{"title":"Introduction: The ideology of the illiberal modernisers in Africa","authors":"B. Dye","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2022.2151482","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The 21st century has seen a major political and developmental shift in Africa involving the rise of new authoritarian states and a return to infrastructure-led, economically interventionist state-building programmes. Many studies have examined the international political economy of this shift, from the commodity boom to the rise of China and the political power underpinning development-focused regimes at the national level. This special issue argues instead that this authoritarian state-building drive is also the product of ideas, beliefs, and principles. An ideology of development has led a group of ruling parties to pursue distinctive programmes of leap-frogging modernization. Authors in this special issue present a set of case studies ranging from old parties in government since independence, in Tanzania and Mozambique, to former insurgents in Rwanda and Ethiopia, and detail their ideologies. While acknowledging their considerable variation and uniqueness, we group the common features of these cases together, presenting the ‘illiberal modernisers’ ideological programme. Many of its elements look like resurgent 20th-century High Modernism, however, we demonstrate that there are profoundly new features combining postmodern aesthetics, elements of neoliberal orthodoxy, and new public management. Such ideological dimensions remain overlooked in the study of African politics, with materialist perspectives touting rational interests and strategy, largely dominating.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical African Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2022.2151482","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The 21st century has seen a major political and developmental shift in Africa involving the rise of new authoritarian states and a return to infrastructure-led, economically interventionist state-building programmes. Many studies have examined the international political economy of this shift, from the commodity boom to the rise of China and the political power underpinning development-focused regimes at the national level. This special issue argues instead that this authoritarian state-building drive is also the product of ideas, beliefs, and principles. An ideology of development has led a group of ruling parties to pursue distinctive programmes of leap-frogging modernization. Authors in this special issue present a set of case studies ranging from old parties in government since independence, in Tanzania and Mozambique, to former insurgents in Rwanda and Ethiopia, and detail their ideologies. While acknowledging their considerable variation and uniqueness, we group the common features of these cases together, presenting the ‘illiberal modernisers’ ideological programme. Many of its elements look like resurgent 20th-century High Modernism, however, we demonstrate that there are profoundly new features combining postmodern aesthetics, elements of neoliberal orthodoxy, and new public management. Such ideological dimensions remain overlooked in the study of African politics, with materialist perspectives touting rational interests and strategy, largely dominating.
期刊介绍:
Critical African Studies seeks to return Africanist scholarship to the heart of theoretical innovation within each of its constituent disciplines, including Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, History, Law and Economics. We offer authors a more flexible publishing platform than other journals, allowing them greater space to develop empirical discussions alongside theoretical and conceptual engagements. We aim to publish scholarly articles that offer both innovative empirical contributions, grounded in original fieldwork, and also innovative theoretical engagements. This speaks to our broader intention to promote the deployment of thorough empirical work for the purposes of sophisticated theoretical innovation. We invite contributions that meet the aims of the journal, including special issue proposals that offer fresh empirical and theoretical insights into African Studies debates.