Business and the state in Africa
Subtitle: economic policy-making in the neo-liberal era
By: Antoinette Handley.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 292
ISBN-13: 9780521886055; 9780521713719
Subjects: Industrial policy -- Africa; Business enterprises -- Africa; Africa -- Economic policy
Description: "The dominant developmental approach in Africa over the past twenty years has been to advocate the role of markets and the private sector in restoring economic growth. Recent thinking has also stressed the need for "ownership" of economic reform by the populations of developing countries, particularly the business community. This book studies the business-government interactions of four African countries: Ghana, Zambia, South Africa, and Mauritius. Employing a historical institutionalist approach, Antoinette Handley considers why and how business in South Africa and Mauritius has developed the capacity to constructively contest the making of economic policy while, conversely, business in Zambia and Ghana has struggled to develop any autonomous political capacity.

Paying close attention to the mutually constitutive interactions between business and the state, Handley considers the role of timing and how ethnicized and racialized identities can affect these interactions in profound and consequential ways."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.