Co-sponsored by Africa Conflict and Social Development Unit (AFTCS)
The Economic Reach of the African State:
Notional Governance and the Mask of Citizenship
Thursday, October 16, 2008
12:30 - 2:00 pm
Room MC13-121 Speaker: Daniel W. Bromley is Anderson-Bascom Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his research focuses on property rights and the institutional foundations of the market economy. He has recently completed a three-year term as Chair of the U. S. Federal Advisory Committee on Marine Protected Areas, and has served as a consultant to the governments of Sudan and New Zealand, the state of Alaska, the Global Environment Facility, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the OECD. His latest book is Sufficient Reason: Volitional Pragmatism and the Meaning of Economic Institutions, published in 2006 by Princeton University Press.
___________________________ African economic development is stifled because most countries are notional states. The notional state must not be confused with rhetoric of corruption and failed states. Rather, the effective reach (in a spatial sense) of the African state is efficiently attenuated in virtue of the benefits and costs of extending coherent governance beyond the capital city. This stands in stark contrast to the concept and the practice of nation building and the state as it evolved over centuries in Western Europe. In Europe, strong states evolved out of a necessity to protect valuable agricultural assets during an era in which land-based wealth was paramount. European states became strong because they could not afford to be weak. African states are weak because they have no good reasons to be strong. The “mask of citizenship” reflects reciprocal estrangement between citizens and the government. Colonialism in Africa did nothing to extend the effective reach of the state, and post-independence governments have found no good reasons to do so. The essential step to extend the reach of governance beyond the capital city is the tax bargain in which all individuals would contribute to the public purse. This will gradually mobilize revenue for the provision of missing collective consumption goods and services. Of greater import, the tax bargain will give “voice” to those in rural areas and will force central governments to listen to demands for coherent governance. Only then will economic development be possible. Download full paper (119 KB PDF file) Please contact Paulina Maribel Flewitt (pflewitt@worldbank.org) if you wish to be included in our mailing list. Details on forthcoming seminars are provided on the Seminar website |
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