Tearing the Social Fabric: Neoliberalism, Deindustrialization and the Crisis of Governance in Zimbabwe. By Padraig Carmody. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. 240p. $67.95. African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979–1999. By Nicolas Van De Walle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 304p. $59.95 cloth, $19.95, paper.

Extract

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to underperform the world's developing regions, remaining a region of pronounced economic stagnation at correspondingly frightful human and social costs. Exactly why this is so has been the subject of extensive debate both among academics and within the policy community. Since most sub-Saharan African countries have been implementing neoliberal economic reforms, there has been particularly heated discussion about whether or not these policies have helped to improve the economic environment.