The roots of our predicament go back to the colonial state that existed prior to independence – an apparatus created by force and preserved by colonial hegemony. The system of production was principally geared to serving the interests of metropolitan capital. After independence in 1960, the elites that took over power were essentially a fractious ethnic-oriented oligarchy that tended to perpetuate pre-existing structures and their entrenched privileges. Far from building a productive and autonomous capitalist economy, they only succeeded in reproducing a neo-colonial capitalist system anchored on producing primary commodities for exports while importing manufactured goods.
The radical Pakistani sociologist Hamza Alavi raised those issues in a controversial and much-debated essay that he wrote in the seventies. From his case studies of Pakistan and Bangladesh, Alavi argued that it was in the very nature of the post-colonial that the elites would be in no position to articulate a vision of autonomous economic development.
The so-called “Asian Miracle” of the last decades has shown that the post-colonial state can be repositioned to serve the needs of structural transformation. It has in fact altered the landscape of world development thinking as we have known it. Countries such as Singapore and South Korea have already joined the ranks of advanced industrial nations while countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia are rapidly “catching up” with the advanced industrial countries. The Asian countries embraced the model of the export-oriented developmental state in the way that our countries in Africa never did. Today, only a couple of African countries can be regarded as developmental states in any genuine sense: Mauritius, Botswana, Rwanda and perhaps Ethiopia.
We define the developmental state as the political order which places ‘development’ as its topmost national priority; encouraging citizens with the right mix of incentives to forego current consumption so as to maximize long-term economic performance. Historically, such states have tended to rather be authoritarian, with the degree of authoritarianism varying from one to the other, depending on regime type, the nature of national conditions and the specificity of security challenges.
Another feature of the developmental state is commitment to property rights, strong markets and the sanctity of contracts. This provides clear signals for foreign investors who also enjoy tax holidays and other incentives. Most developmental states have also undertaken land reforms. Beginning from President Park in South Korea in the 1950s, most Asia Pacific nations that have achieved rapid growth and structural transformation have also been those that have implemented courageous land reforms. Their leaderships have also mobilised enough support to defeat resistance by landed oligarchies.
Most developmental states have also invested heavily in human capital development. They have given priority to ensuring universal compulsory education, expansion of higher education, especially in technical and engineering fields, and in the training and acquisition of industrial skills by its workers.
Developmental states tend to insulate their technocratic elites from societal pressures by giving them the autonomy to develop and implement policies for rapid growth and structural transformation. They have done this through reform of the civil service and creation of a merit-based bureaucracy; with functionaries that are well-paid and possess a vision of national destiny and purpose. The technocrats enjoy the power to issue orders and to guide markets and impose discipline on the private sector. The state guides the markets, with strict controls over investment flows.
Unlike African nations that pursued import substitution industrialisation, with reservations against transnational corporations, the developmental states of the Asia Pacific anchored their development strategies on export-led industrialisation, with an open disposition to foreign capital. For most of sub-Saharan Africa, import substitution created inefficiencies and distortions, often reinforcing the neopatrimonial syndrome.
Typically, a developmental state exhibits a set of interrelated characteristics: (i) Growth-oriented leadership; (ii) Capable economic bureaucracies; (iii) Selective enforcement capabilities; (iv) Broad consultation among public officials and private sector elites; (v) Effectiveness in conflict-resolution and coordination; (iv) Administrative regime that provide clear guidance to market activity; and (vii) Alignment of expectations between state and market actors.
The origin of the concept has been traced back to American political economist Chalmers Johnson, in his seminal study on the role of old Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in Japanese industrialisation and economic development. In that path-breaking work, Johnson made a distinction between states with a ‘regulatory’ orientation and those with a ‘developmental’ orientation. He refers to the United States as a country that belongs to the first type. American industrialisation was largely spurred by the private sector, with government coming in largely as a regulator.
Japan, on the other hand, is the prime exemplar of a country where the state played a central role in the industrialisation process. While Tokugawa Japan was dominated by the Shogun feudal aristocracy, the imperial administration of the time took a back seat as far as economic development was concerned. However, following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, a re-invigorated government took it upon itself to modernise the society and industrialise the economy. Thus the state assumed a central role in the industrialisation of Japan. In recent years Japan has declined relative to the emerging economic powers, but it nonetheless remains a player of the rank among the leading technological powers of the twenty-first century.
Obadiah Mailafia
