Bringing Politics Back In? The World Bank and Adjustment in Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID2140010
AuthorsRichard Sandbrook (corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume29
Issue2
Pages278-289
Publication date1995-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0008-3968 • E-ISSN: 1923-3051
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00083968.1995.10804384
OpenAlexW2273101826
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited21

The initial formulation of the World Bank's adjustment thinking reflected a fairly pure neoclassical perspective. Accelerated Development in SubSaharan Africa (World Bank 1981) sees an overextended state as a large part of the problem of economic stagnation. The solution is, therefore, to pare the size and responsibilities of the state, augment its capacity to fulfil its minimal economic role, and a variety of domestic policy deficiencies that waste resources and suffocate market forces. The report places a high priority on these policy reforms, especially the removal of biases against agricultural production in the form of overvalued exchange rates, high direct and indirect taxes on primary commodities, and low producer prices. Such structural reform, it was initially expected, could be well underway in two or three years. However, Sub-Saharan Africa's intractable conditions soon impelled the Bank to adopt a more broad-gauged, complex, and long-term approach. One important dimension of this shift was a recognition of the centrality of political factors in Africa's economic decline and recovery. I This rethinking produced much debate about the proper role of the state, some of it veering close to the revisionist view of structuralist analysis. The World Bank also acknowledged that policy reforms alone would not suffice to activate markets because a supportive array of political, administrative, legal, and economic institutions was lacking. African states would therefore need the will and capacity to tackle deep institutional restructuring as well as policy reform. Finally, the Bank and donors were drawn into debates on the politics of implementing reform. It was useless to devise technically correct economic packages if these proved politically unfeasible. How then could African governments and significant social forces gain a sense of ownership of adjustment programmes? Although this emerging political-economy approach was better attuned to the challenges of development, it brought the World Bank and donors into a longer term and more intrusive involvement in Africa than they had originally contemplated. Perhaps in recognition of the enormity of the task, the Bank's most recent progress report on Africa (World Bank 1994) retreats into

Development economics · Economic policy · Economic restructuring · Economic system · Economics · Economy · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Restructuring · State (computer science) · Structural adjustment · Economic Theory and Policy · Finance · International Development and Aid · Law