scholarly journals Social protection in an aspiring ‘developmental state’: The political drivers of Ethiopia’s PSNP

2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (473) ◽  
pp. 646-671 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Lavers
Keyword(s):  
Development Strategy ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The Political ◽  
Existential Crisis ◽  
Policy Ideas ◽  
The Development Strategy ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Political Settlement

ABSTRACT Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is among the largest social protection programmes in Africa and has been promoted as a model for the continent. This article analyses the political drivers of the programme, arguing that elite commitment to the PSNP needs to be understood in the context of shifts within Ethiopia’s political settlement and the government’s evolving development strategy. While food security had long been a priority for the ruling party, the 2002/03 food crisis—coming on the back of a series of other political shocks—was perceived as an existential crisis for the ruling coalition, prompting the incorporation of the PSNP into the existing rural development strategy. Foreign donors provided policy ideas and pushed for reform, but it was not until incentives flowing from the political settlement were favourable that elite commitment was secured. Even then, longstanding ideological commitments shaped the productive focus of the programme, ensuring consistency with the development strategy. While the removal of the PSNP is now unthinkable, the extent to which this represents a broader commitment to social protection remains an open question.

Understanding Elite Commitment to Social Protection

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-121
Author(s):  
Tom Lavers
Keyword(s):  
Development Strategy ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Inclusive Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Vision 2020 ◽  
Rapid Economic Growth ◽  
The Development Strategy ◽  
The Government

This chapter examines the political economy of the adoption and evolution of Rwanda’s Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP), concluding that strong government commitment to the VUP was shaped by the characteristics of the political settlement that was established around 2000. For the Rwandan government, the VUP has never been just a social transfer programme, but a key part of the development strategy that aims to promote social stability and the legitimacy of the ruling coalition through rapid socioeconomic development. In particular, the VUP originates in an emerging distributional crisis in the mid-2000s in which rapid economic growth alongside low rates of poverty reduction threatened the government narrative of inclusive development. While donor social protection ideas have also been influential, these are purposely adapted by government with a view to meeting its developmental and political goals.

scholarly journals Singapore: Reflections and Implications of Another Smart State

2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Direct Investment ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Michael Porter ◽  
State Initiatives ◽  
The Development Strategy

The objective of this paper is to analyse key elements of the development strategy of Singapore since the mid–1960s. The paper describes the economic challenge faced by Singapore in the mid–1960s, overviews contemporary world trends in foreign direct investment, and uses competitiveness constructs developed by Michael Porter (1985) to clarify key stages in the evolution of Singapore's development strategy. The paper argues that the strategy has been successful because of unremitting top priority given to it by Singapore's political leadership and because the political leaders charged a single organisation, the Economic Development Board (EDB), with absolute authority to develop and implement the strategy. The paper concludes with implications for Queensland's Smart State initiatives.

scholarly journals Parchedness, politics, and power: the state hydraulic in Yemen

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Moore
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Water Systems ◽  
Groundwater Depletion ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Groundwater Abstraction ◽  
The Arab Spring

Historically, Yemen was noted for its sustainable, locally-adapted system of water management. Today, however, it faces one of the world's most acute shortages of water, driven chiefly by unsustainable rates of groundwater depletion. This article seeks to explain Yemen's present water crisis as the result of a political ecology dominated both by an expansionist Yemeni state and rural elites. By adopting intensive groundwater abstraction as a key development strategy, Yemen has produced an unsustainable basis for future economic and social development. The Yemeni case confirms both the importance of states and elites in the political ecology of water systems, and indicates that rural as well as urban water systems are characterized by patterns of exclusion and marginalization. As Yemen attempts to reap the fruits of the Arab Spring, it must adopt reform of its broken system of water management as one of its most pressing national objectives.Key Words: Yemen, groundwater depletion, developmental state, hydraulic civilization, water scarcity

Beyond cash transfers

2020 ◽  
pp. 523-546
Author(s):  
Kenia Parsons
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Assistance ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Social Safety Nets ◽  
Taxation System

In international development, social protection policies vary from targeting the poor through social safety nets to universal rights-based policies. This chapter argues that the rise of cash transfers as a development strategy, under the social safety net approach, tips the debate towards a residualist state, following the neoliberal path of minimum state intervention. Cash transfers are ‘hijacking’ or taking precedence over other types of social assistance policies. This diverts attention from other social spending required to address the multidimensional aspects of poverty. Moving the development debate beyond cash transfers, this chapter briefly analyses how social spending and the taxation system address poverty, placing social assistance as a mediator policy to protect rights and not as an end policy to fight poverty.

The Politics of Promoting Social Cash Transfers in Zambia

2019 ◽  
pp. 176-201
Author(s):  
Kate Pruce ◽  
Sam Hickey
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Promotional Efforts ◽  
Social Cash Transfers ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Political Settlement ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the rise of social cash transfers in Zambia, going beyond the focus on elections and institutions within mainstream accounts of how social protection is likely to emerge in Africa to demonstrate that there are two alternative drivers: shifting dynamics within Zambia’s political settlement and the promotional efforts of a transnational policy coalition. The extensive efforts of this policy coalition helped get social cash transfers onto the policy agenda, but they only gained political traction when the balance of power within Zambia’s ruling coalition shifted and key actors perceived there to be a crisis regarding the distributional strategies deployed to maintain the stability and legitimacy of the political settlement. Social protection has yet to displace existing interests, ideas, and rent-allocation practices; however, cash transfers are gaining localized support. What matters now is the way in which such transfers become integrated within Zambia’s distributional regime.

scholarly journals Institutions and Development

2019 ◽  
pp. 321-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mushtaq H. Khan
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Institutional Analysis ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
State Theory ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
The Political ◽  
Holding Power ◽  
Effective Policy ◽  
Political Settlement

The role of institutions in Asian development has been intensely contested since Gunnar Myrdal’s Asian Drama, with later contributions from institutional economics and developmental state theory. Despite much progress, the dominant approaches do not agree about the institutions that matter, nor do they explain why similar institutions delivered such different results across countries. Cultural norms and informal institutions clearly matter but the appropriate norms did not already exist in successful countries; they evolved over time. The distribution of holding power across different types of organizations, the ‘political settlement’, can explain the diversity of experiences better and help to develop more effective policy. This chapter outlines Myrdal’s contribution to institutional analysis and how modern institutional analysis has built on his analysis, then, drawing on the experiences of Asian countries, sets out an alternative institutional analysis based on political settlements, and the implications for the analysis of the effectiveness of institutions.

The Successes and Failures of Economic Reform in Nigeria’s Post-Military Political Settlement

2019 ◽  
Vol 119 (474) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zainab Usman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Transition ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Horizontal Distribution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Oil Sector ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Political Settlement

ABSTRACT There are limitations in the explanatory power of prevailing theories on the political economy of Africa’s growth without industrialization that emphasize the resource-curse, ethnicity, neopatrimonialism, and the developmental state. This article uses a political settlements approach to explain the institutional underpinnings of Nigeria’s economic transition. It shows how external constraints on ruling elites interact with the distribution of power and institutions to stimulate episodic reforms in an ‘intermediate’ Nigerian state. Rather than a ‘developmental’ state presiding over industrial upgrading or a ‘predatory’ state operating solely on neopatrimonial basis, this intermediate state presides over selective reforms and bursts of economic growth and diversification. Thus, specific constraints in Nigeria’s post-military political settlement from 1999 generated the initial impetus for successful telecoms liberalization, while inhibiting growth in the oil sector. This article contributes to advancing the political settlements framework in applying it to resource-rich countries, by outlining the four dimensions of the distribution of power and the constraints for institutional persistence or change, and their varying economic implications. It also reclaims the concept of ‘elite bargains’ as a defining feature of the horizontal distribution of power and demonstrates its centrality to the durability or fragility of institutions, especially at critical junctures of resource booms and busts.

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