In recent years, with eyes alerted to the so-called Asian industrialisation model, there has
emerged an important literature on the developmental state with Johnson, Amsden and Chang
amongst the most frequently cited studies (Johnson, 1982; Amsden, 1989; Chang, 1994).
Meredith Woo-Cumings provides a collection which stretches the subject to consider, for
instance, dirigiste France and which also gives convenient definitional strength to the
concept.(Woo-Cumings,1999) ‘The common thread linking these arguments is that a
developmental state is not an imperious element lording it over society but a partner with
the business sector in an historical compact of industrial transformation’. (Ibid.:4) A key
defining element in the developmental state seems to be agency: the existence of a state
formation that transcends or overrules the usual bureaucratic processes. Such agencies are
capable of directing capital and defying the logic of market forces which may constrain
structural transformations. While the state may tolerate large-scale corruption, favourites are
channelled in such a way as to ensure economic results, not simply indulge in private rent-
seeking activities. Capitalists and top government officials, perhaps in the military, come
together to form an elite, probably moulded through social associations, common
educational background and personal ties. With reference to Brazil, Peter Evans proposes
that members of such an elite ‘are embedded in a concrete set of social ties that binds the
state to society and provides institutionalised channels for the continued negotiation and
renegotiations of goals and policies.’ (Evans, 1995:12) They thus fulfil the requirement
suggested by Coase’s much discussed theory: costs are reduced to a minimum where
economic interactions are embedded in social forms. (Coase, 1937)
Indeed such formations are difficult to achieve in a democratic dispensation which is surely a
major reason why developmental states have been authoritarian (South Korea) or at least had
an authoritarian element (Japan); in general, they have been strongly motivated by an intense
nationalist ideology called into being by real or imagined threats. Adrian Leftwich explores
this side but also makes the important qualification that successful developmental states
are nonetheless able to achieve broad general, if passive, support from their populations
which he calls legitimacy, precisely because they can deliver the material goods, raise living
standards and live up to the often intense nationalist fervour which powers them. (Leftwich,
2000) Contemporary China in this sense perhaps fits his point well. It is worth flagging the
point here too that the neo-liberal view of East Asian success stories was always dominated
by the importance of export and successful, competitive participation in the international
economy. While far from being the whole story, it is true that industrial export success has
been of great importance even in China today and barriers intended to block this success for Japan in the 1930s led to developmentalism sliding into militarism and fascism.
The developmental state formulation has been increasingly attractive to many modern
regimes that consider themselves developmental and which look for a road where other
models seem to have led to blockage. Indeed the developmental state idea really found its
feet in the teeth of the political triumph of neo-liberalism with its reification of market forces
and its hostility to the state as a director of economic initiatives. South Africa after 1994
embraced neo-liberalism controversially but the limited success of the neo-liberal agenda led
President Thabo Mbeki to embrace what he called the ‘democratic developmental state’. I
have criticised this view as unsatisfactory elsewhere. (Freund, 2007)
However, the successor Zuma government has opened the door to activists interested in
making this concept work in the South African political economy. But in so doing they
have so far virtually ignored older historic models. 1 I am posing as a hypothesis that South
Africa under white rule was a very good example itself of a developmental state, by no
means unsuccessful by the standard of the times. The racial definition of the citizenry and
the emergence of the Bantustan system were a part of the conception of this state although
certainly they created contradictions at various stages. Far from never having known the
structures typical of what developmental state theorists have considered characteristic, key
elements of the developmental state structure are still in existence although they have lost
their coherence and require substantial reorientation.
Freund2011.pdf