Business and the State in Africa : Economic Policy-Making in the Neo-Liberal Era

Examining four countries (Ghana, Zambia, South Africa and Mauritius), Antoinette Handley analyses the capacity of the indigenous business community in Africa to shape economic policy. She explores the influence of the capitalist class on economic policymaking and asks why it has varied so widely across Africa.

The dominant developmental approach in Africa over the last 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 ethnicised and racialised identities can affect these interactions in profound and consequential ways.