Era Of Structural Adjustment Research Articles

Making Dance Work in West Africa: Women Artists in a Shifting Landscape of Institutional Patronage

This article considers the stakes articulated by French-speaking West African women who claim dance as work opens up critical perspectives on the global political economy of concert dance. African states encouraged creative dance work following independence, but in the era of structural adjustment, French state-affiliated institutions took the lead as foreign patrons for African contemporary dance. Juxtaposing these women’s reflections on their trajectories as dance artists with an account of the institutional politics surrounding patronage in the region, I argue that these women reenvision the value of cultural labor as a substantive contribution to their societies and economies in West Africa.

The World Bank, Agricultural Credit, and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Global Development

ABSTRACT This article examines the development of the World Bank’s agricultural credit programming between 1960 and 1990. I show how these projects constituted key sites where neoliberal development governance was initially articulated, negotiated, and contested. Agricultural credit was a key point of emphasis for the Bank during its ‘Assault on Poverty’ era in the 1970s. Agricultural programming in this era reflected a strong emphasis on agricultural development through marketisation and commercialisation, yet also very clearly demonstrated clear points of ambivalence around the role of credit in relation to agricultural markets. Agricultural credit projects increasingly included implicit or explicit conditionalities linked to the marketisation of interest rates, the commercialisation of state-owned agricultural lenders, and the marketisation of wider financial sectors into the 1980s. But these efforts to marketize and commercialise agricultural credit through these projects often reflected mundane operational challenges as much as ideological shifts, and themselves largely failed even on their own terms. Looking at the evolution of agricultural credit projects thus shows how broadly neoliberal positions were arrived at in part through trial and error adjustments to operational concerns, as well as how fraught the promotion of market-based financial systems was in practice even in the structural adjustment era.

Historical Trajectories of Tourism Development Policies and Planning in Ghana, 1957–2017

ABSTRACTHistorical research on tourism development policies and planning is generally limited, with scant attention on destinations in the Global South. This paper traces the historical trajectories of the development of tourism policy and planning in Ghana using the “Development First” and “Tourism First” framework. A qualitative approach allows for a detailed contextual analysis of key national economic development plans and national tourism development policies and plans. Four broad political eras are identified: (i) 1957–1966: post-independence era of Development First; (ii) 1966–1981: political instability era of Tourism First; (iii) 1981–2000: structural adjustment era of mixed Tourism First-Development First and; (iv) 2000–2017: democratic consolidation era of Development First. The analysis highlights how the distinct historical contexts of state involvement shape the present and future characteristics of tourism development. The findings suggest the need for more detailed exploration of the historical processes of tourism development in Global South destinations.

How Competitive Are Crop Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa?

During the structural adjustment era of the 1980s and 1990s, governments across sub-Saharan Africa generally withdrew from crop markets to encourage entry by private traders and foster competition. Since that time, the degree of competition in crop markets has been a central concern of policymakers, donors, and researchers. We review the evidence on that topic by first developing a conceptual framework to guide our analysis, then discussing the findings from four categories of literature. We have two main findings. First, there is a paucity of empirical evidence on this question, which hinders our ability to draw strong conclusions. Second, that point notwithstanding, the evidence that does exist is broadly supportive of the notion that crop markets are competitive. The dominant themes in the literature are that trading profits are highly variable, trader entry and exit rates are high, and price co-movements between markets suggest relatively efficient levels of competitive arbitrage. It is possible that the high costs of entry foster non-competitive conditions at the level of large-scale, long-distance subnational trade, but we find no positive evidence to that effect, only the satisfaction of certain necessary conditions.

English

The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) has contributed to African agricultural policy debate which has featured prominently in growth and poverty reduction assessment in sub-Saharan Africa. This debate has rekindled interest in the use of agricultural input subsidies to promote food security nationally and at household level. After the enforced withdrawal of these agricultural subsidies during the structural adjustment era, their re-introduction as ‘market-smart’ subsidies has led to several assessment studies. This article draws on evidence from five countries and a detailed study in Ruvuma Region, Tanzania. These subsidy programmes were reported to be successful in increasing maize yields and reducing poverty and had positive spillover effects on input use by non-recipients and private sector development in rural areas. However, unclear programme objectives and serious implementation problems prevented most of these programmes from being effective. These results underline the controversial nature of subsidy policies, with contemporary debate mirroring historical controversy.

Redefining Poverty as Risk and Vulnerability: shifting strategies of liberal economic governance

The existence of global poverty poses a dilemma for liberal economic governance. Its persistence is an irritant to expert assertions that things will get better soon, making it necessary to develop new theories about the causes and nature of poverty and new strategies for managing and reducing it. This paper examines the most recent shift in how the World Bank and other organisations conceptualise and manage poverty, by beginning to view it through the lenses of social risk and vulnerability. The paper examines the evolution in how the Bank has historically sought to contend with the problem of poverty, and then considers the various expert debates and bureaucratic negotiations that shaped how this new conception of poverty as risk and vulnerability came to be institutionalised. Finally, I consider the implications of this shift for how the problem of poverty is governed, suggesting that it involves a much more dynamic ontology of poverty and requires the use of a more proactive set of techniques. While this more active intervention requires a more present and engaged state than was evident in the structural adjustment era, its role nonetheless remains constrained by the liberal preoccupation with limiting governmental power.

Developmental State and Economic Development: Prospects for Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper will argue that the demonization of sub-Saharan African state proposed and enacted by neoliberal institutions during and since the era of structural adjustment has no historical foundations. In making this argument, the history of development thinking prior to and after World War II will be analyzed to show that the state was and continues to be instrumental in economic development. Finally, drawing on the contributions of heterodox development economists, prospects for re-integrating the sub-Saharan African state to bolster economic development will be assessed by drawing on the development experiences of East Asia’s high performing economies.

States and Economic Development

Today the Washington Consensus on development lies in tatters. The recent history of the developing world has been unkind to the core claim that a nation that opens its economy and keeps government's role to a minimum invariably experiences rapid economic growth. The evidence against this claim is strong: the developing world as a whole grew faster during the era of state intervention and import substitution (1950-1980) than in the more recent era of structural adjustment (1990-2005); and the recent economic performance of both Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africaregions that truly embraced neoliberalismhas lagged well behind that of many Asian economies, which have instead pursued judicial and unorthodox combinations of state intervention and economic openness. As scholars and policy makers reconstruct alternatives to the Washington Consensus on development, it is important to underline that prudent and effective state intervention and selective integration with the global economy have been responsible for development success in the past; they are also likely to remain the recipes for upward mobility in the global economy in the future."

SURPLUS CITY

Postcolonial scholars have been slow to address issues relating to urban space and society. This essay argues for new forms of critical engagement with questions of urbanism and citizenship on a global scale. Postcolonial narratives of urbanization, I argue, represent important sites for exploring tensions between elite and popular visions of the city and of development. Moreover, narratives of formation or bildung in the city such as the one that structures Chris Abani's novel Graceland offer allegories of postcolonial hopes for economic development and political reform. In Abani's novel, set in Lagos during the era of structural adjustment in the 1980s, social and economic transformation on both an individual and collective level cannot be found within the fictional mega-city. Instead, spatial egress is substituted for temporal progress in a damning indictment of the combined forces of local corruption and global exploitation.

La sociologie du développement dans la revue tiers monde 50 années pour une discipline improbable

Cet article analyse en perspective cinquante années de sociologie dans la Revue Tiers Monde. Il aborde les certitudes développementalistes initiales et l’évolutionnisme d’une époque où progrès et développement étaient synonymes. Les années de l’ajustement structurel sont ensuite aussi celles de l’apogée du tier-mondisme et de son déclin. Avec la fin de la guerre froide s’ouvre l’époque des incertitudes partagées et de l’approche problème par problème où la sociologie trouve une relative autonomie, devenant moins dépendante de l’économie qu’auparavant.

Power, Capture, and Conflict: A Call for Human Rights Accountability in Development Cooperation

Ushered in during the 1990s in response to development failures of the structural adjustment era, human rights-based approaches to development have proliferated in recent years. Nonetheless, the rhetoric has so far not been matched by conceptual rigor, systematization of practice, or lessons-learning—shortcomings that may undermine continuing support for such approaches. This Article seeks to contribute conceptual clarity to the frequently muddy waters of rights-based approaches, addressing in particular the conceptual and practical relevance of the international human rights normative framework to development cooperation within the UN system. The analysis focuses upon particular niches in which a normatively rigorous model for rights-based programming seems uniquely adapted, that is to say, in addressing asymmetries of power, the phenomenon known as "elite capture," and the transformation of violent conflict. The Article concludes with a reminder of the challenges and prerequisites for the wider implementation of rights-based approaches, and of the urgency of the need for a strengthened conceptual framework for empowerment and accountability.

Civil Society, NGOs, and the Holy Spirit in Mozambique

The concept of “civil society” has been used by major donors in the world of international development to justify the rechanneling of aid resources away from public sector services to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in an era of structural adjustment. Mozambique provides an especially valuable case study of the civil society experiment in Africa, given its dramatic conversion from state-centered development to civil society and free markets over the last decade. The rapid retreat of the state in the lives of ordinary Mozambicans during this period quickly cleared a space for the emergence of an “independent” civil society that has been quickly filled by two social currents: international NGOs and Pentecostal-influenced churches. This article argues that the NGO presence has intensified already growing social inequality by channeling resources primarily to elites, while the church movements have thrived in poor communities outside the foreign aid world. The enormous popularity of the churches reveals the deepening marginalization of poor communities in the market economy and exposes the inadequacy of the NGO-civil society model to meet the needs of vulnerable populations.

Condom social marketing, Pentecostalism, and structural adjustment in Mozambique: a clash of AIDS prevention messages.

Despite significant debate about the efficacy, ideology, and ethics of the method, condom social marketing (CSM) has become the dominant approach to AIDS education in many sub-Saharan African countries. However, critics have charged that social marketing (SM) distracts from the structural determinants of health-related behavior and excludes genuine community participation. This article argues that the diffusion of SM techniques in Africa is not driven by demonstrated efficacy but is attributable to the promotion of privatization and free markets in the structural adjustment era across the region. The CSM experience in a central Mozambican community reveals the dangers of using the method at the expense of community dialogue and participation to confront the AIDS epidemic. The advertising campaign developed to sell condoms has clashed with Pentecostal and Independent Churches, now a majority of the population, that have expanded rapidly across the region spreading a contrasting message about sexuality and risky behavior.

Governance of Healthcare in Structural Adjustment ERA in an Indian State: Orissa

Governance of Healthcare in Structural Adjustment ERA in an Indian State: Orissa

The Inter-American Development Bank's Assessment of Structural Adjustment: Questionable Theory and Pre-ordained Policy

In recent annual reports, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has analyzed the impact of the era of structural adjustment on the economy and society in Latin America. The reports are at odds in their analyses of the reform era's successes, as seen in reduced inflation and modest economic growth, as compared to its failures, as seen in rising poverty and income inequality, falling real wages and lower educational attainment. In spite of the conflicting evidence, the IDB concludes that neoliberal reforms need to be deepened. Such a stance, it will be shown, leads the IDB into frequent contradiction and tautology.

Peri-urban Development in an Era of Structural Adjustment in Africa: The City of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Much recent work in Africa has focused on the impacts of structural adjustment on prevailing economic, social and political structures, and especially so in the urban areas. Rather less has focused on the resulting land-use changes in and around African cities. This paper focuses on recent land-use changes in the peri-urban zone of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in the context of structural adjustment programmes experienced in the 1990s. Recent land-use development in Dar es Salaam's peri-urban zone has been characterised by infill rather than further linear expansion along routeways; by densification of existing linear settlement; and by limited spatial growth to the south of the city. Much of this can be explained as a response to new economic conditions resulting from macroeconomic reform. Access has improved due to greater competition in the public transport sector and increased access to private transport. Rapid capital accumulation, based on trade liberalisation and rent-seeking activities on the part of some individuals, has resulted in investment opportunities in the peri-urban zone. However, lack of confidence in future state policies and uncertainties over land ownership have resulted in investment being made in housing stock in particular, or spread over a range of small-scale enterprises, rather than in larger-scale productive investment.

Banking regulation in an era of structural adjustment: The case of Nigeria

Prior to the 1986 adoption of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in Nigeria, the government was the main player both in the practice and regulation of banking in the country. At the time, this arrangement was expedient given the government objective of preventing the domination of a very important sector of its economy by foreigners. Under this pre‐SAP dispensation, however, the government role as both owner of many of the large banks and regulator of the banking industry sometimes brought the government into conflict with itself. The adoption of SAP, which has led to government divestment of its shares in most banks, has now extensively altered the relationship between banks and the government (regulators). The aim of this paper is to help better understand the various forces that impact on the regulatory process for banks in Nigeria. It will also suggest ways of making regulation more effective in an era of structural adjustment.

Restructuring or De-Industrializing?: Zimbabwe's Textile and Metal Industries under Structural Adjustment, and: Voting with Their Feet: Migrant Zimbabwean Nurses and Doctors in the Era of Structural Adjustment (review)

Restructuring or De-Industrializing?: Zimbabwe's Textile and Metal Industries under Structural Adjustment, and: Voting with Their Feet: Migrant Zimbabwean Nurses and Doctors in the Era of Structural Adjustment (review)

Development Management versus Third World Bureaucracies: A Brief History of Conflicting Interests

This article investigates the impacts on, and responses of, third world bureaucracies (more specifically those operating in the poorer parts of the third world), in the context of the changing demands of development management. These include efforts at debureaucratization, by calling for a radically different kind of civil service; at localization and training; at circumvention, through relying on semi‐autonomous public enterprises; at re‐orientation, by altering civil servants' attitudes and incentives; at decentralization; and at privatization and pressure. For these governments, this last mentioned approach proved more demanding and demoralizing than any of the previous notions they had confronted. Today, under the rubric of governance, there appears to be some acknowledgement that the anti‐state emphasis of the structural adjustment era may have gone too far, and the call is for the more effective bureaucracies to be accountable. The danger in many poor countries, however, is that the real and relative salaries, the morale and ethics of the bureaucracy, and public trust in the bureaucracy, have all plummeted so far, that it may be too late to turn these trends around. The daunting challenge today is how to break out of this ‘box’ of bureaucratic decline, the four corners of which are formed and connected by lack of resources, incentives, public service and legitimacy.

REVIEWCharles M. Becker, Andrew M. Hamer, and Andrew R. Morrison.Beyond Urban Bias in Africa: Urbanization in an Era of Structural Adjustment. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1994. Pp. ix+294.

REVIEWCharles M. Becker, Andrew M. Hamer, and Andrew R. Morrison.<i>Beyond Urban Bias in Africa: Urbanization in an Era of Structural Adjustment</i>. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1994. Pp. ix+294.