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Bureaucratic Development and Economic Growth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Irving Leonard Markovitz
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Providing a good standard of living for all the peoples of Africa means that there must be more than simple economic growth. The alleviation of tremendous poverty requires special measures to ensure that those at the bottom of the social structure benefit by receiving part of the product of growth. Two problems of equal importance involve: first, the necessity for changing the life-styles of peoples and the economic forces of production of centuries; and secondly, the creation of the appropriate political apparatus to guarantee a more suitable distribution of the new goods that are produced. Francophone planners soon after the end of World War II used the word encadrement to convey a sense of the processes and institutions involved in coping with these problems.

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Articles
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The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 183 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

page 184 note 1 McNamara, Robert S., Address to the Board of Governors… September, 1973 (Washington, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1973), p. 10.Google Scholar

page 184 note 2 Ibid.

page 184 note 3 Ibid. p. 13. For a contrary view, see Berg, Elliot, ‘Socialism and Economic Development in Tropical Africa’, in Quarterly Journal of Economics (Cambridge, Mass.), LXVII, 4, 11 1964.Google Scholar Berg maintains that it is ridiculous to distinguish between economic growth and economic development, because without the former the latter is impossible, and eventually everybody will benefit if sufficient economic growth does take place.

page 184 note 4 McNamara, op. cit. pp. 13–14. He is, of course, also aware that millions of the victims of poverty live in urban slums, and that their social and economic advance depends on an acceleration of the pace of industrialisation.

page 185 note 1 Ibid. p. 17. Brazil's so-called ‘economic miracle’ was denounced by the Roman Catholic bishops in a signed declaration accusing the present military régime of ‘repression, colonialism, and manipulation of an economic policy to benefit only 20% of the population.’ According to the New rork Times, 19 May 1974: ‘The thirty-page document, signed in Recife on May 6th, immediately banned by the authorities, tells of starvation wages, unemployment, hunger, illiteracy and high infant mortality in the North East and decries Brazil's so-called economic miracle as merely a means to ‘make the rich richer and the poor poorer”.’

page 185 note 2 Cf. Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth: a non-communist manifesto (Cambridge, 1960),Google Scholar and Politics and the Stages of Growth (Cambridge, 1971).

page 185 note 3 On the dangers of new agricultural technology, see Stewart, I. G. (ed.), Economic Development and Structural Change (Edinburgh, 1969),Google Scholar especially the articles by Myint, H., ‘Trade, Education and Economic Development’, pp. 1–12,Google Scholar and Williams, T. David, ‘Commodity Distribution in Malawi: a case study’, pp. 83–103.Google Scholar See also Furtado, Celso, Obstacles to Development in Latin America (Garden City, 1970).Google Scholar

page 186 note 1 Walker, Martin, ‘Famine South of the Sahara’, in New York Times, 24 02 1974.Google Scholar

page 186 note 2 Roger Morris and Hal Sheets document the extent of the tragedy in their Disaster in the Desert: failures of international relief in the West African drought (Washington, 1974). The decline in annual rainfall has, of course, spread beyond Africa to affect countries in the same line of latitude from Nicaragua to the Maharashtra province of India.

page 186 note 3 On how famine encourages the capitalist transformation of the drought-stricken areas, see Claude Meillassoux, ‘Development or Exploitation: is the Sahd famine good business?’, and Cliffe, Lionel, ‘Capitalism or Feudalism? The Famine in Ethiopia’, in Review of African Political Economy (London), 1, 08–11 1974, pp. 27–33 and 34–40, respectively.Google Scholar

page 187 note 1 Cf. Walker loc. cit. and Binder, David, ‘One Hundred Thousand Deaths in Africa Linked to Drought Neglect’, in New York Times, 4 03 1973.Google Scholar

page 187 note 2 Ibid. 6 July 1974.

page 187 note 3 Ibid. 4 February 1974. Even before the drought and the rise in oil prices the rich nations were getting richer and the poor poorer. Crawford Young tells us that it is a sobering thought that the annual budget of Uganda is significantly less than the University of Wisconsin: ‘Agricultural Policy in Uganda’, in Lofchie, Michael F. (ed.), The State of the Nations: constraints on the development of independent African states (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1970), p. 163.Google Scholar

When 200 million Americans use more energy for air conditioning alone than China's population of oo million for all purposes, then it is time to begin considering whether any country has a permanent right to a disproportionate share of the world's resources. This was the question demanded by Strong, Maurice F., executive director of the United Nations Environment Program; New York Times, 21 11 1973.Google Scholar See also Theobald, Robert, The Rich and the Poor (New York, 1960);Google ScholarZimmerman, L.J., Poor Lands, Rich Lands: the widening gap (New York, 1965);Google ScholarDeCastro, Josue, The Black Book of Hunger (Boston, 1967);Google Scholar and Nwankwo, G. O., ‘Maithus in Africa’, in West Africa (London), 18 08 1972, pp. 1077–9.Google Scholar

page 188 note 1 Pearson, Lester B., Partners in Development. Report of the Commission on International Development (New York, 1969), p. 10.Google Scholar

page 188 note 2 Ibid. p. 25.

page 188 note 3 Ibid. pp. 12–13 and 27.

page 188 note 4 Hance, William A., African Economic Development (New York, 1967 edn.), p. 30.Google Scholar

page 189 note 1 Patel, Surendra J., ‘Economic Transition in Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), II, 3, 1964,Google Scholar reprinted in Markovitz, Irving Leonard (ed.), African Politics and Society: basic issues and problems of government and development (New York, 1970), p. 319.Google Scholar

page 189 note 2 Ibid. pp. 319–20. Patel presents an historical analysis of economic changes over the last century that parallels that found in the Report of the Commission on International Development. He points out that by 1850 many inventions had been made, but their adoption was restricted mainly to Great Britain, and even there mostly on a small scale, except in the textile industry. ‘The muscles of men and animals provided 94 per cent of the energy available to men in 1850… Over one half of the population in Western Europe still could not decipher the magic of the written word… the world output of steel as late as 1870 was only 700,000 tons, or less than one-fifth of India's in 1961.’ Patel, loc. cit. p. 314. See also Hoselitz, Bert F. (ed.), The Progress of Underdeveloped Areas (Chicago, 1952),Google Scholar and Gerschenkron, Alexander, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass. 1962).Google Scholar For an account of the technological basis for economic development in agricultural countries, see Brown, Lester R., Seeds of Change: the green revolution and development in the 1970s (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

page 190 note 1 Dale, Edwin L. Jr, ‘Monetary Fund Reports Four Nations Have Gained’, in the New York Times, 10 09 1973.Google Scholar

page 190 note 2 For an explanation of the organisation of the groundnut trade, see Brigaud, Félix, Histoire traditionnelle des Sénégal (Saint Louis, 1962).Google Scholar

page 190 note 3 Ameilon, B., La Guinée: bilan d'une indepéndence (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar

page 190 note 4 Wallerstein, Immanuel, Africa: the politics of independence (New York, 1961), p. 91.Google Scholar

page 190 note 5 ‘The Industrial Revolution: the rulers and the masses’, in A.J. Taylor, The Rise of Modern Industry (London, 1925), p. 40.

page 191 note 1 Friedrich, Carl, The Age of the Baroque (New York, 1952), p. 3.Google Scholar

page 191 note 2 Goulet, Denis, The Cruel Choice: a new concept in the theoty of development (New York, 1971), pp. 19 and 59.Google Scholar

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page 192 note 2 Rapport général sur les perspectives de développement du Sénégal, Vol. II (Dakar, 1960 edn.), reprinted in Markovitz (ed.), African Politics and Socity, p. 293.

page 193 note 1 Ibid. pp. 294–5.

page 193 note 2 Ibid. p. 295.

page 193 note 3 Ibid. p. 294.

page 193 note 4 See Pratt, Cranford, ‘The Administration of Economic Planning in a Newly Independent State’, in The Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies (Leicester), V, 1, 03 1967,Google Scholar reprinted in abridged form in Markovitz (ed.), op. cit., pp. 332–48.

page 193 note 5 Hapgood, David, Africa: from independence to tomorrow (New York, 1965), p. 65.Google Scholar

page 194 note 1 Ibid. pp. 65–66.

page 194 note 2 Ibid. p. 65.

page 194 note 3 Ibid. pp. 4–5.

page 195 note 1 Cipolla, Carlo M., Literacy and Development in the West (Baltimore, 1968), p. 8.Google Scholar

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page 196 note 1 Tocqueville, De, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (New York edn., 1955), p. 161.Google Scholar

page 196 note 2 See Markovitz, Irving Leonard, Léopold Sédar Senghor and the Politics of Negritude (London, 1969), ch. VIII,Google Scholar ‘Technicity and the New Humanism’, pp. 212–39.

page 196 note 3 Womack, John Jr, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York, 1970), p. 10.Google Scholar The cientflcos had a chance to enter practical politics when President Porflrio Diaz died, but their policies proved ‘naïve, treacherous and incompetent’, and in a short time‘their fashionable order collapsed’. For a discussion of the conflict between the technocrats and reformers in contemporary Latin America, see Feder, Ernest, The Rape of the Peasantry (New York, 1971).Google Scholar For an interpretation of history from a technocratic point of view, see Butterfield, Herbert, The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800 (New York, 1957).Google Scholar

page 196 note 4 Lewis, W. Arthur, Politics in West Africa (London and New York, 1966), p. 78.Google Scholar

page 197 note 1 Lowi, Theodore, The End of Liberalism (New York, 1969), pp. 200–1.Google Scholar

page 197 note 2 Ibid. p. 201.

page 198 note 1 Quoted by Kilson, Martin, ‘The Emergent Elites of Black Africa, 1900–1960’, in Duignan, Peter and Gann, L. H. (eds.), Colonialism in Africa, 1870–1960, Vol. II, The History and Politics of Colonialism, 1914–1969 (Cambridge, 1970), p. 367.Google Scholar

page 198 note 2 Morgenthau, Ruth S., Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa (Oxford, 1964), p. 18.Google Scholar

page 198 note 3 Ghana: the autobiography of Kwame Nikrumah (London, 1957), p. 151.

page 198 note 4 Quoted by Schaeffer, B. B., ‘The Deadlock in Development Administration’, in Leys, Colin (ed.), Politics and Change in Developing Countries (Cambridge, 1969), p. 201.Google Scholar

page 199 note 1 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven and London, 1968), p. 389.Google Scholar

page 199 note 2 Eisenstadt, Samuel N., The Political Systems of Empires (New York, 1963), p. 401.Google Scholar

page 199 note 3 Cf. Dumont, René, False Start in Africa (New York, 1969 translation),Google Scholar and Green, loc. cit. p. 312.

page 199 note 4 Cf. the report in West Africa (London), 19 November 1971, p. 1345 on the Wages and Salaries Review Commission of Nigeria. See also the articles by Apthorpe, Raymond, ‘The Introduction of Bureaucracy into African Politics’, in Journal of African Administration (London), XII, 07 1960, pp. 125–34,Google Scholar and Nellis, J. R., ‘Is the Kenyan Bureaucracy Developmental? Political Considerations in Development Administration’, in African Studies Review (East Lansing), XIV, 3, 12 1971, pp. 389–402.Google Scholar

page 200 note 1 The historical roots and contemporary political ramifications of this problem are critically examined in my forthcoming study of Power and Class in Africa.