Authoritarian neoliberalism and capitalist transformation in Africa: all pain, no gain

ABSTRACT

As a region of the world capitalist political economy, Africa has been the epitome of neoliberalism as a universal project to remake societies in its image. In Africa, the neoliberal project encountered a region already ensconced in state-forms that were authoritarian, albeit very often weaker than their analogues in Latin America or Southern Europe. In these circumstances, neoliberalism both reconstructed and relied upon authoritarian state practices: reassertions of law and order, rising technocracy, re-built bureaucracies, and ‘choiceless democracy’. Liberal advocates of neoliberalism indulged authoritarian governance in the belief that economic liberalization would generate economic growth and transformation. Reviewing these authoritarian neoliberal constructions, one is struck by how poorly they performed as vehicles for market-based capitalist transformation. In a phrase, the pain of neoliberal adjustment was accompanied by no palliative of sustained economic ‘gain’. Liberalization, executed by top-down and undemocratic governance, has generated fragile growth, instability, some enrichment and no economic transformation. This conjuncture is pivotal to an understanding of moves by some governing elites to explore and at times implement non-neoliberal development strategies. The article concludes by suggesting that neoliberalism is currently a somewhat besieged orthodoxy. However, the exploration of unorthodox development strategies has taken place within an authoritarian political shell.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• neoliberalism
• authoritarianism
• capitalism
• development
• governance

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the referees and issue editors for their insightful and helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For the purposes of analytical transparency, I should note that Thomas writes within a broadly Marxist framework, but Mouzelis a more pluralized and Weberian fashion. This is a conflation of the two for my own purposes.

2. For example Campbell and Loxley (1989); Mohan, Brown, Milward, and Zack-Williams (2000); SAPRIN (2004).

3. Accessed from http://icarusfilms.com/if-lag, February 2018.

4. I am starting in 2007, because this is when sudden spikes in food prices generated extreme urban livelihood stress amongst the poor throughout the world.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Graham Harrison

Notes on contributor

Graham Harrison is a Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield, UK.