ARTICLE REVIEW :THE ROLE OF URBAN MARKETING IN LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT A POLITICAL ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE

The aggressive marketing of cities to attract private finance and capital is one important aspect of municipal neoliberalism. Urban marketing, as it is called, is said to be the the surest way to deliver urban economic development. Using a political-economic framework, this paper provides an alternative analysis of urban marketing, and highlights other avenues for addressing the urban question.Political Economy, Cities, Markets, Economic Development

TRANSFORMING THIRD WORLD CITIES THROUGH GOOD URBAN GOVERNANCE: FRESH EVIDENCE

Many Ghanaians believe that introducing multi-party elections at the metropolitan, municipal and district levels would ensure the election of competent people to manage the urban or local economy. This belief is premised on the assumption that electorates are informed and would vote for competent politicians. Using the 2008 elections in Ghana, it is argued that only a minority of electorates vote on issues; the majority vote along tribal and party lines; and based on how “humble” a politician is or simply based on monetocracy. This means that introducing elections into the local government system would not necessarily lead to a transformation of the local or urban economy; greater local democracy is not the answer to the housing problem, sanitation crisis, unemployment burden and the poverty challenge. There may be the need for a new form of local democracy.Democracy, Urban, Governance, Ghana, Elections

Mainstream Economics and Conventional Environmental Policies

Is mainstream economics only about growth, efficiency, and sustainability? Many critics contend so, but the recent state of the art in economics suggests not. Respectively drawing on reformist neoclassical economics, neoclassical microeconomics "proper," and behavioral economics, major studies show that mainstream economics provides theories of inequality and unsustainability. However, the theories of causation utilized remain largely neoclassical. Similarly, the bases for repairing the harms are grounded in neoclassical reasoning, while the mechanisms for restoration-ranging from minimalist interventions and income and substitution effects to behavioral nudges-are still mainstream. Fundamentally, they say little or nothing substantial about ecological imperialism, at the heart of which are rent theft and ecological debt, two critical cornerstones of world ecological crises. Therefore, mainstream economists certainly have, use, and apply theories of inequality and unsustainability, but mainstream economists neither have, use, nor apply transformative theories of social stratification, nor ecological imperialism generally. The overall effect of this disconnect from real-world ecological crises is not simply that conventional environmental policies are incomplete, but that mainstream economics and conventional policies deflect attention from ecological imperialism behind veils of rhetoric, prices, and behaviors.Peer reviewe

Land and Finance : Farming as Financial Asset: Global Finance and the Making of Institutional Landscapes

Book review. Reviewed work: Farming as Financial Asset: Global Finance and the Making of Institutional Landscapes / by Ouma, S. - Newcastle Upon Tyne : Agenda Publishing, 2020. i–x + 204 pp. (Paperback). ISBN: 978-1-78821-187-1.Non peer reviewe

George Adu, PhD. (1977-2019): The social planner goes home

No Abstrac

Politično-ekonomski temelji novega zahodnoafriškega naftnega mesta Sekondi-Takoradi

V članku se z institucionalno-analitično metodo ekonomske zgodovine preučujejo izvor, rast in razvoj novega zahodnoafriškega naftnega mesta Sekondi-Takoradi. Posebna pozornost je namenjena vlogi pristanišč in železnic, njihovemu razvoju in sodelovanju s politično-ekonomskimi ustanovami v preteklih stotih letih. Ta pregledna zgodovinska analiza nakazuje, da je novo zahodnoafriško mesto spet tam, kjer je bilo na začetku. Podobno kot v 20. letih 20. stoletja v državnih in mednarodnih krogih danes ponovno vzbuja nacionalno, regionalno in mednarodno pozornost. Vse kaže, da je treba znova ovrednotiti sodobne zgodbe, ki trdijo, da sta razmah virov in družbeni propad v determinističnem odnosu

Decolonizing Africa and African Development : The Twenty-First Century Pan-Africanist Challenge

Book review. Reviewed work: Decolonizing Africa and African Development : The Twenty-First Century Pan-Africanist Challenge / Anthony Victor Obeng. - Bern : Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, 2017. ISBN 978-3-0343-0758-1.Non peer reviewe

Review of 'Ghana on the Go – African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation'.

Book review. Reviewed work: Ghana on the Go – African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation / Jennifer Hart. - Bloomington/Indianapolis, Indiana : Indiana University Press. 2016; vii-xi + 250 pp. ISBN: 978-025-302-307-0.Non peer reviewe

Critique of development economics

Development economics has struggled to understand the conditions of Africa and Africans. However, the nature of this critique, the alternative to development economics, and the challenges of the existing revisionism of today have not, as yet, received the attention of political economists. As this body of work is relevant to the current debates on Africa’s underdevelopment, and development economics more generally, the present article attempts to fill this gap. The article accepts the classic criticisms that mainstream development economics does not provide an effective approach to studying inequality, that it is Western-centric in both its concepts and vision of the good society, and that these analytical problems have contributed to worsening social conditions in Africa because they have shaped African development policy. However, it departs from the existing approaches of locating these problems in the realm of ideas and looks to the nexus between ideas, materialism, and history. So, the widespread view that it is the reliance on problematic concepts and on unreliable official statistics that constitute the sources of these problems is questioned. Instead, the article extends the premise to both the ontology and the central methodology of mainstream development economics. It cautions against the preference for an indigenous economics as panacea and questions the revisionism of today—that is, the push for a marriage between anthropology and economics. Although clearly much stronger on analyzing entire economic systems and, indeed, on addressing some of the classical problems in development economics, the alternatives do not succeed in probing intergroup inequalities. The development of the emergent field of stratification economics by black political economists is defended as a more fruitful alternative.Peer reviewe

Feature essay: stratification economics and the black radical tradition

Property, Institutions and Social Stratification in Africa is the first book-length analysis of stratification economics in Africa, a new sub-field of economics that offers alternative political-economic explanations for inequality, not just in terms of income but also regarding group-based wealth and power. In this essay, author Dr Franklin Obeng-Odoom discusses his book’s contribution to the field and contextualises stratification economics within the Black Radical Tradition