Africa's Stalled Development: International Causes and Cures by David K. Leonard, David K. K. Leonard, Scott Straus

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Synopsis

Probing the international roots of Africa's civil and economic problems, this analysis offers a new way of thinking about Africa's development dilemmas and policy options for addressing them. The authors argue that weak states, aid dependence, and debt create disincentives for long-term economic growth and peace, and recommend a radical restructuring of Africa's relationship with the international system. Leonard is dean of international and area studies and professor of political science at the University of California- Berkeley. Straus is completing research on genocide in Rwanda at the University of California-Berkeley. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Foreign Affairs

Leonard and Straus, of the University of California at Berkeley, synthesize much recent writing on African political economy into an intriguing big picture that both analyzes the past and prescribes for the future. Without denying the overgeneralizations involved, they hope to jolt the aid establishment toward fundamentally new perspectives. They offer strong evidence that Africa's past economic and political interactions with the international system have created a set of incentives that are deeply dysfunctional for economic development. Old patterns have fostered weak states, antidemocratic leadership, and widespread civil conflict. To break these patterns, the authors want to restructure the incentives produced by the current conjunction of debt, foreign aid, and technical assistance to economies that often depend on enclave production of exports. Their proposed cures are immediate debt cancellation and reductions in most forms of foreign aid for governments with demonstrable commitments to democracy and development, followed by a system of multilateral guarantees to protect these legitimate governments from armed threats by rebel groups (who sustain themselves through illegal means such as the capture of profit-making enclaves). An over-idealistic but thought-provoking contribution to development debates.