Evolution of Risk and Political Regimes

The article contributes to the growing literature on intermediate regiimes by presenting a model that incorporates key features of such regimes and generates several of the "stylized facts" that characterize their behavior: their political volatility, cross nationality and over time, and the veriability of their economic performance something that renders their economies among the fastest growing and declining in global samples. Using an instrumental veriables approach, we test the model employing cross-national data.

POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN AFRICA

The purpose of this paper include (a) a review of the literature on the so-called 'African dummy', (b) an explication of the system GMM method of estimation, by which Hoeffler(2002) shows the 'African dummy' to be an artifact of the application of inappropriate estimation techniques; and (c) an effort to employ this technique to measure the impact of political variables - measures of stability, regime type, and violence - on economic growth in Africa.

Area Studies and the Discipline: A Useful Controversy?

African and African American StudiesGovernmen

The Agrarian Origins of Mau Mau: A Structural Account

African and African American StudiesGovernmen

Political Predation and Economic Development

We analyze a game between citizens and governments, whose type (benevolent or predatory) is unknown to the public. Opportunistic governments mix between predation and restraint. As long as restraint is observed, political expectations improve, people enter the modern sector, and the economy grows. Once there is predation, the reputation of the government is ruined and the economy collapses. If citizens are unable to overthrow this government, the collapse is durable. Otherwise, a new government is drawn and the economy can rebound. Consistent with stylized facts, equilibrium political and economic histories are random, unstable, and exhibit long-term divergence.

The Politics of Agricultural Policy – A Reply

SUMMARY This article attempts to specify Bienefeld's position, to critique it, and to posit an agenda for research. Bienefeld's position is characterised as holding that international determinants of the African economies are far more important than domestic ones; that prices, particularly international prices, offer misleading signals for allocational choices; and that governments should not and cannot rely upon price signals in making allocational decisions. Bienefeld's position is criticised for artificially and harmfully introducing a separation between domestic politics and internalional markets, and for substituting a notion of what governments should do for an analysis of how they actually behave. SOMMAIRE Cet article tente de déterminer et de critiquer la position de Bienefeld, et postule un agenda pour de futures recherches. La position de Bienefeld est caractérisée par le fait que les déterminants internationaux des économies africaines sont beaucoup plus importants que les déterminants nationaux; que les prix, particulièrement les prix internationaux, offrent des signaux trompeurs dans le choix des types d'allocation; et que les gouvernements ne devraient et ne peuvent pas se fier aux signaux des prix, en prenant des décisions d'allocation. La position de Bienefeld est critiquée parce qu'elle introduit artificiellement et de façon pernicieuse une séparation entre la politique intérieure et les marchés internationaux, et parce qu'elle remplace la notion de ce que devraient faire les gouvernements par une analyse de leurs agissements. RESUMEN Este articulo intenta especificar y criticar la posición de Bienefeld y proponer un temario para la investigación. La posición de Bienefeld se describe como sosteniendo que los determinantes internacionales de las economías africanas son mucho más importantes que los nacionales, que los precios — especialmente los internacionales — ofrecen señales confusas para las alternat ivas de decisiones y que los gobiernos no deberían ni pueden confiar en estas señales para tomar decisiones. La posición de Bienefeld es criticada por introducir una separación artificial y nociva entre las políticas nacionales y los mercados internacionales y por substituir la noción de lo que los gobiernos deberían hacer por un análisis de sus comportamientos

Agrarian Politics and Development

Rural insurrections in Third World nations transformed the study of agrarian politics into a recognized subfield of political development. They also discredited prevailing development theories and while rendering development studies a subfield of political economy. This essay reviews the major approaches to the study of agrarian politics. It emphasizes two major weaknesses: the assumption that development implies the demise of the rural sector and the inability of most "economic" approaches to incorporate institutional features of peasant societies, thereby creating a wasteful disjuncture between political economy and anthropology in the study of rural societies. The collective choice approach, it is argued, rectifies these weaknesses and generates a fruitful agenda for new research into the political economy of Third World nations

Some Conventional Orthodoxies in the Study of Agrarian Change

The paper presents a critical review of two major approaches to the analysis of agrarian societies in light of evidence taken from the scholarly literature on Africa. The first approach posits the existence of “natural” societies; the second, of “peasant” societies. The existence of such “precapitalist” societies is often invoked to account for patterns of change in contemporary rural societies. The author argues that these approaches are overly culturally and economically determined, and that they undervalue the importance of the state. Many of the so-called precapitalist features of these societies are themselves found to be products of the societies' encounter with agents of capitalism. Moreover, many result from the efforts of states to secure domination and control over rural populations.African and African American StudiesGovernmen