The Politics of African Industrial Policy
A Comparative Perspective

This book provides four African country studies that illustrate challenges to economic transformation and the politics of implementing industrial policies.

Lindsay Whitfield (Author), Ole Therkildsen (Author), Lars Buur (Author), Anne Mette Kjær (Author)

9781107105317, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 July 2015

356 pages, 6 b/w illus. 9 tables
23.6 x 16 x 3 cm, 0.7 kg

'This is a landmark contribution to the study of African political economy that brings considerable conceptual sophistication and empirical depth to key debates in the field. At the same time, this outstanding study provides insights for broader discussions of industrialization and the developmental state that will make it necessary reading for scholars and students of comparative politics more generally.' Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, University of Oxford

This book engages in the debate on growth versus economic transformation and the importance of industrial policy, presenting a comprehensive framework for explaining the politics of industrial policy. Using comparative research to theorize about the politics of industrial policy in countries in the early stages of capitalist transformation that also experience the pressures of elections due to democratization, this book provides four in-depth African country studies that illustrate the challenges to economic transformation and the politics of implementing industrial policies.

1. The puzzle of limited economic transformation in Africa
Part I. Rethinking the Political Economy of Development: 2. The case for economic transformation and industrial policy
3. Assessing economic transformation in Africa
4. Elaborated political settlements theory and clientelism in Africa
Part II. Evolution of Political Settlements: 5. Increased vulnerability and contestation in Mozambique and Tanzania
6. Dispersed power and elite fragmentation in Ghana and Uganda
Part III. African Experiences with Industrial Policy: 7. Mozambique: between elite capture and pockets of efficiency
8. Tanzania: intense contestation within a weak dominant party
9. Ghana: competitive clientelism and weak capitalists
10. Uganda: competing factions and conflicting elite interests
11. Conclusions and perspectives.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Comparative politics [JPB]