Individuals in low-income countries often contribute significantly to financing local public goods through informal taxation. However, there is limited understanding of how informal revenue generation relates to formal tax and governing institutions. We explore the relationship between informal revenue generation, public finance, and the state in the Gedo region in south-central Somalia, relying on original data from surveys with 2,300 households and 117 community leaders. Our evidence shows that informal revenue generation by non-armed actors in Gedo is prevalent, with informal payments deeply embedded within clan-based and Islamic institutions and rooted in a long history of decentralized political authority and self-reliance in the region. We argue that in such a context, rather than explaining how or why things ‘work’ outside of the state, it may be more relevant and valuable to consider decentralized non-state public authority as the default referent, with a need only to explain the puzzle of pockets of state effectiveness. Governance largely operates outside the state, with citizens playing a pivotal role in directly financing local governance institutions and public goods provision. These findings have important implications for our understanding of statehood and public finance in contexts of weak formal institutions.
{"title":"Financing governance beyond the state: Informal revenue generation in south-central Somalia","authors":"Vanessa van den Boogaard, Fabrizio Santoro","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac030","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Individuals in low-income countries often contribute significantly to financing local public goods through informal taxation. However, there is limited understanding of how informal revenue generation relates to formal tax and governing institutions. We explore the relationship between informal revenue generation, public finance, and the state in the Gedo region in south-central Somalia, relying on original data from surveys with 2,300 households and 117 community leaders. Our evidence shows that informal revenue generation by non-armed actors in Gedo is prevalent, with informal payments deeply embedded within clan-based and Islamic institutions and rooted in a long history of decentralized political authority and self-reliance in the region. We argue that in such a context, rather than explaining how or why things ‘work’ outside of the state, it may be more relevant and valuable to consider decentralized non-state public authority as the default referent, with a need only to explain the puzzle of pockets of state effectiveness. Governance largely operates outside the state, with citizens playing a pivotal role in directly financing local governance institutions and public goods provision. These findings have important implications for our understanding of statehood and public finance in contexts of weak formal institutions.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45563703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Stylianos Moshonas, Tom de Herdt, Kristof Titeca, Paulin Balungwe Shamavu
This paper examines the sources of bureaucratic fragmentation and coherence in the Democratic Republic of Congo by exploring the connections and tensions between interface bureaucracies and the back-office administration tasked with managing the public payroll system. Building on the ‘real governance’ literature and the notion of ‘infrastructural power’, we analyse the recent history of payroll management in Congo and especially its evolution over the last decades of state implosion and reconstruction so as to gauge the potential of different drivers of state infrastructural power. The return of the state in the first decades of the twenty-first century led to a spectacular and unprecedented growth in the number of civil servants, made possible by a reconstituted state budget and renewed donor engagement. Yet this growth largely reflects increased political competition and further disarticulated the payroll system, increasing its vulnerability to the issue of ghost workers. The case study shows important trade-offs, in processes of post-conflict reconstruction, between the triple objectives of building state infrastructural power, making use of it to improve public service delivery, and its democratization.
{"title":"Bureaucratic fragmentation by design? the case of payroll management in the Democratic Republic of Congo","authors":"Stylianos Moshonas, Tom de Herdt, Kristof Titeca, Paulin Balungwe Shamavu","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac032","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the sources of bureaucratic fragmentation and coherence in the Democratic Republic of Congo by exploring the connections and tensions between interface bureaucracies and the back-office administration tasked with managing the public payroll system. Building on the ‘real governance’ literature and the notion of ‘infrastructural power’, we analyse the recent history of payroll management in Congo and especially its evolution over the last decades of state implosion and reconstruction so as to gauge the potential of different drivers of state infrastructural power. The return of the state in the first decades of the twenty-first century led to a spectacular and unprecedented growth in the number of civil servants, made possible by a reconstituted state budget and renewed donor engagement. Yet this growth largely reflects increased political competition and further disarticulated the payroll system, increasing its vulnerability to the issue of ghost workers. The case study shows important trade-offs, in processes of post-conflict reconstruction, between the triple objectives of building state infrastructural power, making use of it to improve public service delivery, and its democratization.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"62 22","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The commodity boom witnessed the emergence of ambitious developmental projects in Africa. But in its focus on the distribution of power, the extant literature struggles to explain the logic driving observed development strategies. To fill this gap, this article provides the first comprehensive study of the Zona Económica Especial, Angola’s main industrial project of the post-civil war era. Built at a cost of at least US$1 billion, sprawling over 1.5 million hectares, and comprising establishments imported by the state across multiple sectors, the Zona Económica Especial de Luanda-Bengo’s ill-conceived design doomed it to failure from the start. But this did not hinder its use for elite rent-seeking, supported by the international networks fed by Angola’s oil wealth. I argue that these outcomes reflect the ruling MPLA’s typical ‘bifurcated policy style’, marked by a disjuncture between discourse and policy practice and the competition for the spoils of the state’s heavy expenditures. Its origins are to be found in the strategies deployed by MPLA leaders to enforce organizational cohesion and to pursue military and programmatic goals over the course of its long civil war. I contend that similar analyses could help illuminate the drivers of industrial policy in other party-based authoritarian regimes.
商品繁荣见证了非洲雄心勃勃的发展项目的出现。但是，由于其对权力分配的关注，现存文献很难解释驱动观察到的发展战略的逻辑。为了填补这一空白，本文首次全面研究了Zona Económica special，这是安哥拉内战后时代的主要工业项目。建造成本至少为10亿美元，占地面积超过150万公顷，由国家在多个部门引进的设施组成，Zona Económica special de Luanda-Bengo的糟糕设计注定了它从一开始就失败了。但这并不妨碍它在安哥拉石油财富支撑的国际网络的支持下，被精英阶层用来寻租。我认为，这些结果反映了执政的MPLA典型的“分岔政策风格”，其标志是话语和政策实践之间的脱节，以及对国家巨额支出战利品的竞争。其根源在于MPLA领导人在其长期内战过程中为加强组织凝聚力和追求军事和纲领目标而部署的战略。我认为，类似的分析可能有助于阐明其他以政党为基础的专制政权的产业政策驱动因素。
{"title":"The logic of authoritarian industrial policy: the case of Angola’s special economic zone","authors":"Nicolás Lippolis","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac033","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The commodity boom witnessed the emergence of ambitious developmental projects in Africa. But in its focus on the distribution of power, the extant literature struggles to explain the logic driving observed development strategies. To fill this gap, this article provides the first comprehensive study of the Zona Económica Especial, Angola’s main industrial project of the post-civil war era. Built at a cost of at least US$1 billion, sprawling over 1.5 million hectares, and comprising establishments imported by the state across multiple sectors, the Zona Económica Especial de Luanda-Bengo’s ill-conceived design doomed it to failure from the start. But this did not hinder its use for elite rent-seeking, supported by the international networks fed by Angola’s oil wealth. I argue that these outcomes reflect the ruling MPLA’s typical ‘bifurcated policy style’, marked by a disjuncture between discourse and policy practice and the competition for the spoils of the state’s heavy expenditures. Its origins are to be found in the strategies deployed by MPLA leaders to enforce organizational cohesion and to pursue military and programmatic goals over the course of its long civil war. I contend that similar analyses could help illuminate the drivers of industrial policy in other party-based authoritarian regimes.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41348503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Scholarship examining African agency towards Chinese development projects typically focuses on negotiations between African national elites and Chinese actors at the inception and policy formulation phase, a period which excludes local elites and public participation more generally. This gap between the policy formulation and policy implementation phases in the project cycle can, however, be exploited by local elites at the periphery of power to serve as a channel of influence over the distribution of foreign-derived patronage. Using opportunities posed by elections, these local elites assert their claims to the spoils of patronage with national elites through strategies like protest, bargaining and co-optation. This article investigates how the implementation phase of the Chinese-funded Standard Gauge Railway presented opportunities for collusion and contestation over foreign economic largesse amongst Kenya’s national and local elites, underscoring the multi-actor aspects of African agency and, concurrently, those structural and temporal factors that enable and shape such agency.
{"title":"Fitting China in: local elite collusion and contestation along Kenya’s standard Gauge Railway","authors":"C. Alden, O. Otele","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac026","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Scholarship examining African agency towards Chinese development projects typically focuses on negotiations between African national elites and Chinese actors at the inception and policy formulation phase, a period which excludes local elites and public participation more generally. This gap between the policy formulation and policy implementation phases in the project cycle can, however, be exploited by local elites at the periphery of power to serve as a channel of influence over the distribution of foreign-derived patronage. Using opportunities posed by elections, these local elites assert their claims to the spoils of patronage with national elites through strategies like protest, bargaining and co-optation. This article investigates how the implementation phase of the Chinese-funded Standard Gauge Railway presented opportunities for collusion and contestation over foreign economic largesse amongst Kenya’s national and local elites, underscoring the multi-actor aspects of African agency and, concurrently, those structural and temporal factors that enable and shape such agency.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46397357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article focuses on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya’s leather sector. It explores how public governance impacts SMEs’ technological capabilities and access to global value chains (GVCs). By public governance, we mean all government regulations and interventions set in place to shape the organization of value chains. Drawing on interview data, the article compares Kenya’s leather handbag and footwear manufacturers. On the one hand, handbag SMEs have succeeded in upgrading and entering GVCs through a combination of foreign knowledge and partnership with local universities. Despite meeting with public governance barriers, this process has enabled the transfer of technological capabilities from foreign-owned firms to a number of emerging SMEs owned by Kenyan nationals. On the other hand, leather footwear production was developed during the 1970s by large firms under state support. As protectionist measures were lifted in the 1990s, firms shut down and producers moved into the informal economy, replicating outdated capabilities in a context of price-driven competition, thereby limiting upgrading and participation in GVCs. The article concludes by comparing these findings with the experience of Kenya’s apparel manufacturers and highlighting the critical need for GVC research to account for the role public governance in shaping firms’ technological capabilities and access to global markets.
{"title":"Public Governance and Technological Capabilities in the Kenyan Leather Industry","authors":"Giovanni Pasquali, Valentina De Marchi","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article focuses on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya’s leather sector. It explores how public governance impacts SMEs’ technological capabilities and access to global value chains (GVCs). By public governance, we mean all government regulations and interventions set in place to shape the organization of value chains. Drawing on interview data, the article compares Kenya’s leather handbag and footwear manufacturers. On the one hand, handbag SMEs have succeeded in upgrading and entering GVCs through a combination of foreign knowledge and partnership with local universities. Despite meeting with public governance barriers, this process has enabled the transfer of technological capabilities from foreign-owned firms to a number of emerging SMEs owned by Kenyan nationals. On the other hand, leather footwear production was developed during the 1970s by large firms under state support. As protectionist measures were lifted in the 1990s, firms shut down and producers moved into the informal economy, replicating outdated capabilities in a context of price-driven competition, thereby limiting upgrading and participation in GVCs. The article concludes by comparing these findings with the experience of Kenya’s apparel manufacturers and highlighting the critical need for GVC research to account for the role public governance in shaping firms’ technological capabilities and access to global markets.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48066088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Scholars have long sought to understand how economic rents may inhibit the formation of effective and accountable government. Prevailing interpretations of empirical state failure do not adequately account for economic connections and rents. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork and original source material from the Somalia context, this study shows how the dominance of the logistics economy, as a system of ‘graft’ endogenous to state-building, has contributed to empirical state failure. Empirical state failure is characterized by intra-elite struggle, endemic political violence, and insecurity including the threat posed by Islamic extremism. Contributing to the study of political settlements, political clientelism, and business–state relationships in Africa, findings from this study offer new insights for understanding how the dominance of logistics rents and lead firms within a political system may prevent the establishment of legitimate, centralized authorities. These findings contribute to the broader study of Africa’s political economies which have experienced protracted civil war and post-conflict reconstruction. In conclusion, it argues how economic development, procurement reform agendas, and efforts to withhold or withdraw aid through economic sanctions fail to resolve endemic conflict and governance issues due to vested interests, elite fragmentation, and polycentric aid practices. Instead, both government policy and foreign interventions continue to empower lead logistics firms (as skilful political entrepreneurs) that destabilize the Federal Government of Somalia.
{"title":"Logistics Contracts and the Political Economy of State Failure: Evidence from Somalia","authors":"C. Elder","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac024","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Scholars have long sought to understand how economic rents may inhibit the formation of effective and accountable government. Prevailing interpretations of empirical state failure do not adequately account for economic connections and rents. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork and original source material from the Somalia context, this study shows how the dominance of the logistics economy, as a system of ‘graft’ endogenous to state-building, has contributed to empirical state failure. Empirical state failure is characterized by intra-elite struggle, endemic political violence, and insecurity including the threat posed by Islamic extremism. Contributing to the study of political settlements, political clientelism, and business–state relationships in Africa, findings from this study offer new insights for understanding how the dominance of logistics rents and lead firms within a political system may prevent the establishment of legitimate, centralized authorities. These findings contribute to the broader study of Africa’s political economies which have experienced protracted civil war and post-conflict reconstruction. In conclusion, it argues how economic development, procurement reform agendas, and efforts to withhold or withdraw aid through economic sanctions fail to resolve endemic conflict and governance issues due to vested interests, elite fragmentation, and polycentric aid practices. Instead, both government policy and foreign interventions continue to empower lead logistics firms (as skilful political entrepreneurs) that destabilize the Federal Government of Somalia.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44404011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Propelled by a commodities boom and expanding South–South investment, mega-projects have reshaped the politics of labour in many African settings. Reflecting on such dynamics, this article critically engages with questions of employment, skills development, and contestation re-configuring capital–labour encounters in the ‘Chinese’ and ‘Brazilian’ workplace in Mozambique. We analyse two mega-projects: the Maputo Ring Road, implemented by the China Road and Bridge Corporation, and the Moatize Coal Project, led by the Brazilian mining company, Vale SA. Engaging with the complex realities at project ground level, the article unpacks how workplace regimes and outcomes reflect an intricate, multi-scalar array of spatial encounters, sector-specific characteristics, and national political economies. For both cases, this is associated with common promises of development and prosperity for Mozambique. While such promises take on different ideational guises, we show that the Chinese and Brazilian workplaces expose, nonetheless, overlapping patterns of inequality, contention, and hostility, reinforced by broader vulnerabilities and imbalances in global production networks and the Mozambican political economy. By providing a ground-level reading of the multi-scalar forces at play in the workplace, this article sheds light on the relationship between emerging South–South global encounters, national political realities, and labour geographies in African contexts shaped by mega-projects.
{"title":"Reading Mozambique’s mega-project developmentalism through the workplace: evidence from Chinese\u0000and Brazilian investments","authors":"Eric Cezne, U. Wethal","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac019","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Propelled by a commodities boom and expanding South–South investment, mega-projects have reshaped the politics of labour in many African settings. Reflecting on such dynamics, this article critically engages with questions of employment, skills development, and contestation re-configuring capital–labour encounters in the ‘Chinese’ and ‘Brazilian’ workplace in Mozambique. We analyse two mega-projects: the Maputo Ring Road, implemented by the China Road and Bridge Corporation, and the Moatize Coal Project, led by the Brazilian mining company, Vale SA. Engaging with the complex realities at project ground level, the article unpacks how workplace regimes and outcomes reflect an intricate, multi-scalar array of spatial encounters, sector-specific characteristics, and national political economies. For both cases, this is associated with common promises of development and prosperity for Mozambique. While such promises take on different ideational guises, we show that the Chinese and Brazilian workplaces expose, nonetheless, overlapping patterns of inequality, contention, and hostility, reinforced by broader vulnerabilities and imbalances in global production networks and the Mozambican political economy. By providing a ground-level reading of the multi-scalar forces at play in the workplace, this article sheds light on the relationship between emerging South–South global encounters, national political realities, and labour geographies in African contexts shaped by mega-projects.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49398893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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