Global Structural Shifts and the Political Economy of Development: Impact and Responses from African States.

Current discourses on international political economy generally contend that the decade of the 1970s generated significant shifts in economic, intellectual and political spheres that continue to shape national and global development. On the economic level, these discourses claim that the period saw the emergence of a serious global recession characterized by decline in production, high inflation, crisis of profits for the majority of firms, technological developments, rise in government deficits and massive layoffs for workers. These economic developments and major changes in the political landscape of major countries in the global North—the rise of Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Helmut Kohl in Germany and Ronald Reagan in the United States—and intellectual shifts that called for the dismantling of the global Keynesian economic framework are highlighted as core factors that ushered in a new phase of globalization underpinned by neo-liberal economic discourse. In the context of African countries, analysts argue that these global economic, political and intellectual shifts have had significant impacts on the continent’s development process. In the economic realm, for instance, the core features of neo-liberal economic globalization are said to have contributed to an economic downward spiral in most African countries. These countries, however, are not the only ones that have faced major economic crisis, for as John Rapley has argued, the crisis of capital accumulation has been a core feature of the current phase of globalization in all parts of the world. In essence, the onset of this phase of globalization marked the end of the post-1945 ‘golden age’ of global capitalism which had seen significant economic growth in the global North and various parts of the global South. In Africa, the crisis of postcolonial capitalism was characterized by a serious economic crisis, evidenced by decline in economic surplus, levels of investment and savings, inability of African states to meet their debt obligations to public and private lenders, and failure of these states to maintain what Yusuf Bangura has termed as the post-colonial social contract. The developments that emerged globally in the 1970s have, over the years, seen states institute various economic and political strategies in efforts to address the economic crises and other contradictions generated by neo-liberal globalization. This paper’s objective is to examine the ways in which African states have responded to neo-liberal globalization, with a specific focus on their New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) initiative. The underlying argument of the paper is that African states, like other states elsewhere, have not been bystanders in the evolution of the contemporary phase of globalization and other global shifts that characterize the current global conjuncture. Situating my arguments within the critical international political economy tradition, the paper argues that the launching of NEPAD demonstrates the political agency of these states but contends that their agency is mediated by local and global factors and thus challenges the dominant theoretical perspectives to studies on African states especially the neoliberal approach that tends to represent their agency as unfettered by external developments. Please contact Eunice N. Sahle at eunice@email.unc.edu for a copy of the paper. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]