Editorial: the Politics of Capital
Review of African Political Economy No. 116:179-183 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 2008 Editorial: The Politics of Capital Reginald Cline-Cole & Graham Harrison [T]he debate over the direction of development policy in Africa should be underscored by a historical understanding not only of the institutions that underpin the development of markets, but also of the evolution of the State itself in Africa. African countries should choose their development strategies against the background of the available institutional options and their specific historical circumstance (UNCTAD, 2007: 89). With its references to historical context, institutional options and strategic choice, the opening quotation is a good example of the more progressive edge of international development orthodoxy. Indeed, UNCTAD is generally perceived by observers of the international development architecture as a less starkly neo-liberal institution, when compared to the World Bank and IMF. What the UNCTAD observation shares with those emanating from the latter institutions, however, is a failure to grasp a crucial aspect of Africa’s current socio-economic malaise: that capital is rarely equal to the challenge of forging a process of economic growth which is both stable and equitable enough to lead to a general improvement in well- being. And yet, this is the task that it is constantly set by mainstream development economists and the institutions they work for. That this issue is rarely interrogated is revealing of the ideological forces that dominate our times. Instead, institutions, states, social capital, infrastructure, financial/credit systems, forms of regionalism, and so on, have been pathologised in order to explain – excuse – ‘the market’ for its failures to offer much hope to the world’s poorest societies.
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