James Pletcher

The Politics of Liberalizing Zambia's Maize Markets

This paper discusses the process of agricultural liberalization in Zambia. The central argument is that maize markets have been more quickly and fully liberalized than maize input markets because the perceived political risks of liberalizing input markets are greater than those of liberalizing maize markets, and because economic interest groups benefited from maize liberalization while similar interests benefited from continued government interventions in input markets. These finding imply that in order to understand the prospects for economic liberalization in new democracies we must disaggregate both civil society and markets.

Regulation with growth: The political economy of palm oil in Malaysia

Abstract The study of the palm oil industry in Malaysia demonstrates that with a proper mix of public regulation and investment a state may achieve national control over an industry and promote the interests of poorer citizens while promoting overall growth and international competitiveness of the industry. The introduction summarizes the literature on public interventions in agricultural markets. Section 2 describes the palm oil industry and its growth in Malaysia. Sections 3 and 4 discuss policies in investment and in regulation and marketing respectively. The conclusion further articulates the thesis.

The Political Uses of Agricultural Markets in Zambia

IT is widely acknowledged that the origins of Africas hunger crisis lie only partly in weather patterns. A growing number of studies have emphasised the role which the state plays in creating a policy environment which either undermines or promotes commercial agriculture. 1 Much of the fault for the latters poor performance in many areas of the continent is assigned to short-sighted government policies of excessive intervention in agricultural markets. The cardinal sins are considered to be price controls, food subsidies, and state-run marketing boards. As the external debt of African states grows, foreign lenders and aid donors impose economic reforms deemed necessary to address the long-run structural problems. The austerity packages of the International Monetary Fund, for example, aim to reduce demand in the borrowing country by cutting government spending on subsidies, while the World Bank focuses on stimulating agricultural production through a mixture of targeted investments and advice on how to change the pricing and tax structure so as to improve incentives for farmers. 2

Public interventions in agricultural markets in Malaysia: rice and palm oil.

This paper explores the goals, nature and results of government interventions into the rice and palm oil markets of Malyasia since independence. Its purpose is to compare the relatively successful way in which the government has promoted the palm oil industry with the failure of interventions in the rice market. The historical comparison of public efforts in these two industries points up the importance of setting consistent goals, of encouraging crops which match the natural resource endowment of the country, of having a private sector which is capable of responding to production incentives, and of letting supply and demand determine prices when designing a strategy of market intervention. Above all, it is important to distinguish programs of intervention based primarily on efficiency criteria from those which seek to perform social welfare (e.g. income support) and political (e.g. food security) functions as well.