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Political Regime and Economic Actors: The Response of Firms to the End of Colonial Rule

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Miles Kahler
Miles Kahler*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

The relationship between economic system and political regime has recently reemerged as a central issue in social science. An examination of the political perceptions and actions of individual firms and of sectors during the uncertainties of decolonization permits a new approach to this question, using the concept of political exposure. The firm or sector characteristics that are associated with greater political exposure are assessed. Political preferences cannot be equated with either political action or outcomes, however. The links between capitalism and political regime require further refinement and qualification.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , April 1981 , pp. 383 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1981

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References

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2 These cases include the French decolonization of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, and the British decolonization of Kenya, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), and the Central African Federation (now Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi).

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31 While metropolitan investment was not absent, private investment in Algeria was concentrated in real estate and commerce; and efforts by the French state to encourage industrialization after 1945 were largely thwarted by competition from metropolitan industry. A tax structure biased in favor of agriculture further stifled industrial development. Gendarme (fn. 14), 169–70, 144; Moussa, Pierre, Les Chances économiques de la communauté franco-africaine (Paris: Armand Colin, 1957)Google Scholar, chap. 9.

32 The archives were made available through the courtesy of the management of the parent firms which consolidated in 1971. A brief history of the parent firms and a description of present activities can be found in Allard, P. and others, Dictionnaire des groupes industriels et financiers en France (Paris: Seuil, 1978), 103–06.Google Scholar

33 VAN began as a creation of perceived political need under the Vichy government: the regime saw such subsidiaries as a means of easing economic discontent in North Africa and assuring a French future for the African territories. The political concessions made to ensure the viability of the firm included customs preferences to permit penetration of the Tunisian and Moroccan markets, as well as a complicated set of subsidy arrangements agreed upon after the war, guaranteeing that the Government General of Algeria would cover any losses (as well as providing credits and loans) in exchange for holdings in the firm.

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35 In 1956, for example, Algeria provided 25% of the company's business; by 1960, the share had grown to 39%. SOCOMAN, Conseils d'administration, October 23, 1956; June 17, 1960. The reasons for the start of diversification have not come to light, although the political situation in North Africa clearly speeded it.

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51 A similar criticism of economic determinism in dependency theory is made in Cardoso, Fernando Henrique and Faletto, Enzo, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 210–11.Google Scholar The case for viewing the state and political structures as having a more autonomous role is made in telling fashion by Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar