but to
allow their clients to feed without limit from the trough of state, or whether as individuals they
were simply oblivious to the long-term economic prospects of their countries, is a debatable point,
but it was probably a bit of both. Houphouet’s loss of control over economic decision-making in
late 1970s Ivory Coast raises similar questions.
Whatever the case, it seems that the quality and outlook of leadership are crucial ingredients in
whether a system works to the advantage or disadvantage of economic development, which is
perhaps not surprising given the highly personalised nature of power. This also raises the
interesting question of whether it is the degree of centralisation of patronage that is important, as
opposed to the kind of discipline the patron exerts over his clients.
Recognition of the importance of personal power leads us to a sixth conclusion: where power is
highly personalised, the process of political succession is always either politically or
economically destabilising, or both. None of the grands-patrons who were able to oversee
relatively successful, disciplined, developmental patronage in their early years was able to sustain
this into the tail end of their regimes; following transitions, economic management often got
considerably worse.
A final conclusion worth adding is that some authors – notably Forrest and MacGaffey – claim to
have found dynamic African business sectors operating without state patronage. Insofar as this is
the case, it suggests that although the capitalist ethic might not, as many authors have argued, be
21
part of the cultural mainstream, capitalist organisation is not totally incompatible with ‘African
culture’, and that, with the right incentives, it could be encouraged to grow.
4
Elements of a typological theory
The Africa Power and Politics Programme is inspired by the idea that the current orthodoxy on
development in Africa, encapsulated in the prescriptions of the good governance agenda, is
unhelpfully normative and insufficiently grounded in the real historical experience of today’s
developed countries or indeed of Africa itself. In the Politics and Business Research Stream, our
working hypothesis is that more realistic ways of improving the investment climate and hence
economic growth in Africa may involve nurturing certain kinds of informal, or hybrid,
institutions, and by fostering relationships between businessmen and politicians that are
clientelistic or hand-in-hand rather than arm’s-length. We also have reasons for doubting the place
of multi-party democracy in an economically optimal approach.
In order to refine and evaluate this hypothesis, we believe we need to undertake research in the
tradition of comparative historical sociology or political economy, as well as the investigative and
ethnographic exploration of contemporary conjunctures. We want to know more precisely when
informal, clientelistic relations between state and business are good for development, and when
they impede or destroy it. That being the case, we still have much work to do to refine and
strengthen our conceptual and methodological approach. This section sets out some of the
thinking we have done so far, with particular reference to likely ways of conceptualising our
dependent and independent variables, and the approach being taken to comparison and case
selection.3
4.2
Dependent variables
We are looking for the kinds of political arrangements that enable business to fulfil its potential
role as a provider of goods and services, employment, tax revenues and foreign exchange.
Another way of putting this is to say that we are interested in the political-institutional
arrangements that create a climate conducive to poverty-reducing business investment. While the
ultimate measures of success may be rates of sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction
or human development, our main interest is in relatively neglected upstream determinants of these
outcomes.
Within the APPP at large, we have agreed to focus on how patterns of power and politics
influence final development outcomes by causing differences in the adequacy of provision of key
public goods (Booth, 2008). This is applicable to our problem here. A good business and
investment climate may be considered a public good. Just like a warm weather climate, it is
difficult to exclude individuals from a good business climate, and the enjoyment or benefit of one
individual does not generally ‘use up’ the good climate for others.4
3
4
It draws on initial think-pieces on concepts and methods for the Programme and the Stream written by
David Booth and Tim Kelsall respectively, and on discussions between Kelsall, Booth, Brian Cooksey,
John Shao and Brian Van Arkadie at a workshop in Zanzibar, 24-26 February 2009.
Arguably the investment and business climate are less amenable to being characterised as public goods
in cases of crony capitalism, in which a good business climate for some may entail the exclusion of
others. We have not thought through the implications fully, but it is possible that a business climate that
is particularistic in this way might be classed a club good. Club goods are still a species of common or
collective good, because they produce positive externalities – in this case employment, growth in
incomes etc. Of course, we would be less likely to class a cronyist business climate as a club good if its
impact on these externalities was poor or even negative. In the latter case, the business climate would
have to be considered a public bad.
22
Moore and Schmitz define the business climate as ‘policies designed to help reduce business
costs’, providing a variety of examples: ‘The availability, reliability, and cost of public
infrastructure … the availability of skilled labour; the implications for businesses of the
procedures for registering companies, employing labour, taking legal action, paying taxes,
importing and exporting, meeting environmental standards; tax rates; and the typical, predictable
level of bribes that a company might have to pay to get its business done and protect itself from
political interference’ (Moore and Schmitz, 2008: 9).
By contrast, they define the investment climate as ‘policies designed to help reduce the
unpredictability that businesses face, above all the degree of uncertainty that investors face about
their ability to profit in the future from investment decisions made now’. The kinds of
unpredictability that investors face include such things as large and arbitrary fluctuations in the
rate of taxation; the inability to enforce contracts and debt obligations; the unwillingness of the
police to take action against large scale theft of goods in transit; extreme and arbitrary forms of
political interference in hiring and pricing decisions. As well as reducing these forms of
unpredictability, governments can boost the investment climate by providing confidence to
investors that they will make the necessary infrastructural investments that their sector requires, to
resolve conflicts between firms, or provide loan guarantees at appropriate junctures (Moore and
Schmitz, 2008: 19).
If we regard these definitions as useful, a question arises as to whether the elements that make up
the business and investment climate public goods – availability of skilled labour, freedom from
undue political interference etc – are themselves public goods. We think that most of them
probably are, although they are public goods of a more specific type. Because of their specificity,
we probably need a new terminology. We propose to call the business and investment climates
composite public goods, and the elements that comprise them component public goods. We should
use these terms when it is essential to make a distinction; however, most of the time ‘public
goods’ simpliciter will do.
At the Zanzibar workshop, the participants agreed that the investment climate and the business
climate, together with the component public goods by which they are constituted, are an important
part of the story we want to tell. On the other hand, we thought that the definitions provided by
Moore and Schmitz, which revolve around ‘policies’ and focus on the role of ‘government’ might
be improved upon. We propose to give close attention to any form of action that coordinates the
activities of multiple agencies or sectors with a view to correcting market failures or coordination
deficits. We do not underestimate the role of government, and government action to supply public
goods is, by definition, the solution of a collective action problem. However, it is not the only
conceivable or observable form of solution.
Similarly, we propose not to be too narrow in our understanding of collective action. At the
commonsense level, the term collective action conjures up images of organised labour, social
movements or community mobilisation. Business, by contrast, is often regarded as a competitive,
individualistic endeavour, in which collective action plays a negligible role. If we think about
collective action in the context of business, we normally think about business associations:
chambers of commerce, the British CBI, and so on, organisations that typically lobby and consult
with governments in an arm’s length fashion. However, such a view of what collective action
means in this context is overly restrictive. If we consider the fact that whenever we are faced with
the challenge of supplying a component or composite public good, we are also normally faced
with a free-rider problem (since, other things being equal, no individual or firm will have an
incentive to supply the public good), then we can see that collective action problems abound in
this field. Whether they are able to be addressed with formal lobbying or informal influence,
whether the solutions are contractual, bureaucratic or patrimonial, and whether the government is
proactive or working in response mode are all topics for empirical investigation.
23
In summary, we are defining our outcome variable as: ‘collective solutions to market failures or
market coordination deficits’. We propose not to define too narrowly in advance what this might
entail.
4.3
Independent variables
The question of what our independent variables are going to be is a more difficult one, and we
may not be certain about this until a later stage of the research. Our review of the secondary
literature has, nevertheless suggested a number of possibilities. An extended discussion at the
Zanzibar workshop, taking the literature reviews as a starting point, suggested the following three
variables as suitable for further conceptual refinement and testing:
 The degree to which patronage is centralised – where centralised patronage implies a
system in which either an individual or a group at the centre of the state controls the
distribution of patronage resources. Centralisation of patronage appears a likely
precondition for setting in place one or other of the more prudent or less damaging
combinations of predation, primitive accumulation, rent-seeking, patronage spending, etc.
The abstract concept of ‘centralisation’ will serve us as a marker for any one of a range of
informal or hybrid coordinating institutions that substitute for the robust legal framework
and arm’s length consultative channels we typically find in the North.5
 The degree to which political competition is managed – where by ‘managed’ we mean a
system in which competition is regulated (de jure or de facto) in a way such as to prohibit
the emergence of political parties based on religion, region or ethnicity. This appears to
be a key precondition for ´centralisation of patronage’ to work in the way we envisage, as
the combination of central distribution of rents with a winner-takes-all multi-party
political system appears particularly destabilising both politically and economically. In
the African context, it is ethnic competition and its proxies that are the particular concern,
not political competition per se. And the focus of the variable is the way the most
threatening forms of competition are handled, not the degree of the competition, which
will be largely determined by the historical legacies of the country, a less interesting
variable because largely immune to policy alternatives.
5
Our review of the literature has suggested that in some Asian countries they are prominent and well
known. One thinks about Cukongism in Indonesia, Guanxi in China, or Gakubatsu in Japan. These are
informal institutions or affective relationships that, among other things, knit together the interests of
businessmen, bureaucrats and politicians, and provide a vehicle through which collective action
problems are solved and component public goods supplied. In the African case, we have not got far
beyond the generic terms patrimonialism, patronage, clientelism and corruption in describing the
informal nature of links of this kind, and, as we all know, these terms tend to carry a heavy pejorative
load. However, our literature review shows that in some African cases at least there may be more
specific functional equivalents of the Asian-style networks, and that in certain periods they have
provided a framework for the solution of coordination and allocation problems, and a foundation for
quite rapid development. For example, Botswana has had hybrid pastoralist syndicates and the
Botswana Meat Commission. In Kenya under Kenyatta it was ‘straddling’ between the interchangeable
roles of state officialdom and Kikuyu business, mediated by a layer of government business-promoting
institutions and the Kiambu inner circle. In Ivory Coast it was the relation between the planning
mechanism and the chains of patronage associated with Houphouetism. Undoubtedly there are others,
more and less developmental, some of which will have acquired a distinct value in the local lexicon,
while others will not have. For Sierra Leone, there is a significant literature on ethnic, old-boy, hometown, and secret society networks, all of which one might think could provide the sort of reciprocities
that are functional for business development. That they have never done so, and are generally perceived
in negative terms, may have more to do with the contingent absence of appropriate enabling conditions,
rather than any intrinsically negative characteristics of the institutions themselves.
24
 The degree to which there is space for technocratic decision-making – where
technocratic means being able to coordinate means with ends to achieve long term
objectives in sectors that are significant for investment decisions and the business climate.
Arguably, it is not necessary for the civil service as a whole to be capable and
autonomous. Key sectors need to be protected for sure, and that is what most of the
historical examples, including Japan’s MITI, suggest.
We are keen to restrict our attention to the various conceivable combinations of these variables.
However, as the review of past experiences makes clear, there is a fourth variable whose effects
can swamp the effects of an otherwise benign combination of circumstances. Notably in the cases
of Kenyatta and Houphouet (and arguably also Banda in Malawi), the death or ageing of the
dominant leader who constructed the post-Independence ‘system’ was at least a major factor in
the unravelling of the mechanisms that had made it work. More prospectively, the absence of a
serious succession mechanism for such current presidents as Museveni of Uganda is widely
regarded as highly dangerous for the continued peace and stability, and thus the investment
climate, in several countries. Therefore, we are considering adding as a frontier condition on our
comparative studies something on the lines of:
 The degree to which mechanisms for transferrals of power are well-institutionalised –
where well-institutionalised means that there are well-accepted formal or informal
arrangements for transferring power from one head of state to another.
In Zanzibar, the participants also agreed that our cases are not countries but political regimes,
where regime is defined by continuity in the character of the independent variables.
4.3
Comparative strategies and case selection
The APPP is committed to a design for both individual research streams and overall synthesis
work that is ‘fit for purpose’ in the sense of being suited to the particular research questions we
are asking (Booth, 2008). This puts us towards the inductive end of the spectrum of theorybuilding approaches in the social sciences, with a bias towards ‘typological theorising’ (George
and Bennett, 2005), rather than, say, computable model-building. In terms of alternative
approaches to research design, we are located somewhere between the relatively systematic smalln comparativism associated with writers such as Ragin (1987) and Gerring (2007), and the less
formal ‘process tracing’ approaches to case studies advocated by David Collier in politics (Collier
et al., 2004) and Olivier de Sardan (2005) in anthropology. Within this context, individual
Research Streams have been having their own debates about the stage of the research they are at,
and in some these have been quite fiercely contested.
In the Business and Politics stream, we have agreed that the aim is to choose a sample of cases
that represents as far as possible every feasible combination of the variables in which we are
interested. Among the analytical opportunities this creates is subjection of the results, including
what are discovered to be the outcomes associated with the combinations, to a Boolean analysis,
as proposed by Ragin. This does not exclude using the full richness of the internal make-up of the
case for ‘process tracing’ and undertaking any within-case comparative enquiries that are relevant
to the propositions under consideration.
The consensus in Zanzibar was that before committing fieldwork resources to a case, we needed
to have reason to believe that it would illuminate a part of the puzzle we are trying to solve. One
way in which a case could be illuminating would be if represented a combination of variables that
we had not encountered in another case, or if the variables in which we are interested are present
or absent in particularly clear form. As a prelude to making choices about where to conduct
fieldwork, it was agreed that we would conduct an additional quick-and-dirty survey of secondary
information on several countries to add to the completed literature-based studies. This would
serve to confirm and rationalise (and just possibly challenge) the prima facie arguments we had
25
earlier advanced for focusing particular attention on current and/or historical experiences, at
macro and/or sectoral levels, in Tanzania, Malawi and Rwanda. Those three countries are already
the focus of preliminary studies, including at the sector level (tourism, horticulture and sugar) in
the case of Tanzania.
Tanzania seems likely to be confirmed as a strong candidate for further study, being a strikingly
sustained instance of the management of potentially destructive forms of political competition.
Interest therefore centres on whether its de facto single-partyism has any potential to restore the
effective centralisation of patronage that might be said to have prevailed in the 1970s. Tanzania
has been an investment bright spot in recent years, yet the information so far suggests that it
represents a relatively open and decentralised type of business clientelism. If that is confirmed,
the implications for our initial theorising need to be explored.
Malawi in the Banda era may turn out to be a good example of another combination of the three
variables under consideration. There are some indications that the current president, Mutharika, is
gaining political support for the idea of reintroducing some aspects of the Banda legacy in a
second term, while his principal opponent in the current electoral context is one of the most
significant power figures from the Banda era (John Tembo).
Rwanda has been dominated by the RPF party in a tightly constrained democratic system, which
has developed an approach to business-party relationships that is partly inspired by various Asian
models. Features of its evolving practice include holding companies under party, government or
army control which own significant parts of the formal sector of the economy, sometimes in joint
ventures or public-private partnerships. How this interacts with the protection afforded to
technocratic decision-making and other dimensions of our emerging typological theory (and how
the model of ‘party business’ differs from other extant examples, such as Ethiopia) is a priority
topic.
It seems likely that we shall cast our net widely, to maximise the policy relevance of our
theorising across Africa. However, it seems likely that we shall conclude that our propositions
apply only to sub-Saharan Africa, and not to either South Africa or Zimbabwe, given the extent to
which racially exclusive regimes have disrupted the normal course of post-colonial state-building
in these countries. Work is ongoing to establish indicators and operationalise our theoretical
propositions with a range of empirically answerable questions that can be deployed across country
cases and at sector level within at least some of them.
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