Jan Kees van Donge

Disordering the Market: The Liberalisation of Burley Tobacco in Malawi in the 1990s

The Malawian tobacco sector has changed considerably in the past decade: the production and marketing of burley tobacco had previously been highly regulated and is now liberalised. The sociological perspective from which this article approaches economic life sees no inherent contradiction between market and regulation: markets are seen as socially constructed, and within regulated systems there can be elements of competition. Elements of regulation are thus brought to light that have not received attention before and it is argued that, while the exclusion and exploitation of smallholders have rightly been stressed, the benefits of regulation for the long-term viability of the sector have been overlooked. From this long-term perspective, it is irrelevant whether burley is grown by smallholders or on large estates. The article describes the policy environment in which liberalisation took place; analyses the role of the tobacco sector in the Malawian economy; describes the evolution of the institutional structure of the industry up to liberalisation; points out the strains and stresses in the regulatory system on the eve of liberalisation; describes the unexpected consequences that arose after liberalisation; places the changes in the industry against the background of international tobacco marketing; and, finally, analyses the gradual and regulated smallholder involvement in the production and marketing of burley through clubs before liberalisation. It is shown that regulation is not intrinsically detrimental to the smallholder. The conclusion places the case in a wider debate on state and economy in Africa. State regulation is not necessarily antagonistic to the emergence of viable economic sectors, and neither is the supposedly free play of market forces intrinsically conducive to the interests of the producer.The Malawian tobacco sector has changed considerably in the past decade: the production and marketing of burley tobacco had previously been highly regulated and is now liberalised. The sociological perspective from which this article approaches economic life sees no inherent contradiction between market and regulation: markets are seen as socially constructed, and within regulated systems there can be elements of competition. Elements of regulation are thus brought to light that have not received attention before and it is argued that, while the exclusion and exploitation of smallholders have rightly been stressed, the benefits of regulation for the long-term viability of the sector have been overlooked. From this long-term perspective, it is irrelevant whether burley is grown by smallholders or on large estates. The article describes the policy environment in which liberalisation took place; analyses the role of the tobacco sector in the Malawian economy; describes the evolution of the institutional stru...

Law and order as a development issue: Land conflicts and the creation of social order in Southern Malawi

Registration of individual title to land in order to create legal security has been the central concern in the rich literature on land and law in Africa. The problem of legal insecurity is approached here from a different angle which has received relatively less attention: dispute settlement. The article results from the observation of land disputes in local political arenas. It portrays a local legal cultural universe in which legal insecurity arises especially from legal situations stressing group consensus. It appears that people who are accused of witchcraft and groups which are said not to belong are particularly vulnerable in such a legal culture. The conclusion argues that this case material reveals connections between law, land and the creation of social order which may throw light on many other situations. It pleads for more attention to be paid to the development of jurisprudence in attempts to create legal security.

Reflections on donors, opposition and popular will in the 1996 Zambian general elections

The Zambian general elections held on 18 November 1996 to elect a president and parliament are of more than merely national interest. Even before the elections took place, a vocal opposition already doubted their genuineness, and these claims have found considerable international sympathy. The Zambian government and those who voted them into power for a second term, however, consider these elections a hallmark of the success of the reintroduction of multi-partyism, which Zambia was one of the first, and one of the most successful, to reintroduce in Africa. These elections, therefore, provide a case in which to analyse a triangular interaction which is common in Africa: the interaction between an incumbent political group, an opposition which does not accept the victory of the former, and the international community. This article aims to offer a theoretical perspective on the way in which these three groups of actors intermesh; but, in order to ground these more theoretical concerns in an understanding of the empirical realities, an attempt is made first to capture the essence of the conflicts involved.

The Arbitrary State in the Uluguru Mountains: Legal Arenas and Land Disputes in Tanzania

When Julius Nyerere visited Mgeta in the Uluguru mountains while campaigning in 1987 for the chairmanship of what was then Tanzanias only party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (C.C.M.), he was confronted with a question relating to a long-running land dispute. Given that a national leader can expect to make little political capital from getting embroiled in such a controverty, Nyerere not surprisingly emphasised that he could not interfere with the work of the local primary court. It is doubtful, however, whether those present considered this a satisfactory reply as, in their experience, the administration of law – especially in relation to land–is highly problematic. Indeed, the magistrate handling this very case was removed by popular request because of alleged corruption soon after stating confidently: ‘After the hospital, we provide the most popular government service’. The demand for legal services is great in Mgeta, as elsewhere in the country, but at the same time there is little or no trust in the legal institutions.

Politicians, bureaucrats and farmers: A Zambian case study

This case study from Eastern Zambia challenges the thesis that after independence an elite of privileged farmers entrenched itself through domination of the local political arena and a coalition with the civil service. It argues that such a view may be a reification due to misplaced assumptions about historical continuity and the uniformity of social behaviour; a lack of attention to the actual operation of government departments at the lowest levels; and neglect of how people construct ways of life on the basis of different interpretations of the world.

The EU Observer Mission to the Zambian Elections 2001: The Politics of Election Monitoring as the Construction of Narratives

Abstract There is consensus amongst election monitors and official observers that the 2001 Zambian general elections were flawed and did not express the preferences of Zambian voters. This article argues on the basis of participant observation in the EU Observer Mission that this consensus was more a socially constructed narrative than a reasoned judgement based on observation. Central in this story is how the EU Observer Mission behaved as a rival source of authority and information to the Electoral Commission of Zambia. Analysis of African elections should view those who are vested with authority to judge about democracy as actors in political processes rather than as impartial arbiters of justice.Abstract There is consensus amongst election monitors and official observers that the 2001 Zambian general elections were flawed and did not express the preferences of Zambian voters. This article argues on the basis of participant observation in the EU Observer Mission that this consensus was more a socially constructed narrative than a reasoned judgement based on observation. Central in this story is how the EU Observer Mission behaved as a rival source of authority and information to the Electoral Commission of Zambia. Analysis of African elections should view those who are vested with authority to judge about democracy as actors in political processes rather than as impartial arbiters of justice.

Governance and access to finance for development: an explanation of divergent development trajectories in Kenya and Malaysia

Kenya and Malaysia embarked on quite similar development trajectories in the 1960s, but economic growth figures started to diverge widely in the 1980s and 1990s. Governance issues are often suggested as the major binding constraint in the Kenyan development trajectory whereas Malaysia scores well on governance indicators; but similar governance problems to those in Kenya can be found in Malaysia. However, Malaysia has the resources to overcome these, whereas access to finance appears to be a binding constraint in Kenya. Essential in the Malaysian development trajectory appear to be islands of efficiency that are relatively isolated from rent-seeking, notably the oil company Petronas. The paper therefore contributes to the debate on the role of institutions in the literature on the resource curse.Kenya and Malaysia embarked on quite similar development trajectories in the 1960s, but economic growth figures started to diverge widely in the 1980s and 1990s. Governance issues are often suggested as the major binding constraint in the Kenyan development trajectory whereas Malaysia scores well on governance indicators; but similar governance problems to those in Kenya can be found in Malaysia. However, Malaysia has the resources to overcome these, whereas access to finance appears to be a binding constraint in Kenya. Essential in the Malaysian development trajectory appear to be islands of efficiency that are relatively isolated from rent-seeking, notably the oil company Petronas. The paper therefore contributes to the debate on the role of institutions in the literature on the resource curse.

Money, Debt and Aspiration in South Africa: Deborah James, Money from Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2015), xix + 282 pp., hardback, ISBN 978-0-8047-9111-3; paperback, ISBN 978-0-8047-9267-7; e-book, ISBN 978-0-8047-9315-5.

Perhaps as Russian naval strength had leapt ahead from the days of Lisyanski and Golovnin, and Russian travellers at the Cape were more frequent, the strangeness had gone. In Russia, the Cape was known, before Goncharov’s The Frigate Pallada (1858), only by Le Vaillant’s romantic yet anti-Boer Travels into the Interior Parts of Africa, (two volumes – French original, 1790). The affection that the travellers shared remained, as Gorelik’s translations make plain so pleasingly.

Security Beyond the State: Private Security and International Politics

between culture and geography and see how space itself is an essential ingredient in struggles of rights’ (p. 252). To this end, Part I considers the historical relationship between space and claim making. Chapter 1 discusses historical processes of caste formation, the territorial control of the Catholic Church on the coast and the ways Mukkuvars negotiated that authority. Chapter 2 describes how the mobilisation of agrarian low caste groups in the interior, in a quest to become at once subaltern and modern, could only be achieved by constituting the Mukkuvars on the coast as primitive. This is developed later in the book, when Subramanian astutely points to the recent prominence of the imaginary of Kanyakumari in Hindutva sacred geography and to Christian trawler owners forging a political alliance with the inland Hindu Right as a bulwark against the political activism of artisanal fishers. Chapter 3 details competing spatial imaginaries manifest in the writings of three colonial era fishery administrators: Mukkuvars as coastal primitives, as participants in a larger network of ocean trade and as members of an emerging nation. It demonstrates how different understandings of space influenced the fishery policies pursued. Part II of the book examines spatial imaginaries in the post-colonial era. Chapter 4 documents how an emergent nationalist spatial imaginary after independence contributed to the adoption of trawling. As a counter to this trend, chapter 5 identifies the rising importance of a desire for intermediacy in artisanal claims. This is manifest in the rise of regional politics, the creation of an artisanal zone of production and the turn to motorised technology. Chapter 6 considers how post-independence national imaginaries were later subverted in the era of globalisation with the battle over foreign intrusion into Indian fisheries. Subramanian contrasts state-led deterritorialisation with a renewed call by the local opposition for national sovereignty. In particular, she describes how artisanal fishers have appropriated ecological framings from the anti-globalisation movement in order to bolster their claims against trawlers (p. 221). The third main argument deals with theories of subalternity. Throughout the book, Subramanian stresses the agency of these subaltern fishers in politics. Yet if scholars associated with subaltern studies have often emphasised the ways in which subaltern politics were infused with religious idioms and practices, this book takes the opposite approach by showing how these aspects of religion become politicised. According to Subramanian, Mukkuvars have exhibited not a passive acceptance of religious ideology but rather an active and ongoing negotiation with multiple institutional powers. In making this important insight, she returns to Gramsci’s original concept of hegemony in which the subaltern is dialectically constituted within a complex web of affiliations and alliances (p. 42). In a work so attentive to the production and effects of spatial imaginaries, it is curious that Subramanian offers so little sense of the actual lives of the people living on the shorelines. Space, of course, is not only the arena of political economy, but also a realm constituted by one’s affective experience. Though she opens by mentioning ‘the religiosity of the landscape’ (p. 2), Subramanian does not explain how Mukkuvars enact these religious sentiments in their immediate surroundings. While perhaps seeking to avoid constructing subaltern spaces as symbolic of anti-capitalist resistance, her discussion of conflicts between artisanal fishers and trawler owners at times seems abstract without attention to the micro-dynamics of space and power. Despite the absence of sustained attention to the life-worlds of her informants, this book makes an important contribution to understandings of rights, space and subalternity in South Asia. With its lucid style and manageable length, Shorelines provides an excellent addition to the academic study of international development, rights, and globalisation.

Growing Apart: Oil, Politics and Economic Change in Indonesia and Nigeria

diversification in rural areas, and agriculture–nonfarm linkages. The policy environment surrounding RNFE is examined from chapter 12 onwards, and begins with a rehearsal of fairly standard arguments about the failures of state interventionism in the 1960s and 1970s leading to the neo-liberal market liberalisation response in the 1990s. Their enthusiasm for RNFE allows the editors and authors of the book to entertain roles for the state in facilitating and promoting the sector that are set out and elaborated in chapters 12–15. This is all mainly light-touch stuff to do with fostering facilitating rather than debilitating regulatory environments and infrastructure provision, as well as ensuring level playing fields when global players enter local agricultural supply chains. The book contains a lot of empirical information about the RNFE in a wide range of countries, and also tests various relationships to do with poverty reducing impact, agricultural growth multipliers, size distribution and dynamics of firms and so on. Provided that you buy in to the overall hypothesis that RNFE is a special sector that acts as a vital bridge (in a path-dependent sense) between agricultural growth and future urban-based growth sectors, then this is definitely the book for you. It is state of the art in the RNFE literature. Nevertheless, not all students of strategic growth processes agree with the golden sequence portrayed by the RNFE enthusiasts. Ashwani Saith famously called RNFE a ‘bargain-basement sector’ comprising micro enterprises of such tentative existence and duration that they could never collectively amount to much in the economic growth stakes (Saith, A., 1992, The Rural Non-Farm Economy: Processes and Policies, Geneva: International Labour Office, World Employment Programme). In a well-known article written many years ago, Hymer and Resnick (Hymer, S. and S. Resnick, 1969, ‘A Model of an Agrarian Economy with Nonagricultural Activities’, American Economic Review, vol. 59, no. 4) predicted that village shops in remote rural areas would soon be selling plastic buckets made in China rather than locally produced earthenware pots, thus failing to create local employment and income multipliers. Then there is the broader question of why select rurally-based non-farm enterprise for special attention, when all nascent enterprises, whether rural or urban, need the same encouragement to survive and thrive, and surely it is resources and markets that determine whether these happen to be located in villages, small towns, district centres, or big cities.