Beyond Institutions: Rethinking the Role of Leaders, Elites and Coalitions in the Institutional Formation of Developmental States and Strategies

Abstract

Compared with economics, the engagement of political science with development studies and development policy is still (with notable exceptions) in its relative infancy. This can be illustrated by the manner in which fundamental issues of structure and agency in politics have barely been addressed in the development context. In the main, policy‐makers and researchers – perhaps unwittingly, or perhaps simply oblivious to the profound epistemological and ontological issues at stake – have adopted emphatically structuralist approaches with their stress on institutions and institution building. In doing so they have not only often failed to account for the agential factors in the design, formation and maintenance of institutions, but also for the important success stories which run against the general patterns of institutional failure or corruption. This paper suggests that if researchers and policy‐makers are to engage seriously with the politics of economic growth, state‐building and social inclusion, they will need to have a much better analytical handle on the role of human agency in the developmental process and on the role of leaders, elites and coalitions in particular. To that end, the paper also reports on some of the initial findings of recent research conducted under the auspices of the Leaders, Elites and Coalitions Research Programme (LECRP), the second phase of which is about to commence as The Leadership Program: Developmental Leaders, Elites and Coalitions (LPDLEC).

¹ This article is based on a keynote address given at the Association of Development Researchers in Copenhagen, Denmark 12 May 2009. It draws on research conducted for 2 research consortia: Improving Institutions for Pro‐poor Growth (IPPG at http://www.ippg.org.uk) and The Leaders, Elites and Coalitions Research Programme (LECRP at http://www.lecrp.org).

Keywords:

• politics
• development
• leadership elites
• coalitions
• structure
• agency
• IPPG
• LPDLEC

Notes

¹ This article is based on a keynote address given at the Association of Development Researchers in Copenhagen, Denmark 12 May 2009. It draws on research conducted for 2 research consortia: Improving Institutions for Pro‐poor Growth (IPPG at http://www.ippg.org.uk) and The Leaders, Elites and Coalitions Research Programme (LECRP at http://www.lecrp.org).

² An anonymous reviewer of this article suggested that development geographers regularly address the structure–agency issue. That may be so (although not reflected in the World Bank’s World Development Report for 2009, Reshaping Economic Geography) but it is certainly not the case in the mainstream literature of the economics or political science of development.

³ See The Dinokeng Scenarios: Three Futures for South Africa, http://www.dinokengscenarios.co.za

⁴ ‘No Bourgeois, No Democracy’ (Moore, 1965, p. 418).

⁵ The legal and other institutional innovations would involve a series of written down ‘norms’, charters, institutional rules, which would specify ‘international minimum standards’ and hence help to provide international public goods. These include a charter for natural resource revenues in LDCs, including the involvement of the big MNCs; a charter for democracy (a set of minimum standards); a charter for budget transparency; and charter for post‐conflict situations (for instance a truth and reconciliation commission); and a charter for investment.

⁶ The British ran Botswana on a shoestring. The capital and administrative HQ of the Protectorate was not even in the country but across the border at Mafeking in South Africa. The British too had assumed that Botswana (or Bechuanaland as it then was) would become part of South Africa.

⁷ From a GNP per capita of US$80 at independence, Botswana has grown to be a middle‐income country to day with GNP per capita close to US$6000 and with literacy close to 90 per cent; it has a stable polity and enjoys a high reputation for public probity and lack of corruption in political and administrative affairs.

⁸ Not all such relations were always ‘cooperative’. At many stages, especially early on, both commercial and business sectors were under tight control – and worse. But even to achieve that, the dominant political elites (especially in Taiwan and Korea) had to form dominant coalitions with bureaucratic and coercive agencies and – as time went by and development occurred – had to establish better and more cooperative relations with both the leaders and elites of the business and labour sectors if growth and social development was to continue. Lauridsen’s account (2007) of this changing set of relations in Taiwan is a vivid illustration of the point.

⁹ These ideas are much more fully elaborated in my paper the on ‘The Leadership Program: Research Framework. Theoretical and conceptual issues, working hypotheses and key questions’ which will be published on the LPDLEC website at http://www.lpdlec.com (Leftwich, forthcoming, 2009).

¹⁰ These cases may be accessed at http://www.lpdlec.com.

¹¹ TAC in South Africa is the Treatment Action Campaign; TASO in Uganda is The Aids Support Organization.