Africa’s Development Impasse: Rethinking the Political Economy of Transformation

Orthodox strategies for socio-economic development have failed spectacularly in Southern Africa. Neither the developmental state nor neoliberal reform seems able to provide a solution to Africa's problems.

In Africa's Development Impasse, Stefan Andreasson analyses this failure and explores the potential for post-development alternatives. Examining the post-independence trajectories of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, the book shows three different examples of this failure to overcome a debilitating colonial legacy. Andreasson then argues that it is now time to resuscitate post-development theory's challenge to conventional development. In doing this, he claims, we face the enormous challenge of translating post-development into actual politics for a socially and politically sustainable future and using it as a dialogue about what the aims and aspirations of post-colonial societies might become.

This important fusion of theory with empirical case studies will be essential reading for students of development politics and Africa.

Stefan Andreasson is Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. He received his PhD in political science from Arizona State University and was a Research Associatewith the Institute for Global Dialogue in Johannesburg. His primary research interest is the political economy of development, including state-market relations, the history of capitalism in Southern Africa and theoretical debates on what constitutes development. His research has appeared in journals including ＂Journal of World-Systems Research,＂ ＂Journal of Contemporary African Studies,＂ ＂Third World Quarterly,＂ ＂Capitalism Nature Socialism,＂ ＂ Political Studies＂ and ＂Democratization.＂