Deborah Bräutigam

Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries: Capacity and Consent.

OUTLINE Introduction Taxation is a core governance function. It has the potential to shape relations between state and society in significant and distinctive ways. Tax revenues allow states to provide security and public goods. “The history of state revenue production,” Margaret Levi declared, “is the history of the evolution of the state (1988: 1).” For these reasons, taxation should be accorded a central role in analyses of state building. There is a large historical literature, relating especially to Western Europe (and a smaller, but conceptually rich, political science literature on the interaction between states and citizens over taxes (Tilly, Levy, Bates, etc.). Yet although the subject of state building is now high on academic and policy agendas, the relationship between state-building and taxation in the developing world has received almost no sustained scholarly attention.

African Shenzhen: China's special economic zones in Africa

This article examines recent Chinese efforts to construct a series of official economic cooperation zones in Africa. These zones are a central platform in Chinas announced strategy of engagement in Africa as ‘mutual benefit’. We analyse the background, motives and implementation of the zones, and argue that they form a unique, experimental model of development cooperation in Africa: market-based decisions and investment by Chinese companies are combined with support and subsidies from an Asian ‘developmental state’. Though this cooperation provides a promising new approach to sustainable industrialisation, we also identify serious political, economic and social challenges. Inadequate local learning and local participation could affect the ability of the zones to catalyse African industrialisation. The synergy between Chinese enterprises, the Chinese government and African governments has been evolving through practice. A case study of Egypt provides insight into this learning process.

Substituting for the state: Institutions and industrial development in eastern Nigeria

Abstract This article examines the recent dynamic industrialization experience in one town, Nnewi, part of eastern Nigerias “industrial axis.” The article suggests that insights from institutional economics can be used to help explain the case of dynamic industrialization in an unpromising economic environment. Nnewi industrialists have successfully filled the gaps left by failures of both the market and the state. In particular, by using both international linkages and alternative, culturally-based networks, they have reduced information uncertainties and principal-agent problems, lowering the transaction costs faced by other would-be industrialists in Nigeria.

Governance, economy, and foreign aid

Much of the current donor discussion of governance takes place outside of a historical or theoretical context. This article locates the governance issue within recent political science, development management, and institutional economics literature. The review focuses on accountability, participation, transparency, and predictability or the rule of law, and includes a discussion of the impact of these variables upon economic performance. It concludes that donors can best assist good governance to develop by helping to foster conditions under which developing societies can push their governments to deliver the accountability, transparency and rule of law that sustainable development requires.

China's Engagement in African Agriculture: “Down to the Countryside”

Agriculture is a rapidly growing arena for Chinas economic engagement in Africa. Drawing on new field research in East and West Africa, and in Beijing and Baoding, China, as well as earlier archival research, this article investigates the dimensions of Chinas agricultural engagement, placing it in historical perspective. It traces the changes and continuities in Chinas policies in rural Africa since the 1960s, as Chinese policies moved from fraternal socialism to amicable capitalism. Beginning in the 1980s, the emphasis on aid as mutual benefit began to blur the lines between aid, south–south co-operation and investment. Today, Beijing has established at least 14 new agro-technical demonstration stations using an unusual public–private model that policy makers hope will assist sustainability. At the same time, a stirring of interest among land-scarce Chinese farmers and investors in developing farms in sub-Saharan Africa evokes a mix of anticipation and unease.

Chinese Development Aid in Africa: What, Where, Why, and How Much?

China’s development aid to Africa has increased rapidly, yet this might be the only fact on which we have widespread agreement when it comes to Chinese aid. Analysts disagree about the nature of China’s official development aid, the countries that are its main recipients, the reasons for providing aid, the quantity of official aid, and its impact. Why does this matter? Knowing more about Chinese development aid is important for understanding Chinese foreign policy and economic statecraft: how and to what ends does China use its government policy tools? It is also important for more accurate comparisons between Chinese practices and those of other donors and providers of finance. Finally, for those who are interested in the question of whether, as it rises, China will transform, reform or maintain the existing system of norms and rules, development aid provides a particularly interesting case study. The rules and norms about foreign aid have been forged not by a global institution, but primarily by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — a group of countries of which China is not a part. To answer questions about China’s impact on these rules and norms, we need to have a sound idea of what China is actually doing as a donor.

Transforming Mozambique: The Politics of Privatization, 1975–2000

Transforming Mozambique: The Politics of Privatization, 1975–2000. By M. Anne Pitcher. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 320p.

South-south technology transfer: The case of China's Kpatawee rice project in Liberia

60.00. Mozambique provides a sharp contrast with transition in much of Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and even Asia. A Marxist movement (Frelimo) took power in 1975, pledging to construct a socialist state. Only 15 years later, a new constitution made no reference to socialism. By 1994, Mozambique was a multiparty democracy and one of the World Banks “model” market reformers. Yet Frelimo remains in power, presiding over the private economy it once denounced. Why and how did this happen?

Looking East Africa’s Newest Investment Partners

Abstract Despite the call for more technical cooperation between developing countries (TCDC) as spearheaded by the United Nations Development Program, the literature contains few examples of actual cases of TCDC. Kpatawee Farm was developed during 1978–1989 by the Peoples Republic of China as a state-owned rice seed plantation in rural Liberia. The article analyzes this experience of TCDC. It concludes that technical cooperation between developing countries may offer unexpected problems. In this case, operating Kpatawee as a state farm effectively transferred Chinas own difficulties with state-controlled, overmechanized, and uneconomic production. Privatizing Kpatawee is unlikely to improve its performance. Even Chinas small-scale irrigation techniques, when considered separately from the rainfed area of the state farm, appear at best only marginally competitive with imports, and offer limited promise as a viable farming system for rural Liberia.

Chinese Aid in Africa

Asian investment and economic engagement in Africa is a prominent feature of this decade. This newly prominent engagement raises many issues for the emerging and frontier economies of Africa. What are the dimensions of this engagement? Do Asian partners offer anything different from Africa’s traditional partners? China is the most prominent of these Asian partners. This article concentrates first on the dimensions of this engagement: trade and investment flows. It then focuses on Chinese instruments for economic engagement on the continent. Five instruments are selected for discussion: (1) Lines of credit to Chinese multinationals; (2) Export credits; (3) Resource-backed loans; (4) China Africa Development Fund; and (5) China’s overseas special economic zones. A final section considers the impact of the global financial crisis on Chinese engagement, finding that some Chinese companies are using the crisis as an opportunity to deepen their investments, through countercyclical purchases.