|
< < <
Date Index > > > |
Samir Amin in the world press (final part of series) - the Anglocentricity of world system research? by Tausch, Arno 20 June 2001 08:51 UTC |
< < <
Thread Index > > > |
This is now the last 10 year archive selection from Reuters in my world
system theory in the world press series.
There were over 100 articles for Samir Amin, so I had to perform a
selection.
A final interpretation in the end: the series could and should show, that
'our points' in world systems research are carried in an interesting, but
culturally very selective fashion in the world media.
AGF's work has been received most actively in the countries of Asia and the
Pacific over recent years; Giovanni Arrighi's impact has been especially
noticeable in the countries of the Mediterranean (Spain and Italy) and in
Brazil; Immanuel Wallerstein's world press echo includes France, Germany and
Austria; while Samir Amin's work has been received most actively in the
media of the world's South.
The echo in all the languages of Reuters Business Briefing over the last 3
years on important authors in the world system tradition was:
Samir Amin 93 articles
Immanuel Wallerstein 71 articles
Andre Gunder Frank 24 articles
Giovanni Arrighi 16 articles
the late Otto Kreye 7 articles
Christopher Chase Dunn 5 articles
Articles in English only were distributed as following:
Samir Amin 32 articles
Immanuel Wallerstein 29 articles
Andre Gunder Frank 23 articles
Giovanni Arrighi 4 articles
the late Otto Kreye 1 article
Christopher Chase Dunn 5 articles
Thus the coefficient of Anglo-Centricity in the reception of world system
theory (English language reception in the world press per total world press
reception, i.e. Table 2 divided by Table 1) was:
(hope that table comes out well!)
total world press echo
english language echo
english echo per total echo in %
Amin 93 32 34,4
Wallerstein 71 29 40,8
Frank 24 23 95,8
Arrighi 16 4 25
Kreye 7 1 14,3
Chase Dunn 5 5 100
Thus the anglocentricity of the reception of world system theory reception
in the international press according to Reuters archive over the last 3
years was the following (in %):
<<...>>
Enjoy the reading
Arno Tausch
13Jun2001 SENEGAL: PANAFRICAN NEWS AGENCY (PANA) DAILY NEWSWIRE - Economists
welcome African self-help initiat
Dakar, Senegal (PANA) - Researchers attending the international conference
of economists on the OMEGA Plan, which opened in Dakar Monday, have
expressed support for the African self-help initiatives, drawn from various
strategies and formulated by Presidents Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Thabo
Mbeki of South Africa.
"The most important thing is that all these plans are trying to offer new
prospects and new dreams to the African continent," Hakim Ben Hammouda, a
researcher at the Council for the Development of Economic and Social
Research in Africa (CODESRIA) told the Senegalese News Agency (APS)
following the opening ceremony.
He emphasised that the initiatives were very important since "this new
period which opens up for Africa differs from the preceding decade when the
continent's sole perspective concentrated on the implementation of
structural adjustment programmes (SAP) dictated by the IMF and the World
Bank".
Former Higher Education Minister Sakhir Thiam of Senegal, who is among the
200 participants, hailed the plan and urged that it be put into action and
not allowed to remain dormant.
These self-help initiatives, which Ben Hammouda said followed a period of
lack of interest in the continent, had never been lacking in Africa,
economist Samir Amin of the Africa Forum, indicated.
"The fact that African States lag in development is not due to lack of
initiatives, but rather to the international system which demolished all
their attempts," pointed out Amin, who is renown for his Third World ideas.
He cited ideas advanced since the Bandong Non-aligned conference in 1955 up
to the Lagos Plan of Action, formulated by the UN Economic Commission for
Africa, which the World Bank reduced to ashes.
Far from sharing the views of his colleagues, he believes, for the moment,
"that the liberal globalisation system is not at all favourable to Africa's
being responsible for itself." He argues that the continent's
marginalisation was partly due to the absence of self-help initiatives.
After the Dakar meeting, another conference will be organised 18-19 June in
Cairo, Egypt, where economic experts will discuss the OMEGA and MAP
(initiated by Mbeki) plans, according to conference sources.
All Material Subject to Copyright
Copyright 2001: Panafrican News Agency (PANA) Daily Newswire. All Rights
Reserved.
Sources:MIDDLE EAST INTELLIGENCE WIRE
PAN AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY (PANA) 13/06/2001
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
22Jan2001 BRAZIL: Global activists to hold "Anti-Davos" in Brazil.
By Shasta Darlington
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Remember the thousands of
protesters who disrupted high-profile world economic talks from Seattle to
Prague with circus antics and street clashes?
In 2001 they have set themselves a much bolder task - they are hosting an
"Anti-Davos" forum in southern Brazil that they hope will produce more
proposals than punches.
Starting on Thursday, anti-globalization activists of all stripes and
nationalities will converge on Porto Alegre, which is ruled by Brazil's
left-wing Worker's Party, for the five-day World Social Forum (WSF).
Timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, socialists,
environmentalists and other left-leaning groups will counter the elite
powwow in Switzerland of world leaders, corporate CEOs and central bank
chiefs, but pens will replace tear gas as the tools of choice.
"This is an opportunity to show that the anti-globalization movement has
proposals not just protests," said Oded Grajew, the 56-year-old Brazilian
businessman-turned-activist who dreamed up the forum. "It is an anti-Davos
answer to world problems."
The some 10,000 activists, including 2,700 registered participants, will
condemn the neoliberal economic policies that they believe have deepened the
divide between the rich and the poor, though not even the organizers think
the experimental meeting will produce a single, unifying manifesto.
The eclectic list of visitors includes the French farmer Jose Bove, famous
for trashing his local McDonald's, Nobel prize winning Portuguese writer
Jose Saramago, Brazilian architect Oscar Niemayer, Egyptian economist Samir
Amin and East Timor freedom fighter Taur Matan Ruak.
Among other issues, they want to produce alternative proposals to debt
relief programs, fiscal adjustment accords backed by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and free trade agreements, shoring up environmental and
human rights concerns.
IDEA BORN ONE YEAR AGO
The idea for the WSF occurred to Grajew exactly a year ago as he watched the
World Economic Forum unfold on television in Paris and he settled on Porto
Alegre to host it.
"We wanted to hold it in the Third World, since the Third World has suffered
the most from neoliberal economic and social policies," Grajew said.
Since then, hundreds of international organizations have thrown their
support behind the forum and what was meant to be a meeting of 3,000 has
ballooned into a mega-event expected to draw 10,000 protesters from around
the globe.
"This will probably be the largest gathering of activists since I've been
one," said Soren Ambrose, policy analyst at "Fifty Years Is Enough," a
Washington, D.C.-based group that campaigns against the IMF and World Bank.
"A lot of people are really excited and curious to see how it works out."
Participants from 120 countries and 1,000 organizations will meet for daily
workshops and conferences at the Catholic University (PUC).
"In Seattle, protesters were successful in getting our word out and showing
there is opposition, but the media focus was on police repression and
conflict, we want to show our other face," said Maria Luiza Mendonca, of
Brazil's Global Justice, one of the eight groups organizing the forum.
Riots in Seattle in December 1999 marred World Trade Organization talks and
revealed huge opposition to what were thought to be widely accepted
development policies. After that, clashes disrupted a European Union summit
in Nice, and IMF and World Bank meetings in Prague.
(Rio de Janeiro newsroom, 5521 223 7142, rio.newsroom@reuters.com).
(C) Reuters Limited 2001.
Sources:REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE - CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 22/01/2001
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
21Dec2000 BRAZIL: DEMOCRACY-DEVELOPMENT - IN SEARCH OF A NEW UTOPIA.
By Mario Osava.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 21 (IPS) - The World Social Forum 2001 (WSF) to take
place next month in Brazil will be a bold experiment in drawing together a
broad range of interests and civil society groups with the ambitious aim of
rebuilding the dreams of the left in today's globalized world.
The Jan. 25-30 gathering in the southern Brazilian port city of Porto
Alegre, the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, will draw delegates
of trade unions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and political and
social movements from throughout the world to identify new routes and
proposals to mobilize civil society internationally.
The initial projection of 2,700 participants, divided in equal parts among
the four above-mentioned sectors, could actually be several times that,
given the flood of registrations, said Fernanda Carvalho, with the Brazilian
Institute of Socioeconomic Research, an NGO on the organizing committee.
One example of the strong level of interest is Italy, where a flight will
have to be chartered to bring all of the delegates. Other countries have
also exceeded their quotas.
Given the enormous number of activists wishing to participate, the
organizing committee will have to modify the schedule of events, which was
to involve morning panels in the four auditoriums of the Catholic
University, with a capacity for 800 people each. Afternoon workshops and a
number of parallel activities will complete the program.
The total number of participants could be in excess of 10,000, said Rio
Grande do Sul Deputy Governor Miguel Rossetto, one of the gathering's hosts,
who recently made a European tour to publicize the event.
The WSF emerged as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum, which has
been taking place annually in late January in Davos, Switzerland for the
past 29 years.
The World Economic Forum "has played a key role in formulating economic
policies throughout the world, sponsored by a Swiss organization that serves
as a consultant to the United Nations, and financed by more than one
thousand corporations," according to the WSF website.
The idea to organize an alternative forum parallel to the World Economic
Forum emerged from the demonstrations staged since 1998 against meetings of
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade
Organization (WTO), such as the mass protests held at the WTO ministerial
conference in Seattle, Washington in late November and early December 1999.
The organizers describe the WSF as "a new international arena for the
creation and exchange of social and economic projects that promote human
rights, social justice and sustainable development," and which "will provide
a space for building economic alternatives, for exchanging experiences and
for strengthening South-North alliances between NGOs, unions and social
movements."
Participants will try to come up with "strategies for grassroots organizing"
and "build proposals to democratize international institutions such as the
WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank to limit the influence of multinational
corporations on local communities."
While the working agenda for the meeting is "anti-Davos," it will be based
on the search for concrete proposals, said Carvalho, who stressed that this
year's gathering would be a "first test" of joint reflection by
organizations dedicated to a wide spectrum of issues, in the search for
alternatives to neo-liberalism.
The theme "Another World is Possible" highlights the aim of coming up with
global proposals that, in the words of the Brazilian organizing committee,
would place "human development and participative democracy among the top
priorities of governments and citizenries."
The WSF is also an attempt to reorganize and give direction to the world's
leftist forces, but not merely political parties. Taking part along with
socially concerned trade unions, parliamentarians and government officials
will be NGOs fighting for the broadest range of causes.
Human rights defenders, land reform advocates, environmentalists and
activists working on issues ranging from the foreign debt to urban planning,
the fight against poverty and inequalities, gender questions, and even the
issue of a one percent tax on financial transactions - the so-called Tobin
Tax - will exchange ideas in Porto Alegre.
The WSF will not be a decision-making body, and no final document will be
approved, but the various groups represented at the forum will be free to
disseminate the proposals and joint positions that arise from specific
meetings.
The choice of Porto Alegre to host the gathering was a statement in and of
itself. For the past 12 years, the city has been governed by Brazil's
leftist Workers Party, which has run the city based on innovations and
people-oriented policies such as the "participative budget," micro-credits,
and top priority attention to social problems.
Depending on the results of this first attempt to draw together such a wide
range of groups and interests, the WSF could become a regular event, held in
Brazil or in different countries. Participants will also have to decide
whether the WSF headquarters will remain in Porto Alegre, or rotate from
country to country.
Among the personalities who have confirmed their attendance are U.S.
linguist and activist Noam Chomsky, Indian physicist and ecofeminist Vandana
Shiva, the leader of East Timor's independence struggle and 1996 Nobel Peace
laureate Jose Ramos Horta, Egyptian economist Samir Amin, and Danielle
Mitterrand, president of the France Liberti association.
Brazil's Landless Movement (Movimento dos Sem Terra, MST) will propose that
seeds be named a common heritage of mankind, as part of the struggle against
transgenic products. It will also organize group visits by participants to
camps set up near Porto Alegre by landless rural folk waiting to be settled
on their own parcels of land.
Chomsky sees the gathering as an "opportunity of unparalleled importance to
bring together popular forces from many and varied constituencies from the
richer and poor countries alike, to develop constructive alternatives that
will defend the overwhelming majority of the world's population from the
attack on fundamental human rights."
The panels in which the formally registered delegates will take part will
focus on four main themes: the production of wealth; access to wealth and
sustainability; civil society and the public arena; and political power and
ethics in the new society.
A World Parliamentary Forum will also be held as part of the WSF, with some
500 delegates from throughout the world. Other events will be youth and
indigenous camps, in which representatives of each sector will discuss their
specific problems and concerns.
Afternoon workshops will be organized around a variety of issues, in 60
different meeting rooms. The aim is to "cross agendas" and promote dialogue
between organizations and movements working on a range of issues and with
different constituencies, in a search for "symbiosis," said Carvalho.
The gathering will be brought to a close by some 350 events - including
concerts, plays and art exhibits - throughout the city, the organizers
reported.
(c) 2000 Global Information Network.
Sources:GLOBAL INFORMATION NETWORK
IPS NEWSFEED 21/12/2000
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
01Oct2000 TURKEY: Neoliberal globalization and the democracy paradox - The
Turkish general elections of 1999.
By Onis, Ziya.
Neoliberal globalization as a late 20th century phenomenon is an inherently
contradictory process. It is a process that unleashes tremendous potential
for economic growth driven by rapid technological progress, notably in the
areas of communications and information technology and is associated with
the opening of markets and the rapid expansion of trade and capital flows.
At the same time, it is a highly uneven process that tends to aggravate
inequality between as well as within countries, by favoring certain regions
or social groups over others. The uneven nature of neoliberal globalization
is also a reflection or even a byproduct of the different speeds at which
globalization occurs. It thus creates disproportionate benefits in favor of
the industrialized countries of the North and the small number of
semi-peripheral countries or emerging markets, such as Turkey, which are
tied to the northern countries through north-south regional blocs.
Significant parts of the developing world have been marginalized and left
out of this process. Within individual countries, neoliberal globalization
tends to create a group of winners who are able to take advantage of access
to technology and integration with the world markets. Concurrently, it tends
to create a group of losers, who lack the skills and the capacity to adapt
themselves to the new environment and, hence, are excluded from its
potential benefits. Natural corollaries of this tendency are the growing
differentiation within the national economy and the dichotomy of highly
prosperous and declining, or stagnant, regions within the same national
economic space.
The paradox of neoliberal globalization is that it unifies and integrates
while it fragments and marginalizes. Globalization of the world economy
finds its most complete form in financial markets; the process has been less
thorough, however, in the areas of foreign direct investment and foreign
trade. In the latter, in spite of significant recent moves to establish a
free, multilateral world trading environment, striking elements of
protectionism continue to exist and novel instruments of protectionism are
created, notably in industrialized countries, in the form of labor and
environmental and technical standards.1
While financial globalization constitutes the most successful aspect of
neoliberal globalization, labor mobility comprises the sphere where progress
to date has been the most limited. Labor mobility applies largely to a
sub-group of highly skilled employees. Unskilled or semi-skilled workers are
usually confined to their national territories and look to their respective
governments to improve their living standards.
The contradictory processes unleashed by neoliberal globalization thus
places enormous strains and tensions on the state. In the aftermath of
widespread privatization, as well as trade and capital account
liberalization, many of the functions that the state has traditionally
performed have become obsolete. This is not to argue that the state itself
has no useful function to perform in the age of globalization. The state has
to modify and adapt itself to the new environment and assume new
responsibilities in such key areas as building human capital and
technological infrastructure, maintaining macroeconomic stability, creating
a competitive environment and regulating financial systems. The "competition
state," which requires productive integration with the global economy,
however, is a state that possesses limited capacity to provide social
welfare. Indeed, attempts to extend the boundaries of the welfare state may
result in capital flight and stagnation in an environment where individual
nations are competing fiercely to attract the available pool of global
capital.
This article attempts to study the impact of neoliberal globalization on the
process of democratization. First, I will discuss the conceptual
relationship between neoliberal globalization and democratization. Then I
will look at Turkey's specific experience with globalization and will
identify some of its impacts on the Turkish economy Next, I turn to the
political question and examine how globalization has affected political
outcomes. This section specifically analyzes the results of the 1999
election and the trend toward party fragmentation. The last section analyzes
the impact of this fragmentation on Turkey's democratization process. The
Turkish experience presents itself as an interesting case because Turkey, as
a second-generation newly industrialized country (NIC) and an emerging
market, has experienced both the positive and negative aspects of neoliberal
globalization during the 1980s and I990s. From a comparative perspective,
the Turkish case also illustrates how the universal features of neoliberal
globalization interact with certain specific national characteristics, such
as the presence of a tradition of a strong, centralized state, which
influences the process of sociopolitical development and the course of
democratization within the national context.
NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION AND THE DEMOCRACY PARADOX: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Does neoliberal globalization promote democracy, abstract democracy or both?
This is a difficult question to answer. The relationship between
globalization and democracy, or democratization, is a complex, ambiguous and
contradictory one. In general, the impact of globalization on prospects for
democratic governance in many parts of the world appears to be extremely
favorable and prospects for democracy on a global scale indeed seem better
than ever. Authoritarian regimes have been dismantled, or are in the process
of being dismantled, in many parts of the developing world, notably in Latin
America, East Asia and Eastern Europe.2 The current wave of economic
globalization is resulting in Western-style, liberal and pluralistic
polities, which set high standards regarding human rights. Increasingly,
successful economic integration requires political reforms. Paradoxically,
and in striking contrast to the Cold War era, transnational corporations and
financial institutions are unwilling to invest in and lend to countries with
authoritarian structures and weak human rights records. Authoritarian
regimes are no longer justified on the grounds of stability or security, as
in the past, and are increasingly associated with favoritism, lack of
transparency and uncertainty. Transnational institutions like the World Bank
place increasing emphasis on "good governance," suggesting that the
development of strong and democratically accountable institutions have a
critical role to play in successful economic development. Another striking
element associated with contemporary patterns of globalization concerns the
development of civil society and the proliferation of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs). This is a process that manifests itself in industrial
societies, and is also reflected, perhaps to a lesser extent, in the
development of transnational NGOs. A positive correlation appears to exist
between the development of civil society on a national or global basis and
an extension of civil or human rights and freedom within individual
countries.
Considering the arguments that I have presented thus far, it is not
surprising that many people tend to conceptualize globalization and
democratization as necessarily parallel, interchangeable and mutually
reinforcing phenomena. The reality is more complex, however, and a deeper
analysis would suggest that the relationship between globalization and
democracy contains a dark, negative side along with the positive, favorable
features mentioned above.
Associated with these patterns of globalization has been the emergence of
nationalist and fundamentalist movements of various sorts, movements that
tend to create enormous tensions during democratization. Authoritarian or
exclusionary identity politics seem to be a necessary corollary of
globalization, although the manifestations of such politics vary among
countries. The growing influence of the far right in Western Europe, the
spread of micro or ethno-nationalism in Eastern Europe and parts of Latin
America and the resurgence of political Islam in the Middle East are
arguably diverse national or regional representations of the same global
tendency.3 From the perspective of political economy, this tendency is not
difficult to explain. As suggested earlier, globalization is an
intrinsically uneven process that dislocates individuals, uproots
communities, creates unemployment and increases the degree of uncertainty in
the lives of a growing number of individuals. Thus, globalization creates a
large group of losers, and exclusionary identity politics based on race,
religion or ethnic identity becomes a natural means whereby the losers of
globalization protest, seek to recover their lost positions and try to
re-establish a degree of stability and certainty in their lives.
In many cases, these groups or movements benefit from the emergence of a
more pluralistic political environment. Ironically though, in many cases
their own democratic credentials are rather weak. They typically see
democracy as a means to consolidate their own political position and their
political projects, rather than an end in itself. Clearly, the emergence of
anti-systemic political movements or parties, basing their claim for
legitimacy on an exclusionary group identity, generates enormous ambiguities
and tensions, notably but not exclusively, for nascent democratic regimes.
This raises serious issues about how much these movements should be
tolerated, and how democracies should best protect themselves from
fundamentalist political movements who see democracy largely in instrumental
terms.
Another difficult issue concerning the complex relationship between
globalization and democratization concerns the quality of democratization
taking place in some countries. While democratic politics is being
established as the norm in the majority of countries, serious questions
remain regarding the true democratic credentials of many of the democracies
being established. Various terms, such as "delegative democracy," "low
intensity democracy" or "the politics of anti-politics, have been used to
describe a familiar pattern: low key politics within a compressed public
space and based on personalities rather than concrete party programs.4 Such
politics are driven by the desire for individual material enrichment rather
than the public good. Thus, it is not surprising to observe a degeneration
of political activity and a corresponding loss of trust in politicians and
political activity on the part of the general public. The moral vacuum that
seems to accompany the current wave of democratization reflects the
extension of the market to encompass economic and non-economic dimensions of
everyday life, including political activity.
It is therefore not so paradoxical that identity politics are emerging at
the same time that neoliberal globalization is taking place. The deep sense
of uncertainty and the feeling of rootlessness produced by globalization
have clearly contributed to the rise of often authoritarian forms of
identity politics to the center stage in the political arena. It is perhaps
this very gap between what is possible and what is expected in this new,
globalized environment that is causing widespread public dissatisfaction and
disillusionment with politicians and political activity.
TURKEY: CHALLENGES AND STRAINS OF GLOBALIZATION
Turkey's encounter with neoliberal globalization dates back to 1980.
Following the collapse of the import substitution model of development
during the late 1970s, Turkey embarked on a major economic reform period in
1980, with strong support from transnational financial institutions. The
objective of the reform process was to correct the severe inward orientation
of the previous era and create an economy that would be fully integrated and
competitive with the world market. The question of whether the Turkish
version of neoliberalism has been successful is an issue that deserves
treatment in its own right.5 What is significant in the present context is
how Turkey's neoliberal reform process has conditioned the subsequent course
of socio-political development and the pattern of electoral politics that
has emerged, notably during the 1990s. With this specific question in mind,
it is worth highlighting the following features of the Turkish experiment in
neoliberalism.
Rapid Growth
In spite of the qualifications concerning the quality of economic growth,
Turkey has nonetheless managed to grow at an average rate of 4 to 5 percent
since 1980. This comparatively high growth rate has, in turn, created a
significant group of winners from the globalization process. The winners
have not been limited to largescale conglomerates, capitalizing on export
markets and the opportunities provided by financial liberalization. A
striking trend in recent years has been the emergence of new centers of
industrial growth in inner Anatolia, such as Denizli, forum, Urfa, Gaziantep
and Konya, which have challenged the industrial dominance of Istanbul and
the Marmara region. The emergence of these new centers of growth is strongly
associated with successful small firm development and heavily oriented
toward production based on advanced technology for external markets. The
striking performance of small-and medium-scale firms in these new centers of
economic growth, the so called Anatolian Tigers, have been frequently
highlighted in the recent literature on Turkey's development trajectory in
the neoliberal era.6
Macroeconomic Instability and Fiscal Crisis
Endemic macroeconomic instability and chronically high rates of inflation,
originating from an underlying fiscal crisis of the state, have been
striking features of the Turkish neoliberal experiment. The state's fiscal
problems emerged in the 1970s, largely a result of unusually high public
sector borrowing. During the early years of stabilization and reform in the
1980s, some success was achieved in containing the budget deficit and
reducing the inflation rate. Following the transition to full, unrestricted
multi-party democracy in 1987 and the resulting populist pressures for
redistribution, however, the fiscal crisis of the state intensified in the
late 1980s and the early 1990s. Indeed, fiscal disequilibrium was an
important cause of the financial crisis of 1994 in Turkey.7 The subsequent
stabilization measures, however, have so far failed to produce a fundamental
change.
Budget Deficit
Another feature of Turkey's economy in the 1990s concerns the importance of
domestic borrowing by the state at high interest rates to cover the budget
deficit. Successive Turkish governments have found themselves confronted
with a major dilemma: While the pressures for populist redistribution have
been immense given the nature of inequality in Turkish society, populist
redistribution has been increasingly inconsistent with the goals of
achieving and sustaining high rates of growth and successful integration
into the global economy. This creates a vicious circle whereby
redistribution attempts result in endemic fiscal instability and high
inflation. This tends to generate a fragile, stop-and-go pattern of economic
growth based on inflows of short-term speculative capital.
The absence of macroeconomic stability therefore fails to provide a
conducive environment for long-term domestic and foreign investment.
Moreover, the heavy interest burden on domestic debt, which has been
accumulating throughout the 1990s, has increasingly left few resources to
redistribute. Paradoxically, a disproportionate share of public resources
are directed toward the repayment of the principal and interest on domestic
debt, limiting the resources available for redistribution and long-term
development.
Inegalitarian Economic Development
Although Turkey's economic growth has been fairly rapid, an inegalitarian
pattern of development has persisted in Turkey during the 1980s and the
1990s. Turkey has one of the higher relative income inequalities: a recent
estimate of Turkey's Gini coefficient, a standard indicator of relative
income inequality, was 0.5.
Furthermore, the Turkish development experience has been characterized by
major inter-regional income inequality. Turkey's comparatively low per
capita income of $5,516 (calculated to account for purchasing power parity)
is a reflection of the wide gap between the relatively developed regions of
the West and the South and the severely underdeveloped regions of the
Southeast and East.8 While the Kurdish issue in Turkey is partly an issue of
ethnic identity, it is also related to the economic underdevelopment of the
Southeast. Associated with this inegalitarian pattern of development has
been large-scale unemployment and underemployment, continued rural-urban
migration and the growth of shantytowns around the major metropolitan
centers.
Fortunately, Turkey is in a process of demographic transition with
population growth displaying a marked decline in recent years.9 However, the
high rate of population growth until recently has created a population
structure, which, in contrast to European patterns, is dominated by young
people. In addition, a disproportionate share of the population, some 40
percent of the labor force, is concentrated in agricultural and rural areas,
in spite of the fact that the share of agriculture to total national
production has declined dramatically in recent decades.
Yet another characteristic of the Turkish experience has been the cycles of
wage repression and recovery Indeed, real wages were heavily depressed in
the early years of the neoliberal experiment under military rule from 1980
to 1983 and the subsequent phase of restricted democracy from 1983 to 1987.
Real wages recovered significantly in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.
However, the financial crisis of 1994, and the subsequent stabilization
program implemented in conjunction with the IMF, have created yet another
round of wage depression during the latter half of the 1990s.
A characteristic not unique to Turkey is that the state possesses limited
capacity to reverse the inegalitarian trend resulting from globalization. It
is increasingly left to informal institutional arrangements or networks to
provide a rudimentary form of welfare provision.10 The growth of these
informal networks and the concept of the "network society" is crucial to
understanding the highly volatile electoral politics of the 1990s. The
electoral scene of the 1990s is increasingly dominated by competition among
these rival informal networks.
PARTY FRAGMENTATION DURING THE 1990S
Now that I have examined how globalization has affected the Turkish economy,
I will move on to its impact on democratization and the political sphere. An
apparent paradox of the Turkish political scene during the 1990s, which
sharply differentiates it from the 1980s, concerns the fragmentation of the
party system and the return of coalition politics. The political system was
strictly controlled during the 1980s. As noted, Turkey had a military
government from 1980 to 1983 and a controlled transition to democracy from
1983 to 1987. There were explicit limits imposed on the number and nature of
the political parties allowed to participate in the general elections of
November 1983 and the municipal elections of March 1984.
In November 1983, Turgut Ozal's right-of-center Motherland Party won the
first general election after military rule." The Motherland Party continued
to dominate the political scene and emerged as the winner once again in the
1987 general election. However, following the September 1987 referendum,
which eliminated the ban imposed by the military on such political parties
as the Justice Party and the Republican People's Party and their leaders,
Suleyman Demirel and Bulent Ecevit respectively, the Turkish political
system reached a new point in its transition to unrestricted party
competition. By the end of the 1980s, Motherland's popularity had started to
wane significantly, and the party lost power in the 1991 election. Since
then, Turkish politics have been characterized by instability caused by
party fragmentation on both the Left and the Right.12 With the return of the
principal political leaders of the earlier era to active politics after the
1987 referendum, a clash of personalities also played a divisive role in
Turkish politics.
The fragmentation of the Turkish party system and the volatility of
electoral politics in Turkey during the 1990s is clearly illustrated in
Table 1. In analytical terms, it is useful to divide the principal political
parties in Turkey into three distinct categories: 1) right of center
political parties, including Motherland and the True Path; 2) left of center
political parties, including the Republican People's Party and Ecevit's
Democratic Left; and 3) fringe political parties with anti-systemic
orientations, including the pro-Islamist Virtue Party, the extreme
Nationalist Action Party and ethnic nationalist HADEP, a party that seeks to
represent the rights of the Kurdish minority in the southeastern part of the
country The electoral performance of the "Nationalist Action coalition" and
the "VirtueWelfare coalition" are displayed separately in Table 1-A. (The
Virtue Party replaced the Welfare Party after it was closed by the
Constitutional Court in January 1998.) However, I show the collective
performance of these parties in Table 1-B, together with another small
party, the Reformist Democracy Party, as they joined forces in the elections
of 1991, under the collective banner of Welfare. The Reformist Democracy
Party, however, has subsequently been marginalized and left out of the
"Welfare coalition."
Several trends emerge from this data. First, none of the political parties
have independently been able to capture more than 25 percent of the total
vote in national or local elections. This is contrasted with the electoral
patterns of the 1970s and the 1980s, when electoral politics was typically
dominated by one major political party on the right and one on the left of
the political spectrum. In fact, with the exception of relatively brief
interludes, the general pattern of democratic politics since its inception
in 1950 has been characterized by the dominance of a major political party
of the center-right. Second, both parties of the center-right have been
steadily losing ground in the 1990s and emerged from the April 1999
elections as clear losers. Third, the Republican People's Party, the party
which perhaps comes closest to a Western style social democratic party in
Turkey, has also been on a steady downward slide. The party could claim only
about 8 to 9 percent of the total national vote and failed to secure any
seats in Parliament for the first time since its creation by Atatirk in
1923. The Democratic Left, the other main party with social democratic
credentials, however, has managed to increase its share of the vote steadily
in the 1990s and emerged as the leading party in the 1999 elections.
Table 1-A
Table 1-B
While many of the centrist parties have suffered declining electoral
support, fringe parties have enjoyed an unexpected and dramatic rise in
national prominence, such as the Welfare Party's marked success during the
March 1994 municipal elections and the December 1995 general elections. The
Welfare Party was subsequently renamed, or replaced by, the Virtue Party
following its closure by the Constitutional Court and its effective
exclusion from formal politics in January 1998. Equally striking has been
the rise of the extreme Nationalist Action Party to the position of the
second largest party in parliament.13 In fact, an examination of the
distribution of votes between center and fringe parties suggests a steady
improvement in the relative position of the fringe or anti-systemic parties,
as illustrated in Table 2.
Another important political development involves the apparent convergence in
party programs during the course of the 1990s. An examination of recent
party programs and a comparison on the basis of seven main criteria point
toward some interesting tendencies, which are worth highlighting. The seven
criteria are: privatization, as a measure of commitment to reducing the
direct involvement of the state in economic affairs; decentralization, as a
measure of commitment to reducing Ankara's control over regional districts;
democratization and individual rights, as a measure of the party's
commitment to civil rights and democracy; traditional and conservative
communitarianism, which involves a mix of Islamic and nationalist undertones
and emphasizes tradition, hierarchy and group solidarity; nationalism, which
measures the extent to which the party programs are based on nationalist,
exclusionary dialogue; secularism, which measures the party's commitment to
separation of religion and the state; and, foreign policy orientation, which
indicates the party's stance toward EU membership. These trends are laid out
in Table 3.
Table 2
Some interesting trends are clear from Table 3. First, there seems to be
much less disagreement on economic issues in the 1990s compared with earlier
periods. In the past, significant differences existed between the
right-of-center and left-of-center parties concerning the role of the state
in economic affairs and the issue of whether or not to privatize the large
state enterprise sector. Now, almost all political parties appear to be in
favor of privatization and the market economy, although differences of
emphasis may still be detected.14
Table 3
Secondly, all of the parties appear to be in favor of some decentralization
and delegation of authority to local governments. Most of the political
parties also appear to be in favor of democratization and the enlargement of
individual rights. At the same time, with one exception, the programs of all
the principal political parties tend to reflect strong traditional and
conservative communitarian elements involving various mixes of Islam and
nationalism. This type of communitarianism, with its emphasis on tradition,
culture, hierarchy and group solidarity, makes a rather sharp contrast with
the "liberal communitarian" vision of the world, with its emphasis on the
individual and individual rights within a broader social context. Perhaps
not surprisingly, then, the emphasis on nationalism appears to be
particularly strong across the political spectrum.
The degree of emphasis placed on secularism seems to be a point of
demarcation between center-left and center-right political parties, with the
former placing more emphasis on the importance of secularism. Center-right
parties appear less concerned with maintaining secularism. Foreign policy
orientations of the political parties are broadly parallel, again with one
or two exceptions. The link between party programs and electoral results
will be explored later.
One last dramatic trend underlying the electoral politics of the 1990s, and
particularly the elections of 1999, and closely related to the process of
globalization, involves the national-local divide. The 1999 elections are
important because they marked the first time national and local elections
were held simultaneously in Turkey Thus, the electoral performance of any
given political party may differ significantly in the same locality
depending whether one examines the results from the general or the local
elections. For example, the pro-Islamic Virtue Party's share of the national
vote declined in the 1999 elections relative to its 1995 performance, but
the party continued to dominate in major metropolitan centers, such as
Ankara and Istanbul. This suggests that voters increasingly differentiate
between local and national politics and consider the personalities and the
performance of the parties at the local level independently of the broader
ideology or program of the national party The divergence between the
performance of the principal political parties in the national and local
elections is illustrated in Table 4.
IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON POLITICAL BEHAVIOR
A closer examination of party programs and electoral behavior in Turkey
during the 1999 elections in particular reveals what is now needed for
electoral success. First, successful electoral performance seems to depend
on the formation of a broad coalition that successfully integrates the
winners as well as the losers of neoliberal globalization. The Welfare Party
is a particularly good example of this. Welfare has managed to successfully
integrate groups who have benefited from the globalization process, such as
the rising bourgeoisie and the new elites in emerging centers of small
enterprise development in Anatolia with marginal groups in urban centers who
constitute the clear losers of globalization. The strong emphasis in the
Welfare program on communitarian elements, such as Islam or nationalism,
integrates these rather diverse groups in a nationwide organization. A
similar phenomenon is evident in the rise during the 1999 elections of the
Nationalist Action Party.Although its populist rhetoric and varying degrees
of emphasis on nationalism and Islam appealed to the underprivileged,
Nationalist Action has managed to attract the rising businessman and the new
elites on the periphery to forge a cross-class coalition. White Nationalist
Action's bond is based more on an appeal to nationalism, the Islamic element
has also been an important feature of the party's electoral program. The
Nationalist Action Party capitalized on the decline of the Virtue Party,
following the loss of morale and organizational disarray after its
predecesor was closed. Indeed, the Nationalist Action Party has managed to
increase its votes precisely in the areas where Welfare previously
dominated. The experiences of both the Welfare and the Nationalist Action
Parties clearly testify to the importance of strong organizational skills,
local level networks and redistributive mechanisms, which are crucial in
building a broad cross-class coalition from a grassroots level.
The logical implication of this argument is that class-based politics do not
produce success in the new political environment. This observation is
directly verified in the cases of both the Motherland and the Republican
People's Parties, which have become increasingly class-based and which have
sustained significant electoral losses. The Motherland Party under Ozal
during the 1980s was a truly cross-class coalition. Its programmatic appeal
was based on a hybrid ideology, combining a strong commitment to the market
with communitarian elements of nationalism and Islam, although not to the
extent of Nationalist Action and Welfare. Following the departure of Ozal
and the more conservative elements in the party, it progressively lost its
cross-class quality Under the dominance of its liberal wing, during the
1990s the Motherland Party increasingly became the principal representative
of the urban bourgeoisie, which has naturally benefited from the
globalization process. The Motherland Party example clearly demonstrates
that a political party that only appeals to the winners of globalization
will not be able to translate this limited popularity into electoral
success.
Similarly, the Republican People's Party, which tried to appeal primarily to
the losers of the globalization process, was not able to generate the
desired level of electoral success in the 1990s. It is important to note,
however, that the specific historical legacy of the Republican People's
association with the state and the state ideology of authoritarian
secularism has also limited its electoral success.15
A second attribute of successful parties in the 1990s is their appeal to the
underpriviledged, which accounts for the Welfare Party's rise to power in
1994 and 1995 and the unexpected rise of the Nationalist Action Party in
1999. Both of these parties have capitalized on the weaknesses of the
traditional social democratic parties in Turkey and have represented
themselves as the natural outlets for the underprivileged. In both cases,
they appeared to be more statist and populist than the mainstream parties.
At the same time, they managed to differentiate themselves in terms of their
discourse from the mainstream political parties of the "center." Welfare
appealed to the electorate by using Islamic nationalism whereas Nationalist
Action focused more on nationalism and national identity.16 The appeal to
the underprivileged in both cases utilized strong collectivist and
communitarian elements that helped to build a bridge between various levels
of society These strong communitarian elements had a strong moral appeal in
the Turkish environment, which is increasingly characterized by favoritism,
corruption and an overall decline in ethics caused by relentless materialism
and the extension of the market into everyday life. The identification of
the main center-right political parties with corruption has also been
instrumental in tilting the balance of support toward parties of the extreme
right.
Table 4
This moral imperative also helps explain the rise of Ecevit's Democratic
Left as the premier party of the center-left. Ecevit's brand of social
democracy embodied a strong emphasis on nationalism in conjunction with a
challenge to political Islam, although it did not convey the strong
authoritarian secularist tone associated with its rival Republican People's
Party Specifically, the Democratic Left presented an image of being on good
terms with pure Islam while being against the politization of religion.
Ecevit's image as a clean politician has helped bolster the party's
electoral chances. In fact, pleas for clean politics were an important
common element in the rise of two leaders, Ecevit of the Democratic Left and
Bahceli of Nationalist Action, during the 1999 elections.
A third attribute is that, despite cross-class coalitions, winning parties
continue to command a relatively small fraction of the total vote. The
reasons for the limited nature of these cross-class coalitions are primarily
economic. The parties concerned do not have economic resources themselves or
access to state resources. They are therefore unable to build broadly based
electoral coalitions that would win a majority of the vote. Thus, the
financial limits of clientelistic politics contribute to the fragmentation
of party politics.
IMPACT OF PARTY FRAGMENTATION AND COALITION GOVERNMENTS
An interesting question to consider is whether electoral volatility and
party fragmentation necessarily imply an inherently unstable polity in
Turkey From an economic point of view, the fragmented party system and
associated pattern of coalition politics during the 1990s have clearly
restricted the ability of governments to undertake rapid and far-reaching
reform in such key areas as privatization, taxation and social welfare.
Coalition politics, at least until recently, have been associated with weak
governmentsgovernments that have lacked the authority to pursue, as well as
the willingness to pay the price for, deep-seated structural reforms. The
failure to undertake reforms has been costly to the Turkish economy Due to
the presence of persistent macroeconomic instability and chronically high
rates of inflation, the Turkish economy has failed to realize its potential
level of economic growth.
Nonetheless, the degree of political instability in Turkey should not be
overexaggerated. First, a significant gap exists between what parties
promise while in opposition and what they can deliver once they are actually
in office. The presence of severe fiscal constraints and the discipline
imposed by the international financial community limit how much parties can
deliver to low income groups. Thus, many populists become at least qualified
neoliberal reformers once in government. This is best illustrated by the
recent example involving the coalition between the Democratic Left and
Nationalist Action and its commitment to key reforms in the areas of
privatization, social security and the banking system. It is also striking
that the statist and redistributive orientation of the Islamist Welfare
Party was significantly reversed when the party was the dominant government
coalition partner from July 1996 to June 1997. Moreover, the old party
program of the Virtue Party, which was based on extensive redistribution and
an expanded role for the state, has been replaced by a commitment to
privatization and a reduction of the role of the state in economic affairs.
The parameters set by the logic of neoliberal globalization and the
requirements of successful integration with global capitalism effectively
lead to a convergence of economic policies when parties of different
ideological orientations find themselves in government. This gap between
what is preached in opposition and what is implemented in government has led
to a certain disillusionment with politics and political activity in
general.17 It also contributes to the volatility and fragmentation of the
party system in the sense that electoral choice is increasingly centered
around leaders and personalities, as opposed to concrete party programs. The
paradox is that this instability will not impact economic policies, as they
are increasingly determined by exogenous factors.
In the political realm, the fragmentation of the center-left and the
center-right has contributed to political instability in Turkey by providing
room for fringe parties of the extreme right to establish themselves as
major political actors. This was clear during the rise of political Islam in
the mid-199Qs, which provided a direct and serious challenge to the existing
secular constitutional order.
The strong tradition of a centralized state and the Kemalist ideology based
on a deep commitment to the principles of secularism and the unitary
nation-state have built a significant element of stability, perhaps
overstability, into the Turkish political system. The closure of the
Islamist Welfare Party in 1998-an action spearheaded by the military-clearly
highlights the limits imposed by the key institutions of the state. Thus,
Turkey's challenge is to balance a stable political order with the process
of democratization. The centralized state, and a strong commitment to
Kemalism, restricts the sphere of action of groups or parties whose politics
are based explicitly on religious or ethnic identity. At the same time, the
democratic credentials of anti-systemic parties, such as the Welfare Party
or its successor, the Virtue Party, are also in doubt.
Important developments increase optimism regarding the potential for
democratic deepening in Turkey First, the experience of the most recent
coalition government, formed after the 1999 elections, suggests that Turkey
is learning to live with coalition governments. Coalition politics no longer
necessarily imply the deep-seated instability or conflict as it did in the
latter half of the 1970s and the early phase of the I990s. Moreover, there
has been a change in political culture in favor of greater tolerance and
management by consensus. Indeed, in spite of the existence of a fragmented
polity, the most recent coalition government in Turkey has been able to
undertake radical economic reforms. A second element of democratic deepening
involves the process of decentralization and the growing importance of local
level participation in politics that are in line with the global trends. A
third positive influence concerns the potentially favorable impact of
eventual membership in the European Union following the formal announcement
of Turkey's candidacy for the EU at the Helsinki Summit of December 1999. EU
membership is crucial for the process of democratic deepening in Turkey.
CONCLUSION
Neoliberal globalization is an inherently inegalitarian process that
undermines the redistributive capacities of the state, but paradoxically
tends to promote democracy. However, the democracy that emerges is without
real alternatives in the economic arena. The distinction between the
traditional Right and traditional Left is being progressively blurred with
steady convergence in the economic realm between parties of quite different
ideological orientations. Consequently, politics has shifted to radically
different terrain and now centers around issues of ethnic, religious or
national identity It would be misleading to assume, however, that identity
politics is a purely superstructural phenomenon or a cultural manifestation
of contemporary patterns of globalization. Indeed, closer examination
reveals that what appears on the surface to be conflicts over group identity
are, in many instances, economic conflicts.
Neoliberal globalization tends to generate a significant group of losers as
well as winners. The mobilization of those adversely affected by
globalization frequently occurs by appealing to ethnic, religious or
national identity Hence, what appears to be identity politics is in fact a
protest on the part of the excluded against deeply rooted inequalities that
are worsened by exposure to the globalization process. This may explain the
electoral success of the Islamist Welfare Party in Turkey in 1994 and 1995,
and the subsequent rise of the Democratic Left and the extreme Nationalist
Action during the 1999 elections.
While the losers of globalization typically constitute the backbone of
political parties, class-based politics has been unable to generate
electoral success. A clear formula far electoral success requires forging a
broad cross-class coalition, which integrates both the winners and losers of
the globalization process. Strong traditional and conservative communitarian
agendas based on nationalism or Islam or both appear to be crucial in tying
these disparate elements together in a broad-based cross-class coalition.
The construction of cross-class coalitions is also critical in generating
the resources needed to organize informal networks of redistribution to the
poor and underprivileged majority within these coalitions. Indeed, the
construction of such well-functioning informal networks constitutes an
important organizational precondition for electoral success.
The recent Turkish experience also helps to highlight another apparent
paradox of neoliberal globalization: it restricts the state's ability to
guarantee social rights even as citizens increasingly look to their state
for welfare provision due to the increasingly uncertain economic
environment. Under these circumstances, citizens become increasingly
disenchanted with politicians and political activity This growing lack of
trust in politics is also caused by low ethical standards and corruption due
to weakening state authority. Not surprisingly, the more successful parties
in Turkey have effectively capitalized on this moral vacuum by stressing
their claims to clean politics. The parties concerned are confronted with a
real dilemma once they find themselves in office. In opposition, their
ability to distinguish themselves from their rivals constitutes a key
element of their success. Once they are in government, however, their
ability to differentiate themselves from their rivals declines sharply,
given the parameters set by the official state ideology and the
international financial community. This discrepancy reduces their chances of
replicating their previous electoral success and contributes to the inherent
fragmentation and lack of equilibrium in the party system.
1 On the broad economic aspects of the contemporary globalization process
and its inherently uneven character, see Paul O. Hirst and Grahame Thompson,
Globalization in Question (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996); Robert Boyer and
Daniel Drache, eds., States Against Markets: The Limits of Globalization
(London: Routledge, 1996); Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Andrew Hurrell and Ngaire Woods,
"Globalization and Inequality," Millennium, 24, no. 3 ( 1995) pp. 447-70.
2 On the complex relationship between globalization and democratization, see
James Mittelman, ed., Globalization: Critical Perspectives (Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner, 1996) and John S. Dryzek Democracy in Capitalist Times:
Ideals, Limits and Struggles (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). On a
favorable assessment of the prospects for democratization, see Samuel P
Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century
(Norman, OI and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991 ).
3 For a broad analysis concerning the relationship between globalization and
the emergence of authoritarian politics, see Samir Amin, Capitalism in the
Age of Globalization (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1997). On the
emergence of the extreme right in Western Europe, see Herbert Kitschelt, The
Radical Right in Western Europe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1995). For a discussion of similar tendencies in the Eastern European
context during the post-1989 era, see Sabrina P. Ramet, Whose Democracy?
Nationalism, Religion and the Doctrine of Collective Rights in Post-1989
Eastern Europe (Boulder, CO and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997). A
good discussion of similar tendencies in the Latin American context is
provided by Alison Brysk and Carol Wise, "Liberalization and Ethnic Conflict
in Latin America," Studies in Comparative International Development, 32, no.
2 (Summer 1997) pp. 76-104.
4 Particularly important in this context are Guillermo O'Donnell,
"Delegative Democracy" Journal of Democracy, 5, no. 1 ( 1994) pp. 55-69;
Barry Gills, Joel Rocamora and Richard Wilson, eds., Low Intensity
Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order (London and Boulder, CO:
Pluto Press, 1993); and Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,"
Foreign Affairs (November/December 1997) pp. 22-43.
5 For a detailed and critical assessment concerning the consequences of the
Turkish neoliberal experiment in the post-1980 era, see Ziya Onis, State and
Market: The Political Economy of Turkey in Comparative Perspective
(Istanbul: Bogazici University Press, 1998) and Ziya Onis, "The Turkish
Economy at the Turn of a New Century: Critical and Comparative
Perspectives," in M. Abramowitz, ed., Changing Turkey and the United States
(Washington, DC: The Century Foundation, forthcoming).
6 On new centers of industrial growth based on small and medium sized firms
in the socalled Anatolian Tigers, see Ahmet Kose and Ahmet Oncu, "Dunya ve
Turkiye Ekonomisinde Anadolu Imalat Sanayii: Zenginlesmenin mi Yoksa
Yoksullasmanin mi Esigindeyiz," Toplum ve Bilim, 77 (Summer 1998) pp.
135-58; Alpay Filiztekin and Insan Tunali,:Anatolian Tigers: Are They For
Real?" New Perspectives on Turkey, 20 (Spring 1999) pp. 77-106.
7 On the nature of fiscal disequilibrium in the Turkish economy during the
neoliberal era, see Izak Atiyas and Serif Sayin, "The Political Economy of
Budget Deficit in Turkey" Bagazici Journal, 12, no. 1 ( 1998) pp. 55-80. For
an analysis of the Turkish financial crises of 1994 from a comparative
perspective, see Ziya Onis and Ahmet Faruk Aysan, "Neoliberal Globalization,
the Nation State and Financial Crises in the Semi-Periphery: A Comparative
Analysis," Third World Quarterly, 21, no. 1 (2000) pp. 119-40.
8 For evidence on different dimensions of income inequality in Turkey, see
Zehra Kasnakoglu, "Income Distribution in Turkey: Who Gets What?" Private
View, 4/5, no. 3 (Autumn 1997) pp. 56-62. The per capita income Figure is
based on UN Human Development Report, 1998 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999).
9 For a comprehensive analysis of the changing demographic trends and the
decline in the rate of population growth in Turkey during the recent period,
see TL15IAD, Turk ye'nin Firsat Penceresi: Demografk Donusum ve Izduiumleri
(Istanbul: TUSIAD Publication, 1999).
10 For a comprehensive discussion of informal networks and their importance
in the political economy of Turkey, see Aye Bugra, "The Immoral Economy of
Housing in Turkey," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
22, no. 2 (1998) pp. 303-17.
11 For an analysis of the political environment of the 1980s and the rise of
the Motherland Party, see John Waterbury, "Export-Led Growth and the Center
Right Coalition in Turkey" Comparative Politics, 24 (Winter 1992) pp.
127-45. Also relevant to an understanding of the period is Metin Heper, ed.,
Strong State and Economic Interest Groups: The Post-1980 Turkish Experience
(Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991 ). On the pattern of electoral
politics during the 1990s, see Ersin Kalaycioglu, "The Shaping of Party
Preferences in Turkey: Coping with Post Cold War Era," New Perspectives on
Turkey, 20 (Spring 1999) pp. 47-76.
12 In retrospect, the fragmentation of the party system is a surprising
phenomenon in the sense that one of the chief intentions of the military
elite during the 1980-1983 era was to build a certain measure of stability
into the system. What they had in mind originally was the design of an
electoral system that would ensure a natural two-party equilibrium.
On the rise and fall of the Welfare Party during the 1990s, see Ziya Oni,
"The Political Economy of Islamic Resurgence in Turkey: The Rise of the
Welfare Party in Perspective," Third World Quarterly, 18, no. 4 ( 1997) pp.
743-66 and Haldun Gulalp, "The Poverty of Democracy in Turkey: The Refah
Party Episode," New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 21 (Fall 1999) pp. 35-59.
'" The programs of all the major political parties seem to display a certain
degree of continuity in the campaigns leading toward the elections of 1995
and 1999, with the exception of that of the Virtue Party, which has changed
its program significantly in favor of a more liberal approach in economic
affairs and a new emphasis on democratic rights and civil liberties.
Moreover, Virtue currently attaches major importance to developing closer
links with the European Union. These changes mark a sharp contrast to the
program of the Welfare Party in 1994 and 1995. Welfare's program had been
based on a hyper-populist rhetoric of "just order" and a clear bias could be
detected in its foreign policy stance in favor of the Arab and Islamic world
and against Israel and the European Union. The closure of the Welfare Party
in January 1998 clearly resulted in a massive overhaul of the program of its
successor, Virtue. The link with the EU is more important in this context in
terms of protecting the party against another possible closure. The shedding
of its more communitarian elements in favor of a program based on individual
rights and liberties, with a focus on religious rights, has not helped
Virtue's electoral fortunes, however, as the results of the 1999 elections
testify.
'S For a discussion and a critique of official state ideology and the notion
of authoritarian secularism, see Hakan Yavuz, "Turkey's Fault Lines and the
Crisis of Kemalism>" Current History (January 2000) pp. 33-38. For similar
critical perspectives concerning the positions taken by the Turkish state
concerning the Kurdish issue and political Islam respectively, see Henri J.
Barkey and Graham E. Fuller, Turkey's Kurdish Question (Oxford: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1998) and Mehran Kamrava, "Pseudo-Democratic Politics and
Populist Possibilities: The Rise and Demise of Turkey's Welfare Party, "
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 25, no. 2 (1998) pp. 275-301.
Turning our attention to the Republican People's Party, there is an
interesting dichotomy between its staunch defense of Kemalism on the issue
of political Islam and its more liberal stand concerning minority rights and
ethnic identity.
16 The Nationalist Action Party's rise is also associated with the tough and
uncompromising stance that the party has adopted on the Kurdish issue.
Consequently, it has been able to appeal to these segments of the electorate
who have been directly affected by the war in the Southeast. It is
interesting to observe, however, that Nationalist Action, following its
electoral victory in 1999, has been moving toward the center of Turkish
politics and has been developing a milder image. How this change will affect
the electoral fortunes of the party in the coming years is an interesting
question.
17 For valuable survey research demonstrating the broad lack of trust
concerning politicians and political parties in Turkey see Yilmaz Esmer,
Devrim, Erim, Statuko, Turkiye'de Sosyal, Siyasal, Ekonomik Degerler
(Istanbul: TESEV Yayinlari, 1999).
Ziya Onis is a Professor of International Relations at I oq University in
Istanbul and was formerly a professor of economics at Bogacizi University
His areas of specialization include comparative politics, international
political economy and development and the political economy of contemporary
Turkey He recently published State and Market: The Political Economy of
Turkey in Comparative Perspective. With James Riedel, he produced the World
Bank publication, Economic Crises and Long-Term Growth in Turkey. Prof. Oni
has published extensively in journals ranging from Third World Quarterly to
Mediterranean Quarterly to Journal of Economic Issues. Onis received both
his BSc and his MSc in Economics from the
London School of Economics. He received his PhD in development economics
from the University of Manchester.
This article attempts to study the impact of neoliberal globalization on the
process of democratization.
This article attempts to study the impact of neoliberal globalization on the
process of democratization. First, the conceptual relationship between
neoliberal globalization and democratization is discussed. Turkey's specific
experience with globalization is examined. Some of its impacts on the
Turkish economy are identified. An examination is made of how globalization
has affected political outcomes. A specific analysis is presented of the
1999 election and the trend toward party fragmentation. An analysis is made
of this fragmentation on Turkey's democratization process.
Copyright Journal of International Affairs Fall 2000
Sources:UMI
JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 10/2000
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
23Jun2000 SENEGAL: Forum Maps Out New Development Paradigms For Africa.
Dakar, Senegal (PANA) (Panafrican News Agency, June 23, 2000) - A group of
prominent Africans seeking innovative approaches to African development
wound up their three-day meeting in Dakar late Thursday, with a declaration
that could launch the continent on a new path of growth and development this
century.
The Independent Commission on the 'Millennium for Africa' project said it
cannot be business as usual for a continent that has been ravaged by
slavery, colonialism and multiple forms of exploitation in the last 500
years.
"Africa is a continent of almost infinite natural resources (currently
exploited for the exclusive benefit of the Western world, rather than for
the African continent itself).
"Like other continents it has the potential of almost infinite human
resources capable of being developed for the purpose of exploiting and
transforming these natural resources for the benefit of its people," the
declaration said.
The meeting participants, who brain-stormed on several aspects of the
African condition, said in spite of its present difficulties, Africa should
not be characterised as a continent of doom endemically inferior to the rest
of the world.
To begin with, they said, "Africa is a continent and no with an almost
infinite variety in its peoples and cultures.
Different parts of the continent have achieved different levels of growth
and development, and so, limitations and crises in one part of the continent
should not be taken as representative of the continent.
Thus, they said, priorities for African development should be viewed from
the local, national, sub-regional and continental levels.
Critical areas include education, health, finance, infrastructure, political
stability and security.
But of paramount importance is the freedom for Africans as individuals and
as a corporate entity to take charge of their destiny.
The forum also took a critical look at the debt issue, saying it would make
a thorough study of the origins and nature of the continent's estimated 300
billion dollars foreign debt and demand cancellation of the bad ones.
The participants said recognition of the causes of Africa's present
condition needed urgent consideration.
"Restitution for the sustained and deliberate destabilisation of the
continent over the last 500 years, particularly through the institution of
slavery and the slave trade, which physically removed many millions of
Africans from the continent for the development of Europe and the Americas.
"It is essential that the beneficiaries of this exploitation and
destabilisation be clearly identified so that this restitution can be
claimed", the declaration said.
The conference proposed a prize for exemplary leadership to be named after
late Tanzanian president, Julius Nyerere.
It also proposed the establishment of an African technology institute or
Space Centre to deal with a host of issues including infNY1/21and
communication technologies and bio-engineering.
The declaration would be presented to African leaders at the July OAU summit
in Lome, Togo, and the General Assembly of the UN in New York in September.
The Millennium for Africa project was initiated way back in 1998 by Benin's
frontline historian, Albert Tevoedjre with the support of UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose report on the 'Role of the United
Nations in the Twenty-First Century' set the ball rolling.
Members of the commission include Nigerian Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka,
renowned Egyptian economist Samir Amin, former secretary-general of the OAU,
William Eteki-Mbomua and space engineer, Chiekh Modibo Diarra.
The Commission held was inaugurated in Abuja in January.
By Felix 'Machi Njoku, PANA Correspondent
Copyright 1900 Panafrican News Agency. Distributed via Africa News Online.
.
Distributed via COMTEX News.
Sources:AFRICA NEWS SERVICE 23/06/2000
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
21Jun2000 SENEGAL: PANAFRICAN NEWS AGENCY (PANA) DAILY NEWSWIRE - Africans
Urged To Banish Fatalism In New Mil
By FELIX 'MACHI NJOKU, PANA STAFF CORRESPONDENT.
Dakar, Senegal (PANA) - The independent Commission of the 'Millennium for
Africa' project opened its second session in Dakar Tuesday with a call on
Africans to reject fatalism and focus on building the essential components
of a new and prosperous Africa.
Opening the three-day meeting attended by over 100 prominent Africans,
Senegal's Prime Minister Moustapha Niasse said fatalism should no longer be
used as a pretext for Africa's lag in the development ladder.
He called on the participants, including intellectuals, writers and experts
in several fields, to thrash out a new development culture capable of
arresting the continued marginalisation of the continent.
"At the level of ideas and technology, Africa can liberate itself if the
major constraints imposed in her from outside are removed," Niasse said.
Henceforth, African leaders and intellectuals would do well to refocus their
attention "on the essential components of a new Africa".
Earlier, the executive director of the commission, Prof. Albert Tevoedjre of
Benin, gave a run-down of the many man-made and natural constraints and
calamities which have rendered Africa impotent.
Tevoedjre accused Africa's leadership of "indifference to the external
exploitation of its people" over the years.
"Political dictatorship in Africa has demonstrated its limitations. Things
must now begin to change for Africa and Africans," he added.
A representative of the UNDP, Mar Dieye, painted a grim picture of the
current situation in Africa, saying 42 percent of its 600 million people
live below the poverty datum even though his organisation devotes 60 percent
of its basic resources on the continent.
Algerian Ambassador to Senegal, Abdelkader Taffar, delivered a message from
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, current chair of the OAU, saying that Africa
has the resources to propel its development, if only it can get a little
sympathy from the international community.
Meanwhile, the Assistant secretary-general the UN, Ibrahima Fall, said
finding a solution to Africa's problems requires endogenous and exogenous
approaches.
Fall cited the secretary-general's Millennium Report which seeks to refocus
UN intervention on the people and not on governments, as one way through
which help for the continent can come from outside.
The conference on the theme 'Africa and the Challenges of the 3rd
Millennium' seeks to prepare a blueprint on how to tackle the myriad
problems facing African countries. These are based on a series of
pan-African charters, action plans and declaration prepared over the years.
These include the OAU charter, the Lagos plan of Action, the treaty
establishing the African Economic community, the conventions of the various
sub-regional groupings and the recent Syrte Declaration on African union.
The documents would be presented to African leaders at the July OAU summit
in Lome, Togo, and the UN General Assembly in September.
The Millennium for Africa project was initiated in 1998 by Tevoedjre with
the support of UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, whose report on the 'Role of
the United Nations in the 21st Century' has provided a lot of input to the
project.
The commission is made up of 28 prominent Africans including Nigerian Nobel
Laureate, Wole Soyinka, renowned Egyptian economist, Samir Amin and former
secretary-general of the OAU, William Eteki-Mbomua.
The first meeting of the commission was held in Abuja in January.
All Material Subject to Copyright
Copyright 2000: Panafrican News Agency (PANA) Daily Newswire. All Rights
Reserved.
Sources:MIDDLE EAST INTELLIGENCE WIRE
PAN AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY (PANA) 21/06/2000
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
01Apr2000 AFRICA: Globalization, regionalism and democracy - An interview
with Samir Amin.
By Anonymous.
Samir Amin heads the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal, where he is
leading an effort to strengthen regional ties among African nations. He is
the author of many books, including: Capitalism in the Age of Globalization,
Delinking: Toward a Polycentric World and Unequal Development.
Multinational Monitor: What do you mean when you say that the world
capitalist system is facing stagnation?
Samir Amin: After World War II, we had very high rates of growth for three
decades in the three parts of the world: the capitalist world (the West),
the socialist world (the East), and most parts of the Third World (the
South). Three decades of high growth and investment, which had never been
achieved in the history of capitalism before.
This is precisely because the markets were regulated - that is, because
there was a balance of forces between capital on the one hand, and the
working or popular classes on the other hand. This balance was less in favor
of capital than it had been for a long time before, and was the result of a
double victory - the victory of democracy over fascism and the victory of
the people of Asia and Africa over colonialism.
These two popular victories created the conditions which compelled capital
to adjust to the social demands of working people. The adjustment of capital
to those demands is the meaning of the market being regulated. Capital was
unable to unilaterally impose the logic of profit maximization. That was the
basis of high growth and accelerated rates of accumulation and development.
Gradually, the balance of forces has been eroded to the benefit of capital
for a variety of reasons. If we look at the West in the capital centers, the
pattern is that welfare states and democracy have been gradually eroded by
the pressures of globalization - the opening of national economies to the
pressures of the global system.
In the East, it is because of the internal limits of so-called socialism and
the lack of democracy. In the South - especially in Asia and Africa there
was a period of strong national unity which started to be eroded by internal
social conflicts.
This erosion of the regulation of the market which dominated after World War
II led to a change in the balance of forces to the benefit of capital. We
can say that Reagan and Thatcher were the announcement of that. But it was
not just under Reagan and Thatcher. It was also due to the loss of
legitimacy of most national radical popular regimes of the South, as well as
the stagnation of the Soviet system.
That led to a comeback of the utopian capitalist dream of ruling the world
as a market and reducing whole societies to just market-based relations.
Which means the unilateral domination of capital.
MM: And removing regulations on capital undermined growth?
Arvin: According to the so-called neoliberal view, "deregulation" of the
market - which meant oppressing other social interests - should have led to
higher growth. Instead, it led to the opposite.
Since the early 1970s, it led to a slowing of the rates of growth, to about
half of what they had been in previous decades. This happened not only in
the West, but also in the East after high growth rates during the Soviet
period of industrialization. It also happened in the South. In the 1960s,
the rates of growth in Africa were roughly twice as high as they have been
in the 1980s and 1990s during the current period of structural adjustment.
Simultaneously, rates of investment and the expansion of the productive
system went down.
That led to a new kind of crisis characterized by a surplus of capital which
does not find an outlet in the expansion of the productive system in the
West, East and South.
In order to avoid this problem, the owners of capital are designing rules in
order to open alternative financial outlets for capital. This is not leading
to higher growth but to relative stagnation of growth. There is no absolute
stagnation, but rates of growth in OECD countries are half of what they had
been in the 1950s and 1960s.
There is deepening inequality. You have growing inequality everywhere in the
world, within each nation state and at the global level between nations. It
is more and more politically and socially unbearable and unacceptable to
people.
The reason for the deep crisis of capital is precisely the utopian effort to
realize the unilateral rule of capital. The system cannot function according
to the unilateral rule of capital.
MM: There has been a renewal of growth in the last couple of years in the
United States at much higher rates. Do you think that the new communications
technologies might revitalize the global economy?
Amin: No. We should separate the eventual effect of the technological
revolution and particularly communications on the one hand, and the specif
is effects of that revolution and other technologies on the relative
achievements of the various partners - the U.S. vis-a-vs Europe, for
instance.
With respect to the effects of the technological revolution, every period of
deep structural crisis of capitalism has also been a period of industrial
revolution. For example, take the deep structural crisis which happened from
1873 to 1896. That was also a period of the second industrial revolution,
the first one occurring in the early nineteenth century. The second
industrial revolution involved electricity, petroleum, the automobile and
the airplane. These are the technologies that dominated industrial
development in the twentieth century.
The current crisis started in 1971 with the end of Bretton Woods and the
floating of the dollar. Along with the crisis, we have had a third
industrial revolution, the basis of which is infomatics and biogenetics with
all the dangers that it represents, as well as nuclear and space technology.
By themselves those technologies are not enough to create the conditions of
high growth, because growth depends on an equilibrium between the various
social forces.
During each of these periods, capital interests have exploited the
industrial revolution to their own unilateral benefit.
Because an industrial revolution also means that old industries are
decaying, labor loses the advantages of collective stability and becomes
more vulnerable. Therefore capital is in a position to erode whatever rights
the working classes have conquered in the previous period.
That's what's happening now. Along with an industrial revolution there is
growing brutality, inequality - not just between capital and labor, but
between a variety of workers - and an overall vulnerability of the working
classes. As long as capital is able to mobilize unilaterally and use the
industrial revolution to its exclusive benefit, it is not able to move out
of the crisis.
We can also compare the atmosphere now to the atmosphere during what was
called the belle epoch at the beginning of the twentieth century. That
15-year period was after a long crisis and before World War I. During the
course of that time the discourse was exactly what we hear today - that the
unilateral rule of capital is going to benefit everybody. It was a period of
the weakening of the working classes. The movement of the socialist parties
to the right - like Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder, etc. - is exactly
similar to the move to the right of the socialist parties at the beginning
of the 20th Century. For exactly the same reasons.
Nairobi slum.
I am not suggesting that the industrial revolution per se is or is not the
basis of growth. It could be if social and political conditions established
a better balance of forces - less unilaterally favorable to capital. That is
one dimension.
Another dimension is how it works in different parts of the world.
Particularly, for example, the U.S. vis-a-vis Europe and Japan. It is true
that today's discourse, especially in the United States, stresses the
relatively higher rates of growth. But this growth is socially unbearable in
the longer run. It goes along with a growing inequality and with a growing
vulnerability that the American working class will not accept indefinitely.
It is also artificial and at the expense of others. The success of the U.S.
is proportionate to the lack of success elsewhere, particularly in Europe
and Japan. This means that the so-called U.S. hegemony is very vulnerable.
In the nineteenth century, Britain, which was hegemonic at that time, had an
enormous export surplus which was the counterpart of its ability to export
capital. It was financing railways in Argentina and India, etc. If we look
at the pattern of current globalization and U.S. hegemony, we find exactly
the opposite. The U.S. balance of trade is in an enormous deficit, which
means that hegemonic power is (draining) capital from other parts of the
world. Who is funding that? The whole world, but especially the Europeans
and Japanese. I don't think that they will accept that indefinitely. This
doubles the vulnerability of the so-called high growth in the United States.
MM: Andre Gunder Frank has argued that developing countries may benefit most
when there is stagnation or contraction in the center countries. What is
your perspective on that in the current period?
Arvin: I am a friend of Andre Gunder Frank and we agree on many things, but
I am cautious about those kind of sweeping generalities. I think everything
depends on class struggle and not on whether we are in an A phase or a B
phase. Development changes are unequal throughout the world, because the
balance of social and political forces are not similar from one place to
another.
During the current period of crisis, not all of the countries of the Third
World have suffered. Major countries, including China, to a lesser degree
India, southeast Asia, Korea and Taiwan and if you add up their populations,
you get more than half of the world - have not suffered from the crisis.
They have had high rates of growth because they were less subject to the
rule of globalization than others. They have controlled their own move into
the global system. We could discuss whether they have been democratic or
not, but the domestic ruling class has, to a certain degree, been in
control.
We saw the exact opposite in Africa, the most vulnerable part of the Third
World, where the local ruling classes do not control anything and where as a
result the rates of growth are zero if not negative in some cases. Therefore
we see that the differences in the same period depend on the capacity of the
local ruling class - bourgeois capitalists in various shapes and forms - to
control its relation to the global system.
MM: You write that structural adjustment is not misguided but a part of the
management of the crisis in the rich countries. What do you mean by that?
Arvin: Structural adjustment as it is imposed by the World Bank and IMF on
most countries of the South and on the former socialist countries in eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union is unilateral. That is, adjustment of the
economies of those countries is to the needs of dominant capital. That means
the needs of the triad - the U.S., the European Union and Japan - and
nothing more.
This structural adjustment is not structural but a conjunctural adjustment.
It is one of the tools of crisis management - that is, finding an outlet for
the surplus of financial capital. That is the root of the external debt of
the Third World and former socialist countries.
The effects are disastrous, as we can see in any part of the world other
than in the dominant triad. What we need is another pattern of globaliza
tion. The issue is not globalization or withdrawing from the world and going
to the moon. There are many alternatives.
Globalization could be conceived as a pattern of regulated expansion of the
markets at the international level, of channeling the surplus of capital
towards productive investments. That would be a pattern of globalization
that I would call structural because it would help change structures. It
would also be multilateral rather than unilateral, an adjustment of each
part of the world to another pattern of globalization - what I call a
multipolar pattern of globalization.
MM: What is your perspective on calls for reforming the IMF to make it a
"good"global regulatory institution?
Amin: I think you cannot start from the top, by changing these international
institutions. That would be very naive, because the international
institutions reflect the imbalance of forces at that level. Things must
start from below, from national societies.
Again, it is the class struggle which is the key to understanding social
change. Things must change at that level to the benefit of the working
classes everywhere - in the U.S. as well as in Senegal.
That means reinventing new forms of organization, of action, of legitimate
targets, etc. It has deep social dimensions.
That should be supported or enlarged by regional organizations. One can
imagine that an average country in Latin America alone cannot go very far,
but Latin America on the whole can. Similarly, no African country can go
very far alone, but Africa as a whole could and can. Not to speak of India
or China.
To think about a move from the top is a little naive, as if there are no
interests behind the system as it is. There are interests, of course, and
they are the prevailing interests of transnational capital and the triad
states that are behind them, as well as compradors in the Third World.
MM: If developing countries were to form regional blocs, what would be the
institutional structure of region-wide economic management?
Amin: It must accomplished gradually. First, we must reinforce the
complimentarity between the industrial and agricultural developments of the
partners. And that needs much more than just a free trade area, because it
needs some degree of planning-a word that is not fashionable today - of
investment ot develop complimentarity with a view to reducing the monopolies
of the West - monopolies in technologies, in communications and media, in
the use of natural resources.
But it also has a political dimension. It must gradually reinforce the
capacity of those regions to ensure security, both internal and external
security - not only in the police sense, but a security based on legitimate
power, the whole question of democracy. It must also work toward regional
security, that is, reducing the causes of conflict. We'll never have a world
without conflict, but we can reduce the causes.
MM: How would you see the regions relating to external forces, especially
the rich countries?
Amin: That is where it would lead to institutional changes in the U.S. We
have had this in the past during the decade after World War 11, during that
period of high growth, when we had negotiations at the global level, however
weak. It was a time of UNCTAD [the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development]. There were negotiations on the transfer of technologies, etc.
We need not have a remake of that, but a revival of its spirit. This would
give back a role to the UN in serious international negotiations on those
issues.
I don't want to be overly optimistic, but I think the last meeting of UNCTAD
in Bangkok is indicative of a move in this direction. We heard there a
majority of states, most from the Third World, speaking against
globalization as it is.
MM: What would be the regional approach to capital flows from outside the
region or trading outside the region?
Amin: There are a number of principles. One is that so-called hot money
flows - capital that wants to get a quick profit - should bi forbidden and
countries should be allowed to establish exchange controls against that.
Second, we should look at productive investment, including that by
transnationals, on a caseby-case basis. Getting certain technologies is
difficult without accepting private investment of foreign capital. But that
could be negotiated. There we come back to a series of old questions, such
as the control over the export of profit, control over the degree of using
local inputs, the transfer of technology, property rights, etc. These are
important points of the agenda. It's not fashionable today to speak of that,
but these are objectively needed.
During an interview, Samir Amin, the head of the Third World Forum in Dakar
Senegal, discussed the stagnation of the world capitalist system, the
renewal of growth in the US at much higher rates, and region-wide economic
management.
Copyright Multinational Monitor Apr 2000
Sources:UMI
MULTINATIONAL MONITOR 04/2000
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
01Jan2000 ARGENTINA: Structural adjustment and social disarticulation - The
case of Argentina.
By Teubal, Miguel.
Structural Adjustment and Social Disarticulation: The Case of Argentina*
ABSTRACT: In most cases structural adjustment (SA) involves transfers of
income, wealth and power into the hands of economic and political
establishments, implying marginality and exclusion for the majority of the
population. SA contributes to development of a new "regime of accumulation,"
more "socially and sectorally disarticulated" than previous ones.
Disarticulation occurs when the main activities of the economy are
increasingly dissociated from the demands of wage earners. While the social
and sectoral articulation/disarticulation dichotomy was first conceived to
distinguish development in the third world as compared with the first world,
it also applies to different stages of third-world development. This
framework is used to analyze the case of Argentina, a semi-industrialized
country in which labor organizations had historically acquired substantial
power. Adjustments applied since the mid-1970s culminate in the SA program
of the Menem administration (1989-1999), which has led to the extreme social
disarticulation prevailing in the present.
THROUGHOUT THE WORLD NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC policies reign supreme. Governments
everywhere are induced, either because of their own convictions or under
pressure from the IMF and World Bank, to apply structural adjustment (SA)
programs. Wholesale privatization, deregulation, flexibilization of labor
markets, and "opening up" to the world economy are all essential features of
these programs. As part of the rhetoric it is assumed that "excessive
government interventionism" and "fiscal deficits" must be reduced if
national economies are to embark on the path of growth and prosperity.
Structural adjustment is not just an economic program. It also implies
adjusting institutions to the workings of the market. In most cases this
leads to enormous transfers of income, wealth and power into the hands of
the economic and political establishments. Concentration of power and wealth
also implies marginality and exclusion for the majority of the population
and a devaluation of everything that has to do with the "social." As has
been frequently pointed out, structural adjustment involves an increase in
the exploitation of labor, as evidenced in a reduction in real wages (both
direct and indirectly, a greater regressiveness in income distribution, and
increased unemployment in its several forms. All of this comprises a new
model of development or regime of accumulation (RA) 2 which can be defined
as "socially and sectorally disarticulated."
In this paper I consider some of the main features of this new regime of
accumulation as it emerges in a third world country as a consequence of the
application of a SA program: the fact that it tends to be much more
"socially and sectorally disarticulated" than previous regimes of
accumulation - for example, import substitution industrialization (ISI).3
This is due to the central role played in the new RA by the fall in real
wages and incomes of lower income groups and the impact this has on the
structure of the economy and the nature of productive investments.
Disarticulation means that the main activities of the economy are not
related to, or are increasingly dissociated from, the demand of wage
earners. The domestic market based on the demand of wage earners ceases to
be of interest. Only the demand of middle and upper income groups
increasingly appears to be of interest for domestic and foreign investors
alike. This applies not only to the productive structure of the economy -
industry, agriculture - and to certain services including the financial
sector, but to the provision of basic needs as well. Low cost health,
education, housing and the like are substantially reduced. Thus, SA policies
adopted by successive governments tend to reduce real wages, causing income
distribution to become increasingly regressive.4
This shift of resources to the rich is not simply a once-and-for-all
occurrence. Increased income inequality becomes self-replicating, due in
large measure to its impact on the changing structure of the economy, which
tends to reproduce this inequality in the long run. When changes in both
traditional activities and the emergence of new ones are oriented mostly to
the demand of the upper income groups, excluding lower income wage earners
and groups, then the economy tends to a greater "social and sectoral
disarticulation."
This concept is clearly related to the role of wages in propelling growth.
Its "social" aspect concerns the disorganization and distress associated
with low wages and increased unemployment in all its forms; the "sectoral"
aspect refers to the presence or absence of a balance between the major
departments of production (and consumption) within a country. Evidently, a
major "opening" of the economy can lead to substantial changes in this
balance between sectors, and this may tend to be self-reinforcing, as has
been the case recently in many third world countries.
While there is a certain overlapping in the use given to the concepts of SA
and "social and sectoral disarticulation," the former refers more to a
program or strategy that implies "restructuring" large segments of the
economy, whereas the "social and sectoral articulation/ disarticulation"
dichotomy has to do with the way the economy functions and reproduces
itself, especially the relationships between wage income and the structure
of the economy, as well as their overall impact on income distribution.
The "social and sectoral (dis)articulation" concept was developed in the
1960s and 1970s by Furtado, Amin, de Janvry and others to describe some of
the structural differences between first and third world economies, and to
explain the fact that poverty and exploitation were much greater in the
latter than in the former. Nevertheless, it is a complex concept whose
specifics were never spelled out completely. On the one hand, it refers to
the degree or rate of exploitation prevailing in different economies. But
then it also includes important demand elements, which are complementary to
the rate of exploitation but not exhausted by that concept.
As Marx pointed out, the production of surplus value in capitalist economies
can take a variety of forms. One stage of development is defined by the
production of absolute surplus value: exploitation of labor is increased via
reduction of wages or increase in the working day; that is, more work is
extracted from the labor force at a given wage. But relative surplus value
is most characteristic of advanced capitalism. This appears when new
techniques or innovations are introduced in the productive process,
resulting in productivity increases.5 In this case it is possible that real
wages and/or the share of wages in national income may increase, and a
certain welfare be attained for the laboring classes. This of course depends
on the struggles of the working classes in defending or increasing the real
wage rate and/or wage share.
The concept of social and sectoral articulation/disarticulation also
includes demand elements, mainly wage income as an important Kaleckian
demand factor that influences the industrial structure of the economy. Under
certain circumstances real wage increases may also induce productivity
increases. If the latter increase proportionately more than real wages the
rate of exploitation may continue increasing. But then productivity
increases may be accompanied by real wage increases, as apparently has
occurred in certain periods of capitalist development, or real wages may
increase proportionately more than productivity, raising the share of
wages.6
A relatively articulated economy can be construed to have been attained in
the advanced capitalist countries in the post-World War II years durring the
so-called golden age of capitalism. Capitalism in this period functioned
with increasing real wages, at a rate more or less equal to the rate of
productivity increase. This implies that capitalism continued to function as
a system of exploitation, even if real wages and the share of wages in
national income were high or tended to increase. In the advanced capitalist
countries wage shares are much higher than in the third world, and hence the
rate of surplus value is lower. Nevertheless, given that productivity levels
in advanced capitalist countries are substantially higher than in the third
world the mass of surplus value attained compensates for lower rates of
surplus value.
This golden-age articulated economy was possible due to a combination of
Marx's production of relative surplus value with Kalecki's wage income
demand functions. The former was due to large productivity increases
contingent upon the continuous incorporation of new technologies into
production. In the advanced capitalist countries this became feasible due to
Keynesian full employment policies combined with the establishment of a
full-fledged welfare state, as well as incomes policies sustained on the
basis of a certain "social pact." As Celso Furtado points out, this
situation was quite different from that emerging in the third world under
ISI.
In the present stage of capitalist development the mechanisms used for
production of surplus value are much more sophisticated and require
elaborate state policies. This is where structural adjustment comes in.
Under the desarrollista (developmentalist) perspective sustained in the
1960s in certain third world countries policies were oriented, on the whole,
towards increasing relative surplus value. On the other hand, SA programs,
in particular when they do not take into consideration productivity
increases, can be construed as tending towards the production of absolute
surplus value. Nonetheless, both mechanisms for the production of surplus
value may be present at any one time.
The social and sectoral articulation/disarticulation dichotomy was first
conceived to distinguish development in the third world compared with
development in the first world. Nevertheless it can also be used to describe
distinctive features of different stages of development in both the first
and third worlds. Import substitution industrialization in the third world
in the post-World War II years (more or less the same period in which
Fordist regimes were prominent in the first world) tended to be more
"socially articulated" than the earlier agro-export economies. Nevertheless,
it was also presumably more "articulated" than the "open economies" of the
1990s developed in the wake of neoliberal policies and "globalization" or SA
strategies. While these strategies tend to disarticulate both developed and
underdeveloped economies, the differences between the two cases are quite
marked.
In this paper I consider the impact of SA policies in Argentina, a case that
stands out for the following reasons.
1. At the beginning of the century and up to the 1930s Argentina was one of
the high income per capita "new and empty lands" or "regions of recent
settlement" similar to Australia, Canada and, to some extent, the United
States. Argentina's growth in this period was based on the fertility of her
lands and enormous differential rents accruing to large landowners and the
supporting classes of an agroexport economy.7 She did not have the surplus
labor that characterized other countries of the third world; labor was to a
large extent provided for by means of large-scale immigration.
2. Argentina's agro-export model fell into crisis in the 1930s; thereafter,
under the Peronista and desarrollista regimes of the 19401960 period, import
substitution industrialization was furthered, taking on a variety of forms.
By the early 1970s industrialization had been considerably advanced in the
wake of working-class struggles and ISI strategies. Due to major trade union
movements and social struggles considerable labor and social welfare
legislation was placed on the books, and segments of the middle and working
classes attained a measure of welfare and a betterment in their standards of
living not always found elsewhere in the third world.8
3. Since the mid-1970s a series of adjustment policies following the
prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank were applied by successive
governments. While the military regime of the Proceso (1976-1983) carried
out important "adjustments," the democratically elected governments of
Alfonsin (1983-1989) and Menem (19891999) followed suit. Under the Menem
administration a severe "structural adjustment" program was put in place.
The new RA that emerges as a consequence of the application of this program
is substantially different from that prevailing under ISI.
4. Thus, previous trends were reversed drastically: income distribution
became more regressive, real wages (both direct and indirect) and incomes of
lower income groups fell, and unemployment and poverty in all their forms
increased. A key factor in defining the character of this new RA is the role
played by institutions or structural forms influencing real wages. While the
share of wages in national income fell and income distribution became much
more regressive, the structure of the economy was transformed: much of
industry based on small and medium-sized firms disappeared and the remnants
of the welfare state were heavily contested by the neoliberal establishment.
5. The case of Argentina also stands out for not being a "success" story of
the NIC type (such as Korea, Taiwan or even Brazil), probably due precisely
to the fact that the SA program applied in the 1990s was one of the most
extreme of third world countries. This of course has elicited much struggle
and opposition from varying quarters.
In the following section, I discuss the concept of "social and sectoral
disarticulation," and the extent to which it is useful for describing
differences in the industrial structures of first and third world countries.
This concept can also be used for comparing different stages of development
in the third world; eg., ISI being more articulated than the present "open"
economies developed in the wake of severe SA programs. Next I deal with the
case of Argentina. I describe some of the measures applied in recent
decades, and in particular under the Menem administration, and relate social
disarticulation to falling wages, increases in interest rates and in the
prices of, and hence popular access to, commodities meeting basic needs. My
main hypothesis is that the new "open" economy emerging in Argentina in the
1990s is much more "socially and sectorally disarticulated" than previous
regimes based on ISI. Finally, I offer some reflections as to why these
structural adjustments may have been implemented in a country such as
Argentina.
Conceptualizing Social and Sectoral Disarticulation
The differences between capitalist development in the center and in the
periphery (to use terms originally coined by Prebisch) were part of the
development debate of the 1950s and 1960s.
Celso Furtado (1961, 1965, 1974) points out that while technological
innovations are the essence of capitalist development, this process in the
underdeveloped world is substantially different from that prevailing in the
center. In the periphery the introduction of new technology disorganizes
important segments of the economy and creates a problem of surplus labor
with no possibilities for its absorption. The ensuing dualism of the
economic structure is reflected in a much greater inequality of income
distribution, on the one hand, and a lack of a vigorous demand for final
wage goods, on the other. Workers' resistance is limited, due to large labor
reserves available to capitalists, a factor that also inhibits the formation
of a domestic market. Thus, the economic surplus created is in large measure
used for luxury consumption or filtered abroad.
This situation is essentially different from industrialization in the
center, which is based on the widespread diffusion of the "fruits of
technical progress" - creation of mass markets, large economies of scale,
and increases in real wages - all of which do not impede the widespread
concentration of capital.9
According to Furtado the experience of countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and
India demonstrates that this model of industrialization does not reproduce
itself in the periphery. Thus any model of the world economy must take into
account these qualitative differences between center or dominant capitalism
and peripheric or dependent capitalism - the first based on the introduction
of new products and the diffusion of their use, that is, mass consumption;
the latter on technological imitation and a greater concentration of wealth
and income. "The only thing that we know for sure concerning the
industrialization processes in countries of the capitalist periphery is that
the masses do not have access to the fruits of productivity increases"
(Furtado, 1975, 25, my translation).
Thus one of Furtado's main arguments (later picked up by Samir Amin) is that
whereas a mutually reinforcing relationship between workers' consumption
expenditures and investments is the basis for sustained growth and
industrial democracy in the advanced capitalist economies, this
interdependent relationship does not exist in the periphery because mass
consumption demand does not constitute a significant market outlet for local
manufactures. High and middle income groups - the principal outlets for ISI
in Latin America tend to equate development and progress with their
attainment of the levels of consumption available to comparable groups in
the advanced capitalist countries. Imported technologies required to produce
these goods are biased toward capital-intensive production and concentration
of income. These limit the spread of technical progress to other parts of
the economy, and this in turn leads to the marginalization of vast segments
of the population. Since wage incomes and other mass-consumption demands are
not important as market outlets, the dominant groups' interest is simply to
keep wages very low. 10
Samir Amin and de Janvry go along with much of this analysis. According to
Amin industrialized countries tend to have "articulated" or "autocentric"
patterns of growth and accumulation in which part of the gains in labor
productivity are transformed into wage increases. Workers' consumption
capacity thus increases along with output and creates the possibility for
dynamic equilibrium - both between aggregate consumption and production, and
among key sectors (notably the mass consumption and capital goods sectors)
(Amin, 1974, 9-11).
According to Amin, while an internal solution for the maintenance of a
dynamic equilibrium is possible in the center, the periphery tends to be
functionalized to the center's needs and is therefore devoid of a dynamic of
its own. In the periphery an investment structure emerges which does not
always contribute to growth, because it tends to be "extraverted," that is,
it is oriented towards traditional exports, or towards the needs of the
upper classes (Amin, 1982).
For Amin capitalism is either "autocentric" or "extraverted," based on
whether or not the two main departments of social production are located in
the country in question. Thus peripheral capitalism is considered to be
incomplete, because the production of capital goods takes place in the
advanced capitalist countries.
According to de janvry, Amin places too much emphasis on external factors in
determining the disarticulation and stagnation of peripheral economies;
domestic class structure and the dynamics of domestic capitalist development
are also important. In any case both authors relate regressive income
distribution to the industrial structure emerging in the periphery, which
tends to be biased in favor of services and industries producing luxury
goods (Amin, 1975; de Janvry, 1981).11
As de Janvry and Sadoulet point out, in an articulated economy labor is
simultaneously a cost and a benefit for capital: a cost in that all wage
payments are a subtraction from profits, and a benefit in that the mass of
wages paid creates "the necessary effective demand for the products to be
sold and for capital to return to the form of money." Under pure social
disarticulation, labor is only a cost to capital. Non-workers' incomes
create both the source of savings and the expanding final demand for the key
growth sectors. "Growth finds its roots in increasing inequality, and the
only limit to inequality is the relative power of labor versus other
classes" (de Janvry and Sadoulet, 1983, 279).
In essence, there is social and sectoral articulation when it is mostly wage
income (including income from non-wage or salaried low income earners
arising, for example, in the informal sector) that determines the "expanding
demand" for "key growth sectors." This contributes to a certain homogeneity
in the structure of the economy because the bulk of demand is provided by
wage earners and low income earners, and industry produces mostly "wage
goods and services." There is also a correspondence between the share of
wage earners in the labor force, of wage income in GDP and of wage earners'
demand in global consumption.12 This is what occurred in certain periods of
center capitalist development, in particular the "golden age" of the
post-World War II years. The crux of the matter refers to trends in real
wages in relation to productivity increases, and their influence on mass
consumption and investments, all of which induced a "virtuous circle of
accumulation."
By contrast social and sectoral disarticulation exists or increases when the
bulk of demand is provided by non-wage high income groups, and hence "key
growth sectors" tend to produce mostly "luxury goods." While wage earners
and low income earners of the informal sectors constitute the bulk of the
labor force, they tend to represent a small or decreasing share of GDP and
consumption. Thus, mostly "luxury" goods oriented to the demand of upper
income groups or exports are produced. Investments are also oriented to the
production of these luxury goods and exports. 13
These concepts have been used to explain why industrialization in the third
world did not elicit improvements in the living conditions of wage earners
and lower income groups. They are thereafter implicitly reintroduced when
different stages of development of the advanced capitalist countries are
being considered. The French Regulation school (Boyer, Lipietz, Aglietta)
and the Social Structure of Accumulation theorists of the United States (see
Kotz, 1990) imply in their analyses that different regimes of accumulation
tend to be more or less articulated, depending on the institutions prominent
in different stages of capitalist development (see Ruccio, 1989). Following
this line of thought the Fordist regime that characterized the post-World
War II years in Europe and the United States was relatively articulated or
"wage-led," compared with the post-Fordist regimes of the present time. The
crisis of the late 1960s and early 1970s was a crisis of Fordism. Thereafter
neoliberal policies contributed to social disarticulation. The provision of
indirect wages by the welfare state in the golden age became one of the main
objects of attack by neoliberalism.
While discussion concerning the crisis of Fordism in the first world
continues being prominent, analysis of the stages of development and the
nature of post-ISI economies in the third world has been somewhat less
debated. While ISI was more socially articulated than previous regimes of
the pre-1930s period, being based on the growth of the domestic market (and
wage income),14 the new RA that emerges as a consequence of the SA programs
tends to be much more disarticulated. The trajectory of a third world
economy from ISI to the open economy can also be visualized in these terms.
The Case of Argentina
In the case of Argentina, ISI was relatively articulated in its initial
phase. Certain industries - textiles and light metallurgical products
oriented to the demand of wage earners - were established or grew
substantially in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s due to the development of a
relatively extended domestic market based on real wage increases. In the
second, more "difficult," stage of ISI (mostly in the 1960s) "heavy"
industry - petrochemicals, the automobile industries, etc. - was established
or became prominent, and the economy became somewhat less articulated
because production and real investments tended to be oriented to the demand
of middle and upper income groups.
Nevertheless, the changeover to an "open economy" in the 1970s, 1980s and
1990s, induced in large measure by a series of "adjustments" and "structural
adjustments," contributed to the formation of a "pure" disarticulated
regime. Deindustrialization, regressive income distribution, and social
exclusion became the essential features of this new stage of development
(see Teubal, 1994; Teubal and Pastore, 1998).
A greater heterogeneity emerged in the structure of the economy as well. In
large measure deindustrialization was related to the decline and
disappearance of wage-goods industries, in which traditional small or
medium-sized business played an important part (for example, certain food,
textile, light metallurgical industries).
Thus, in its initial phases ISI had been in large measure wage-led and its
crises related to periodic foreign trade bottlenecks: imports (mostly
intermediary goods and capital goods required for the industrialization
process) increased more rapidly than (primary goods) exports, thus causing
balance of trade deficits. Stabilization policies and large devaluations
were recommended by the IMF to redress these imbalances. Nevertheless,
devaluations designed to bring the economy back to a workable "equilibrium"
provoked domestic recessions and caused real wages to fall.
Industrialization became an important goal, since it was to induce changes
in the structural relations of the economy. In the late 1960s it was seen
that new industrial exports had to be encouraged if the model was to remain
viable. Industrial exports also reduced dependence on primary goods exports.
This was to complement the establishment of heavy industry, which furthered
the more "difficult" import substitution process.
Nevertheless, from the mid-1970s onwards industrialization, whether of the
import substitution or the export variety, ceased to be a goal of long-run
public policy. Fiscal equilibrium and maintenance of foreign debt service
payments substituted for ISI policies, reflecting important domestic and
international structural and political changes.
The economy ceased to be wage-led in the sense that it used to be under ISI:
real wages fell systematically, independently of productivity gains, and the
prices of goods and services providing for basic needs tended to rise,
reinforcing the fall in real wages and the regressiveness of income
distribution. These factors contributed to the fall in the wage share, to
deindustrialization and to further structural changes. The economy tended to
become a "labor surplus" economy.
Disarticulation refers not only to the industrial structure, but to all the
activities of the economy, including "services." To the extent that health,
education and housing tend to be provided mostly for upper income groups,
social and sectoral disarticulation was extended, reinforcing the regressive
trend in income distribution.
The "open economy" of the 1970s, 80s and 90s faced a series of pitfalls on
the foreign front, although these were due mostly to problems of foreign
debt servicing and financial and speculative considerations. Periodic crises
emerged, due in large measure to the priority the various governments placed
on maintaining foreign debt servicing, a factor that draws resources from
the domestic front and contributes to balance of payments difficulties.
Foreign debt servicing requires strict fiscal disciplinary measures and a
surplus in domestic finances. Hence it is not only a question of reducing
the fiscal deficit: there must also be a fiscal surplus, and resources must
be accumulated to pay for foreign debt servicing requirements. These
resources come from funds previously earmarked for public expenditures on
education, health, housing, etc.; from increased taxation; from net capital
inflows from abroad; from rollover of existing debts; or from obtaining new
debts. This situation is much more unstable than it was under ISI because of
the overall opening of the economy and the limited capacity governments have
for controlling capital inflows and capital flight. Capital flight of the
sort that occurred during the recent "tequila" or "Brazil" crises can easily
become another source of domestic crisis.
Towards a New Regime of Accumulation: The Case of Argentina
Two highlights were important in paving the way for the establishment of a
new RA in Argentina: the military coup of 1976 and the so-called "economic
coup" of 1989.
The military coup of 197615 was undoubtedly an important landmark; by
establishing a new "bureaucratic authoritarian state" (O'Donnell, 1971) a
series of institutions was established - in particular, those operating on
the labor front, and those impacting financial and capital markets. The
"economic coup" of 1989 was implemented by the economic establishment when
it induced a wholesale capital flight, which led to accelerating devaluation
and hence hyperinflationary spurts of the 1989-1991 period. This then led to
a need for new "disciplinary" measures to be imposed on a large part of
civil society. The Convertibility Plan of 1991, part of the severe
structural adjustment program implemented by the Menem administration, can
be considered a response to this coup.16
Freezing wage increases and reducing wages in the public sector for the
purpose of dampening fiscal deficits were among the first measures adopted
by the military government of the so-called Proceso de Reorganization
National in April 1976. This was the recommended pattern for the private
sector as well. Real wages fell substantially in the first months of the
military coup (with falling money wages supplemented by price liberalization
measures and reduction of government expenditures). It is estimated that in
the first three months of the new military government real wages fell 40% in
relation to the levels attained in the first half of the decade (Marshall,
1995, table 3) and the share of wages in GDP fell from about 49.3% in 1975
(an average of 45.9% for the 1970-1974 period) to 32.8% in 1976 (an average
of 32.3% in the 1976-1980 period) (Schvarzer, 1983, 130). These trends
continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s. While in the first years of the
Alfonsin administration (1984-1989) and during the implementation of the
Austral Plan (in 1985) real wages increased somewhat, at no time did they
attain their pre-1976 levels. Real wages during theTXT>
10 For a succinct exposition of Furtado's thought, see Oman and Wignaraja,
1991, 157-158.
11 "The process of development of peripheral capitalism goes forward within
a framework of competition (in the broadest sense of the word) from the
center, which is responsible for the distinctive structure assumed by the
periphery, as something complementary and dominated. It is this competition
that determines three types of distortion in the development of peripheral
capitalism as compared with capitalism at the center: (1) a crucial
distortion toward export activities, which absorb the major part of the
capital arriving from the center; (2) a distortion toward tertiary
activities, which arises from both the special contradictions of peripheral
capitalism and the original structures of peripheral formations; and (3) a
distortion in the choice of branches of industry, towards light branches,
and also, to a lesser degree, toward light techniques" (Amin, 1982, 205).
12 In 1986 wages and salaries represented 73.8% of national income in the
United States (URPE, 1988, Statistical Appendix). In Argentina in 1998 they
represented only 26% of national income. If we add the incomes of the self
employed this proportion is increased to 34.5% (Clarin, June 21, 1999).
13 An "open" economy is not necessarily less articulated than a "closed"
economy. For example many European countries are quite open, the share of
exports and imports in GNP is high, but they continue being relatively
"articulated" because imports and exports are also mostly "wage goods."
14 In many cases as a consequence of argrarian reforms (see de Janvry,
1981).
15 The military coup of 1976 was the last of a long string of military coups
that began in 1930. Others took place in 1943, 1955, 1962 and 1966.
16 In the 1950s and 1960s "stabilization programs" were also implemented,
but these apparently were not intent on changing the essential features of
the ISI strategies or the "regime of accumulation" prevailing at the time.
17 It has been estimated that about 40% of the desaparecidos were wage
earners, including many shop floor labor leaders.
18 "... financial speculation was exacerbated by the financial reform of
1979: profits channeled to the financial sector tended to remain within the
financial circuit. Capital owners speculated domestically and abroad, made
little investment in manufacturing activities at home, and their profit
expectations were increasingly based on ever shorter time spans. To the
rapid growth of speculation should be added the impact of "opening up" the
Argentine economy. The final outcome was the partial dismantling of the
manufacturing sector, and the substantial increase in idle capacity"
(Marshall, 1992, 14).
19 Foreign debt continued to increase in the 1980s and 1990s under
successive governments. Under the Menem administration it increased from 62
billion dollars in 1990 to 118 billion in 1997. A large part of this foreign
debt financed capital flight, as reflected in external deposits of
Argentinians abroad officially estimated at about 75 billion dollars (see
Mayo, forthcoming).
20 "In the late 1980s, the term `Washington Consensus' served to encapsulate
the crystallization of a paradigmatic shift in economic policy making
regarding Latin America. The intellectual impetus behind the consensus view
clearly flowed from Washington, the locus of the U. S. Treasury, the
International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Equally important, the
consensus encompassed key Latin American business elites and functionaries
of the state apparatuses. Transnational corporations, particularly in the
financial realm, used their extensive influence to consolidate a policy that
promised to open virtually all areas of the Latin American economies to
foreign investment and unrestrained financial flows across borders,
including fluid repatriation of profits. Leading orthodox economists both in
the U. S. and throughout Latin America urged deregulation of capital
markets, free exchange rates, privatization of parastate firms, and
'flexible' labor markets" (Cypher, 1998, 47).
21 This was a scheme devised in 1989 by U. S. Secretary of the Treasury
Nicholas Brady with bank and government approval, whereby foreign debts of
third world countries were restructured, "old debt" was replaced by "new
debt," and a new zero coupon U. S. treasury bill purchased by the debtor
countries (with IMF financing) was used as collateral for debt servicing. In
exchange for this, debtor nations received a discount on principal of debt
or reduced interest rates. Argentina accepted the Brady deal in April 1992.
Presumably the deal, as had also occurred with the prior Mexican Brady deal,
was to reduce uncertainty and provide for greater confidence among foreign
investors, which would then increase capital flows into Argentina.
22 Supermarkets accounted for 18% of food sales in 1973. In 1994 they
controlled 56% of sales. This increase in the share of supermarkets became
significant in the 1990s (see Teubal, 1998).
23 In the period April 1991-April 1995 the food price index reached 160
(April 1991 = 100), health services 195, educational services 165 and "other
goods" (non-food items) 115. In this period the overall price index
increased by 50%.
24 According to Perry Anderson a strong agrarian landowning class and a
strong labor movement were factors that influenced the structural basis for
the succession of military dictatorships in the 1960s (Anderson, 1988).
25 The fact that advanced capitalist countries maintained high employment
for long indicated "the changed correlation of class forces (including, in
particular, the decline in the weight of financial interests in the
aftermath of war and decolonization" (Patnaik, 1999, 55).
I REFERENCES
Aglietta, Michel. 1987. A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The U. S.
Experience. London: Verso.
Amin, Samir. 1975. Capitalismo periferico y comercio international. Buenos
Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Periferia.
. 1982. "The Disarticulation of Economy within Developing Societies." In
Alavi and Shanin, eds., Introduction to the Sociology of "Developing
Societies" New York and London: Monthly Review Press.
Anderson, Perry. 1988. "Democratic y dictadura en America Latina en la
decada del '70." Cuadernos de Sociologia, No. 2. Carrera de Sociologia,
Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Astori, Danilo. 1984. Controversial sabre el agro latinoamericano: Un
andlisis critico. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO.
Azapiazu, Daniel. 1994. "La industria argentina ante la privatization, la
desregulacion y la apertura simetricas de la economia." In Daniel Azapiazu,
and Hugo Nochteff, El desarrollo ausente. Restricciones al desarrollo,
neoconservadorismo y elite economics en la Argentina. Buenos Aires,
Argentina: Flacso-Tesis Grupo Editorial Norma.
Azapiazu, Daniel, Eduardo Basualdo, and M. Khavisse. 1986. El nuevo poder
economico en los anos 80. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Legasa.
Basualdo, Eduardo. 1987. Deuda externa y poder economico en la Argentina.
Buenos Aires, Argentina: Nueva America,
Beccaria, Luis. 1992. "Cambios en la estructura distributiva, 1975-1990." In
A. Minujin, et al., Cuesta abalo. Los nuevos pobres: efectos de la crisis en
la sociedad argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina: UNICEF-Losada.
Brenner, Robert, and Mark Glick. 1991. "The Regulation Approach: Theory and
History." New Left Review, No. 188.
Cypher, James. 1998. "The Slow Death of the Washington Consensus on Latin
America." Latin American Perspectives, Issue 103, 25:6 (November).
da Conceicao Tavares, Maria. 1973. Da Substituicao de Importacoes ao
Capitalismo Financiero. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Zaher Editores.
de Janvry, Alain. 1981. The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin
America. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
de Janvry, Alain, and E. Sadoulet. 1982. "Social Articulation as a Condition
for Equitable Growth." Journal ofDevelopment Economics. No. 13.
Ferrer, Aldo. 1963. La economia argentina. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Economica. Furtado, Celso. 1961. Desarrollo y subdesarrollo. Buenos Aires,
Argentina: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires.
. 1965. Dialectica del desarrollo. Mexico, Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura
Economica.
-. 1974. El mito del desarrollo economico y el futuro del tercer mundo.
Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Periferia.
Kosacoff, B. et aL 1993. El desafio de la competitividad. La industria
argentina en transformacion. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CEPAL-Alianza
Editorial.
Kalecki, Michal. 1971. Selected Essays on the Dynamics of the Capitalist
Economy, 19331970. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Kotz, David. 1990. "A Comparative Analysis of the Theory of Regulation and
the Social Structure of Accumulation Theory." Science & Society, 54:1
(Spring).
Marshall, Adriana. 1992. Circumventing Labour Protection: Non-Standard
Employment in Argentina and Peni. Geneva, Switzerland: Research Series, ILO,
No. 88.. 1995. "Mercado de trabajo y distribution del ingreso: efectos de la
politics economics, 1991-1994." In Realidad Economics, No. 129
(January-February). Marx, Karl. 1967. Capital, Vol. 1. New York:
International Publishers.
Mayo, Anibal. 1999. "El Plan de Convertibilidad (1991-1998): siete anos de
ofensiva del capital." Forthcoming.
Monza, Alfredo. 1993. "La situation ocupacional Argentina. Diagnostico y
Perspectivas." In A. Minujin, ed., Desigualdad y exclusion. Buenos Aires,
Argentina: UNICEF-Losada.
O'Donnel, Guillermo. 1979. "Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State
and the Question of Democracy." In David Collier, The New Authoritarianism
in Latin America. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Oman, Charles and Ganeshan Wignaraja. 1991. The Postwar Evolution
ofDevelopment Thinking. New York: St. Martin's Press and OECD.
Patnaik, Prabhat. 1999. "Capitalism in Asia at the End of the Millennium."
Monthly Review, July-August.
Ruccio, David. 1989. "Fordism on a World Scale: International Dimensions of
Regulation." Review of Radical Political Economics, 21:4.
Sanchez, Miguel A. 1995. "El empleo en Argentina." IBAP, No. 1 (November).
Teubal, Miguel. 1992. "Hambre, pobreza y regimenes de acumulacion: el caso
argentino." Realidad Economics, No. 111 (October-November).
1993. "Argentina: Fragile Democracy." In Gills, Rocamora and Wilson, eds.,
Low Intensity Democracy. London: Pluto Press.
. 1994. "Cambios en el modelo socioeconomico: problemas de incluidos y
excluidos." In Norma Giarracca, ed., Acciones colectivas y organization
cooperativa. Reflexiones y estudios de caso. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Centro
Editor de America Latina, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias
Sociales.
-. 1995. Globalization y expansion agroindustrial. iSuperacion de la pobreza
en America Latina? Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Corregidor.
. 1998. "Transformaciones en el sistema agroalimentario: Impacto sobre los
precios relativos." In Informe de Coyuntura. El Complejo Agroalimentario:
Estructura y Perspectiva de desarrollo. Centro de Estudios Bonaerenses, La
Plata, Ano 8, No. 77 November-December.
.1999. "From Import Substitution Industrialization to the 'Open' Economy:
The Role of Peronism."
Teubal, Miguel, and Rodolfo Pastore. 1998. "Acceso a la alimentacion y
regimenes de acumulacion: el papel de los precios relativos." In Miguel
Teubal, ed., Teoria, estructuras y procesos econ6micos, Ensayos en honor al
Dr. Julio H. G. Olivera. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CEA-Eudeba.
Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE). 1987. The Imperiled Economy,
Volume I. New York.
Centro de Estudios Avanzados University of Buenos Aires Mail to: Washington
2839 Buenos Aires, Argentina (1430) teuba@mail. retina. ar
In most cases structural adjustment (SA) involves transfers of income,
wealth and power into the hands of economic and political establishments,
implying marginality and exclusion for the majority of the population. SA
contributes to development of a new "regime of accumulation," more "socially
and sectorally disarticulated" than previous ones.
Copyright Guilford Publications, Inc. Winter 2000/2001
Sources:UMI
SCIENCE & SOCIETY 01/2000
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
06Feb1999 SOUTH AFRICA: What they didn't talk about at Davos.
Johannesburg (Mail and Guardian, February 5, 1999) - Unknown to most of the
official delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last
weekend, a caravan of 60 leftist economists, researchers and activists had
sneaked through the police cordons to stage an "Alternative Davos".
It included intellectuals and activists from all five continents, a motley
but determined crew who had spent two days in Zurich planning protests and
other actions before surreptitiously staging a media conference on Saturday
under the noses of the forum's security phalanxes.
The mood in the bunker-like conference centre where the official Davos was
being staged was disconsolate and contrary. Spin doctors failed to hide the
undercurrents: the polite but stern tiff between United States and Japanese
officials; European leaders' undisguised disquiet at Washington's apparent
serenity; and deep concern about, as one Latin American central banker
phrased it, "a loss of interest in globalisation in emerging markets" and
the danger of a "political backlash" against it.
The contours of disagreement seemed stark.
Ranged on one side is the hang-on-for-the-ride camp (captained by the US and
transnational corporations). On the other there's the loose band of "Third
Way" politicians in Europe and some countries of the south, keen to stir up
an alchemy between dynamic market economies and greater social
responsibility.
Pundits will fuss about this divergence, missing the fact, said Egyptian
economist Samir Amin, that there remains a fundamental consensus to press
ahead for more open markets, especially for financial investments.
"These differences should not be exaggerated. The debate at the official
Davos is really only about what, if any, types of self-regulation should
accompany this drive."
Whereas speeches at the official Davos came swaddled in metaphors ("a global
village that has caught fire", "boats tossed on stormy seas" and "plumbing"
that had to fixed), at the Alternative Davos the gristle and bones of the
world economy held centre stage.
"In 18 months," said Kang Sang Goo of South Korea's union-linked Policy and
Information Centre, "we've gone from almost zero unemployment to 3,
65-million people without jobs and tens of thousands of people homeless. The
suicide rate among young women is catastrophic."
In Brazil, some 200 000 peasant farmers have lost their land in the past
four years and almost $600-million of state assets have been auctioned off
to transnational corporations, said Mario Luis Lill, leader of that
country's Movimento Sem Terra.
"I cannot speak here as a citizen of a rich country when the homeless die on
our streets this winter," said Robert Cremieux of France's Movement of the
Unemployed.
A recently leaked French government study, he added, has pegged the true
number of jobless not at the official three million, but at almost seven
million.
Many of the group's demands were pointed. Topping the roster was the need to
block a new round of Multilateral Agreement on Investment talks. Scuttled
last year in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development by
worldwide protests mounted mainly through the Internet, these negotiations
are being shifted to the World Trade Organisation's "Millennium Round", due
to start in November.
If passed, warned development analyst and activist Susan George, the
Multilateral Agreement on Investment would exempt transnational corporations
from most national labour laws, environmental regulations and investment
codes.
The agreement expressed pure free market ideology applied globally: "Once
it's in place, the south will have little to resist with. This has to be our
first line of attack."
Other demands issued by the Alternative Davos included instituting a tax on
capital flows, eliminating tax havens and cancelling the debts of all
countries of the south - "not just the 20 or so poorest". Wistful and
unattainable?
In Davos's conference centre bunker, US officials pounded much more chaste
proposals to limit hair-trigger capital movements, fix currency trading
zones or design "early warning" systems for troubled economies.
"We're not here to bend the ears of some masters of the universe," countered
one of the Alternative Davos delegates. "We're not asking. We're at the
beginning of new struggles across the world around these issues. Often they
know nothing of one another. Our aim is to link them."
The fissures and disquiet coursing through the official Davos meant that
sanitised versions of left-wing demands could feature in the surgery being
performed on the global economy. It's not for nothing that Davos's theme
this year was "responsible globality", or that the words "a new social
contract" featured in the official proceedings.
"Their idea of a new social contract is a little wider consultation which
legitimises measures that - perhaps - could slightly soften the social and
developmental devastation achieved by free market capitalism, " said Amin.
"Ours is different. It will come about only if the kinds of forces at the
Alternative Davos grow strong enough to engage and eventually negotiate with
dominant political and economic powers.
Out of that new, democratic social contracts can be created.
"I'm talking about ordinary peoples' struggles - Brazil's peasants, workers
in South Africa, youth in France - not just round tables and conferences."
Copyright 1999 Mail and Guardian. Distributed via Africa News Online.
Distributed via COMTEX News.
Sources:AFRICA NEWS SERVICE 06/02/1999
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
01Dec1998 EGYPT: Nowhere to Run, BUSINESS TODAY.
By Abdalla F. Hassan.
A market-driven casino of commodities, currencies and exchanges circles the
globe from Cairo to Montreal, Paris to Beijing, Manhattan to Tokyo to London
and back again, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's one sign of the
emerging phenomenon called globalization, the economic engine that is
transforming the world. This phenomenon was the subject of passionate debate
during a two-day economic symposium held in October at the Goethe Institute
in Cairo and sponsored by Al Habashi General Contracting.
The march toward globalization - i.e., regional or supernational integration
- can be seen in the creation of regional trading blocs and, in the case of
the Euro, the formation of a common currency zone. One aspect of
globalization is the expansion of world trade. Goods, especially those that
are technology intensive, are now being produced and assembled in different
countries.
Why the big fuss over globalism? In a global economy, forces of trade and
finance give many people a sense that the world they knew has changed.
Workers in developed countries feel that globalization will alter their
living conditions through greater competition. "Germans would compete with
Egyptians, who have lower income and lower social protections," explains Dr.
Paul Bernd Spahn, professor of public finance at Goethe University in
Frankfurt, Germany. "But [Egyptians] could do as good a job as German
workers provided they had the same skills and access to information."
The attributes of a global economy are also rather abstract. "Globalism is a
fully decentralized system without any power center," explains Spahn, who
describes a world where market forces dominate. Ideally, he argues, the
forces of globalization are not controlled by any individual, government or
institution. Proponents of globalization argue that the process gives Arab
states an opportunity to integrate into the world economy, promoting
economic growth, creating more employment opportunities and improving living
standards.
Technology, liberalization of trade, and increased capital flows and direct
foreign investment are benefits globalization offers developing countries,
argues Dr. Heba Handoussa, professor of economics at the American University
in Cairo and the managing director of the Economic Research Forum for Arab
Countries. "The role of the state has changed from producer and planner to
arbitrator," she explains. In order to successfully compete in an era of
globalization, governments must be more effective in creating infrastructure
and providing education, training and health care services, which would
attract investment. In addition, the move of transnational corporations to
low-wage economies may eventually mean an equalization of wages worldwide.
"Developing countries must not be afraid of being exploited for cheap
labor," asserts Handoussa, believing the transition will give more citizens
an opportunity to work and acquire the skills they need to compete in the
global marketplace. The cost of labor in Egypt is lower than in any other
country in the Middle East and North Africa region. As Handoussa points out,
seven percent of the Egyptian population earns less than $1 a day.
There are other advantages. Globalization makes nations dependent on each
other. "Nations that are dependent on each other don't opt for war or
armament," says Harald Schumann, journalist and co-author of the
international best seller "The Globalization Trap." "They prefer negotiation
in case of conflict." More importantly, economic integration has the
potential to help developing countries catch up to the industrialized world
on the basis of imported technology and capital, he adds. That's the good
news. "The bad news is that so far this integration process is so poorly
politically managed and regulated," argues Schumann. Referring notably to
the countries of Southeast Asia, he adds, "Most of the countries that take
part in this process became politically and economically unstable. The most
important reason for this is the growing inequality in the distribution of
income." Although economies are getting richer due to the infusion of
foreign capital, a large percentage of the population does not reap the
benefits, he says. This results in greater political turmoil. Schumann
acknowledges that economic analysis of globalization generally neglects the
political dynamics of countries and regions. Moreover, globalization has
resulted in a huge number of crossborder transactions occurring continually,
making economies sensitive to short-term currency speculation. Individual
countries may face greater risks due to the massive movements of capital
occurring virtually overnight. "The first thing to be done is to reregulate
the international financial markets," suggests Schumann. "We have to tame
these short-term capital flows."
As some economists see it, globalization chronicles a major power shift in
world affairs, from the public to the private, and from national governments
to transnational corporations and international financial agencies. It was
during the 19th and early 20th centuries that the search for raw materials -
as well as pressure to protect or increase markets drove colonial expansion
and promoted the birth of transnational corporations. Today, burdened by
debt (Egypt, for example, has a foreign debt of LE 150 billion), low
commodity prices and unemployment, governments throughout the less
industrialized world have sought to liberalize investment restrictions and
privatize public sector industries as a way of attracting technology,
capital and jobs. For multinationals, less-industrialized countries offer
the potential for market expansion, lower wages, and fewer health and
environmental regulations than in Western Europe and North America. "The era
of colonial exploitation is over," says Spahn, who argues that globalization
presents an opportunity for developing countries. "You now have sovereign
governments that can say 'no' or 'yes.' The market may have no morals; it's
not an ethical institution. But the market at least gives you the freedom to
say 'no.' " But Samir Amin, director of the Third World Forum in Senegal,
calls globalization a "political strategy" and derides the notion of a
self-regulating market. "Markets do not exist in the air. In reality,
markets are always regulated." And the process of deregulation is nothing
more than "secret regulation." The decision-makers of this capital market
have not been democratically elected, he says, but by their influence in the
marketplace, they have become a quasi world government. Transnational
corporations, among the world's largest economic institutions, are the real
power center, he reasons. Regional trading blocs, the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and global institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank work to the benefit of
multinationals, eroding national decision-making powers, says Amin. Through
tax breaks, subsidies and fewer restrictions, governments have liberalized
their trade and economic policies to attract these foreign investors.
To take an example, Amin points to the IMF bailout of South Korea. The
source of Korea's financial woes, according to the IMF, is the monopolistic
tendencies of indigenous conglomerates. This is how Amin views the solution
proposed by the IMF: "Ugly monopolies in Korea [will be] sold to ugly
monopolies in the U.S. or Japan." The end result is the dismantling of
potentially competitive systems of production. The two sides of the debate
are clearly drawn out. Is globalism economically beneficial to developing
countries through increased trade and investment? Or does it merely serve
the interests of organized capital? As economists search for answers,
investors trade trillions in global markets, and the forces of globalism
grind forward.
Copyright 1999 BUSINESS TODAY all rights reserved as distributed by
WorldSources, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 1998 BY WORLDSOURCES, INC.,A JOINT VENTURE OF
FEDERAL DOCUMENT CLEARING HOUSE, INC. AND WORLD TIMES, INC.
NO PORTION OF THE MATERIALS CONTAINED HEREIN MAY BE USED IN
ANY MEDIA WITHOUT ATTRIBUTION TO WORLDSOURCES, INC.
Sources:WORLDSOURCES ONLINE
BUSINESS TODAY (EYGPT) 12/1998
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
01Oct1998 USA: Desert Frontiers - Ecological and Economic Change Along the
Western Sahel, 1600-1850.(Review) -
By McDougall, E. Ann.
By JAMES L. A. WEBB JR. Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press,
1995. Pp. xxvi+227. [pounds]40.95 (ISBN 0-299-14330-9); [pounds]17.95,
paperback (ISBN 0-299-14334-1).
In contrast to the desert itself, the Sahara as subject of historical
(re)construction is currently displaying signs of health and vitality. It is
enticing historians into a range of theoretical and methodological domains
deriving from other disciplines, and simultaneously attracting scholars from
other disciplines to play out their own explorations around its contours.(1)
For a space which seems to have no difficulty occupying well-delineated and
identified areas in every genre of cartographical representation, the Sahara
is surprisingly difficult to 'locate' in academic discourse. Its identity,
in current parlance, is a popular focus of speculation and debate,
challenging conventional notions of its location, both in time and in space.
One of these challenges is engagingly articulated in the recent publication
of economic historian James Webb Jr. His Desert Frontier: Ecological and
Economic Change along the Western Sahel, 1600-1850, invites wider
participation in this 'search for the Sahara' and in so doing, encourages
broader understanding of just where 'Saharan studies' and in particular
Saharan history and Saharan society stand in these so-called post-colonial
times.
This ambivalence notwithstanding the present review begins by defining the
geographical and chronological space it will consider (excluding
contemporary Niger, Chad and Sudan), and by concentrating on materials which
refer to the post-sixteenth-century Sahara (with only brief references to
work on the twentieth century). This approach to defining geographical space
conforms in large part to the current 'state of the art' which tends to
generate a fairly discrete literature on the Central Sudan and the Sudan
itself. And the chronological parameters adopted here are justified to some
extent by those defined in Webb's book. More importantly, however, these
reflect the degree to which the study of the sixteenth to nineteenth
centuries has become a sub-field in itself, defined by its particular
sources and methodologies, and generating debates specific to its framework.
The medieval Sahara (defined as a geographical feature) gave unity to the
African continent and in so doing linked Africa to the Mediterranean and
Arab worlds. For African historians, the Sahara was the focus of 'great
states' like ancient Ghana, Mali and Songhay;(2) the sea of sand over which
passed Bovill's 'golden trade of the Moors';(3) and the world of Islamic,
nomadic warriors, such as the Almoravids, who waged holy war against the
animist, sedentary 'Sudan'. With the arrival of the Europeans off the desert
coast and the beginning of the competition between Atlantic and Saharan
commerce, between 'the caravel and the caravan',(4) the Sahara lost its
economic centrality and with it, its role in Africa's destiny. As African
history became increasingly shaped by European rather than Arab sources, the
Sahara became the definitive division between history 'north of' and 'south
of' the Sahara. Sub-Saharan Africa was created.
In studies of post-medieval Africa, the Sahara, like the Atlantic and Indian
Oceans, became one of Africa's 'peripheries'. Its importance lay largely in
the international trade, especially the slave trade, that it carried to the
'sub-Saharan' continent. Ralph Austen's exercises in counting trans-Saharan
slaves are comparable to Philip Curtin's influential (and controversial)
efforts regarding the Atlantic trade.(5) And the impact of trans-Saharan
trade on West African states provided a perfect foil for its Atlantic
counterpart, rich fodder for the 'development/underdevelopment' debates of
the 1970s.(6) A. G. Hopkins, in his seminal work on West African economic
history, compared Saharan oases to oceanic 'islands of consumption' which at
least potentially, allowed for the existence of a Saharan population beyond
its transient merchants.(7) But apart from Charles Stewart's early 1970s
publication, Islam and Social Order in Mauritania,(8) historical study of
the Sahara as home to such people and their development was sparse on a
ground increasingly populated with anthropologists studying pastoralism and
segmentary societies, and developmentalists addressing problems of aridity
and desertification.
The return of historians to Saharan research owes much to the results of
that work, as is evidenced by the range of multi-disciplinary and
inter-disciplinary literature to which they contributed during the 1980s and
early 1990s. The thesis on which Webb's Desert Frontier was based,(9) for
example, as well as his influential articles on the gum trade and the
slave-horse trade,(10) reflect clearly these historiographical trends. It
appeared alongside the work of fellow economic historians Stephen Baler and
Paul Lovejoy, Knut Vikor and the present reviewer on Saharan salts;(11) of
anthropologists/sociologists Pierre Bonte, Constant Hames and Abdel Wedoud
Ould Cheikh on central Mauritanian political economy, society and Islam;(12)
of historians and Islamic specialists Michel Abitbol, Elizabeth Hodgkin,
John Hunwick, Zarha Tamouh on the Sahara as an element in Moroccan-Soudanese
relations (religious, cultural, political and commercial);(13) of linguist
Catherine Taine Ould Cheikh on the construction of hassaniyya (the
Berber-Arabic dialect of Mauritania);(14) of ethnologist Aline Tauzin on
sexuality and social structure;(15) and of folklorist/Islamicist Harry T.
Norris on the Arabisation of Saharan culture(16) - among others. What has
emerged from this particular melange are several fascinating concepts of how
the Sahara came to be where it came to be, and what it came to be during
various epochs between the ninth and the nineteenth centuries. These
parameters have provided historians with a rich array of issues, debates and
perspectives which has shaped research in the 1990s.(17)
For Abdel Wedoud Ould Cheikh, whose magisterial three-volume doctorat d'etat
explored the intersection of nomadism, Islam and political power in
precolonial 'Moorish' society,(18) the essence of the Sahara lay in l'espace
Maure. Defining the nature of this 'space' entailed determining both a
temporal and geographical construct. For Ould Cheikh the origins of societe
Maure or bidan(19) society lay in the eleventh century with the infiltration
of the Amoravids into the desert. By the end of the nineteenth century, its
frontiers were delineated by the physical movement of Mauritanian families
and tribes. As a sociologist, Ould Cheikh began with a contemporary
understanding of what constitutes 'maure(tanian)' society, with its emphasis
on the horizontal socio-political divisions between hassan (warriors) and
zawaya (clerics), each, in turn, composed of a range of vertical social
strata, and its distinct marriage of Berber and Arab cultural traits. Social
evolution which was identifiably maure was apparent in the ordering of
affairs among the Amoravids, and was further sculpted by the experiences of
absorbing the Bani Hassan (the Arab infiltration which gave its name to a
'conquering' class and language), of developing Islam through Saharan
scholarship, of accepting (increasingly) the Arabic-dominated hassaniyya in
place of traditional Sanhaja and azayr(20) dialects, and of centralizing
power in political entities called 'emirates' from the second half of the
seventeenth century.
The physical space defined by this process of identity creation, which Ould
Cheikh refers to as the Western Sahara, stretched from Wadi Dra'a (Southern
Morocco) to the Senegal River and east to the eastern frontiers of the
emirate of Tagant (bordering modern Mali). He allows that cultural bidan
influence exceeded the political, and includes regions stretching into
current Algeria and the Azawad-Niger Bend of Mali. However, he does not
dwell on the question of what exactly determines 'bidan cultural influence'
in the regions where it did not articulate itself in emiral political
authority.(21)
H. T. Norris does precisely the opposite. For him, culture is the essence.
Yet, his temporal and physical 'maps' would resemble those of Ould Cheikh
very closely, their contours defined principally by the combined influences
of 'Arabization' and commercial networks.(22) Where Ould Cheikh begins with
social dynamics and assumptions about accumulation of power in outlining a
particular social space, Norris begins with the human articulation of that
society in terms of movement and cultural expression: poetry, writing,
language, symbolism. His Sahara is the trab al-Shinqit (country of Shinqit),
and it subsumes within it Malian Tuareg as well as Mauritanian 'Moors'. His
concern with the structure of power is second to his concern for cultural
identity and the ways in which it gives definition to social space, but he
argues that the lack of emirates in parts of the trab al-Shinqit in the
nineteenth century simply reflects a difference in historical conjunctures.
He believes that the same process which produced the emirate of the Adrar in
central Mauritania by the mid-eighteenth century and a similar if less
well-defined political entity in the Tagant a century later, was also under
way in the nineteenth-century Azawad region (north of Timbuktu). Delineating
the eastern frontier and providing the broader skeleton of the trab
al-Shinqit were the commercial salt networks, principally those based on
Timbuktu and Tegaza/Tawdeni which traced a large part of the northern 'edge'
intersecting with Tuat-Tafilelt (Algeria) and the Wadi Dra'a of Morocco. But
he also acknowledges the centrality of western salts (coastal deposits,
including the elusive medieval 'Awlil', as well as Tawdeni's inland
competition, Ijil(23)) and the network of linkages which followed the
southern desert edge through the Adrar, Tagant and Hodh. The origins of this
cultural and economic intersection were epitomized in the medieval town of
Shinqit, which gave its name to the vast Saharan lands, and welcomed Islamic
and Arabic influences from the time of the Almoravids onwards.(24)
Disciplinary differences aside, both Ould Cheikh and Norris sought the
essence of bidan in the written, Arabic texts produced by that society.
Pierre Bonte, an anthropologist by training, began with somewhat different
aims and methodologies. He was interested in bidan society primarily because
it offered an illustrative study with which to push the limitations of the
influential 'segmentary society' theory.(25) That the pastoral, nomadic
Saharans of Mauritania had managed to constitute a political entity in the
Adrar region as early as the late seventeenth century, suggested that more
power and authority could be accumulated and institutionalized among
segmentary lineages than 'theory' allowed. Methodologically, Bonte depended
primarily on oral interviews to reveal the history of the Adrar and the
nature of 'emiral power'. His intimate understanding of familial and
'tribal' relations in the region has become apparent to all who have read
his prolific publications; more than twenty-five years of frequent visits
have produced a very sensitized, politically-astute vision of the past,
liberally laced with closely critiqued oral tradition.
The historical exploration, to which he has devoted almost as much attention
as to his anthropological theorizing, leads him to argue that the
distinctiveness of this society derived both from the fusion of Arab and
Berber familial linkages and alliances, and from a subsequent emergence of
warrior-clerical distinction in a changing economic climate which was
increasingly shaped by capitalist forces. For Bonte, like Norris, the
northern connections (Wadi Dra'a, Tafilelt, Tuat) are as important as the
southern, and his analysis literally radiates in all directions from the
'heart' of the trab al-Shinqit. Indeed, this heart, the ksur (towns) of the
Adrar, was central in shaping bidan society and in distinguishing it from
that in other desert regions.(26) Bonte would argue that the particular
nature of the political anthropology within which the zawaya evolved was not
similarly developed among the Tuareg in the Azawad and indeed, may not even
have characterized other parts of Mauritania or at least, not to the same
degree.(27) So, while the trab al-Shinqit exists as an historical reality on
the level of material culture, for Bonte the societal essence of the Sahara
is l'espace Maure in its very limited format.
The oral traditions and histories of the Adrar also attracted the attention
of this reviewer some twenty years ago. From the perspective of an economic
historian, I sought to understand 'power' as it was derived from material
wealth. Research for my thesis into the history of the Ijil salt mine and
how the zawaya group which controlled it (the Kunta) translated 'wealth'
into 'power' (both spiritual and political), resulted in a Sahara delineated
by Kunta activity and the salt networks earlier identified by Norris.(28)
Driven by assumptions of the role of material wealth and accumulation in
shaping social evolution and stratification, my subsequent work pushed the
origins of bidan society to the eleventh and twelfth centuries.(29) But I
argue that this was only a stage in an evolving Saharan society which
predated the Almoravids, and which continued to evolve throughout the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In short, for this reviewer,
l'espace Maure is a considerably more limited concept than trab al-Shinqit
both in space and time. Although largely in accord with Bonte's historical
reconstruction, my work treats the southern and central Saharan regions as a
single political economy (in which spiritual authority is an essential
element), at least into the early colonial period. This has formed the
framework for explorations into the structural and conceptual evolution of
what I prefer to call 'Saharan' (rather than desert or maure) society(30).
Desert Frontier is also the work of an economic historian. And Webb uses a
goodly part of the extant work on the salt trade, as well as his own on the
gum, horse and slave trades, to explore the economic change referred to in
the book's sub-title. But Webb's concept of 'Sahara' and ' Saharan society'
is very different from any of those described above - different in temporal,
geographical, and ideological construction. It is one shaped and reshaped
from the beginning of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth
century by profound and irreversible ecological change (a drying climate),
and the consequential emergence of 'black-white' identities created in the
throes of Sahara-Sahelien frontier violence. Spatially, the analysis
encompasses a 'south-west' and a 'south-east' frontier which appears to fade
off east of the Tagant, and rather vague references to a 'western Sahara'
which occasionally seems to encompass territory as far north as the Tiris
(former Spanish Sahara), but for purposes of discussion does not extend
beyond the Adrar.(31) For Webb, the northern influences so integral to the
others' articulations of the Sahara are introduced as part of that frontier
violence, and characterized as incessant incursions by 'Moroccans' whose
chief aim was to acquire slaves.(32)
Given that the centre of Webb's focus is the frontier, not the desert per
se, it is perhaps not surprising that the Sahara emerges in his book with
somewhat fuzzy frontiers. To the extent that identity is an issue in his
analysis, it is an identity defined in terms of contrasts:
pastoralists/sedentarists, Muslims/non-Muslims, bidan/sudan, 'White/Black'.
Where Webb's ecological framework intersects the issue of defining bidan
identity, it challenges the perspectives of almost all the current
literature. He argues that it was the particular nature of the material
conditions pertaining during this era of droughts, famines and political
violence, namely 1600-1750, which shaped bidan society and encoded its
meaning among Saharans. This thesis is largely consistent with recent trends
in African history which examine the historical import of ecological factors
and disease on the one hand, and categories of race and ethnicity as
historical constructs on the other. But Webb's argument is unlikely to go
unchallenged by those whose concepts of 'Saharan' differ considerably from
his, nor by those who would dispute the degree to which the impact of
seventeenth-century droughts was especially unusual or irreversible.(33)
Some contemporary researchers, however, seem less inclined to pursue issues
of traditional economic history;(34) they are less trusting of the revealing
nature of numbers and statistics and argue for less literal readings of
'traditional' texts, both oral and written. The questions Ould Cheikh and
Bonte have formulated regarding segmentarity, 'tribal' formation and the
nature of political power in the Sahara continue to evoke extensive
discussion, and the importance of controlling material resources is being
interpreted in the context of analyzing identity formation. Mariella
Villasante-Debeauvais's recent thesis on the formation of the Ahel Sidi
Mahmoud (Tagant) challenges both Bonte and Ould Cheikh on their
generalizations about the nature of power accumulation and tribal
formation,(35) as does Raymond Taylor's study of 'power, authority and
society' in nineteenth-century southern Mauritania (Gebla).(36) While
Villassante-Debeauvais analyzes the making of a zawaya tribe, one which
achieved considerable power and authority in the nineteenth century outside
of the 'parental alliance framework' so central to Bonte's theory, Taylor
looks more closely at the unmaking of emiral authority, principally among
the hassan tribes of the Trarza and Brakna. He challenges Ould Cheikh's
assertions about both the similarities between, and the longevity of,
Mauritanian power structures (the emirates of Adrar, Trarza, Brakna and
Tagant).
McDougall and Nouhi's '... you have known power', also outlines the
intersection of zawaya material and ideological interests with the emergence
of Saharan political struggles between the seventeenth and nineteenth
centuries, and emphasizes the role of the clerical elite in shaping the
geographic and economic frameworks of hassan power. Nouhi's current
fieldwork in Mauritania is probing this question further by looking at
correspondence (both formal and 'informal' as recorded in oral tradition and
hassaniyya poetry) between the Kunta and their various friends and foes
between the Adrar and the Azawad.(37)
These concerns invariably touch on the notion of identity and point to the
need to look at Saharan 'tribes' as social constructs. Webb's introduction
to his usage of 'white' and 'black' in Desert Frontier is a fine
articulation of the premise that these terms are cultural statements, the
product of a complex dynamic stretching over space and time. Unfortunately,
in Webb's actual analysis the ' dynamic' tends to become fixed in time and
space as the book progresses, and the cultural aspects become increasingly
tied to skin colour and occupation.(38) Taylor, on the other hand, builds
engagingly on Webb's premise, to show further how the concept of 'being
bidan' continued to evolve beyond the mid-eighteenth century as power
structures changed both within the desert and on either side of its
'frontier' in the context of French colonization. He goes further than Webb
in drawing on post-modernist approaches to the reading of oral and written
texts, and to the questioning of historical reality to unveil the layers of
posturing and presentation which shroud the realities historians seek to
describe.(39) The 'process of being bidan' which emerges is one which will
influence considerably our future work.
Similarly, Timothy Cleaveland makes explicit his approach to questions of
politics and identity in the eastern Hodh in the very title of his recent
thesis, 'Becoming Walati'. His explorations into identity formation are
clearly focused on the ' tribes' which settled the region, and on
understanding how the conflicts over power which resulted from the settling
process shaped that formation. He too tackles the hoary legacy of
'segmentary lineage theory'(40) and argues for the centrality of basic
economic strategies in the structuring of kinship. His thesis also
challenges implicitly the applicability of Webb's ecological framework in
explaining the region and the movements of its peoples. And his handling of
the question of identity in terms of the Arab/Berber/Mande origins of Walati
shades less into 'color' and more into social category. Cleaveland's
argument that ethnic and genealogical identities were linked to the
evolution of social status in Walati society parallels Webb's approach to
unravelling 'cultural dynamic over time and space' and furthers research
which increasingly treats what used to be historical 'givens' and societal
'constructs'. Cleaveland's attention to social status and societal hierarchy
as aspects of historical change is a welcome counter to our tendency to
accept a timeless, ethnographic snapshot of Saharan social classes.(41)
Hopefully, future research will pursue the various strata of Saharan society
within this optic of process, while also remembering that constructs are
often as much the creation of the historian as they are the subjects of
history.(42)
Webb raises again the issue of the impact of the Atlantic trade, especially
the gum and slave trades. Few would question Webb's expertise concerning the
role of the Atlantic gum trade,(43) but his challenging of the claim that
the Atlantic slave trade was the most significant economic activity in this
part of west Africa during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is sure
to provoke discussion.(44) To the extent that it also draws attention to the
absorption of slaves into the Sahara as well as across it, Webb's argument
fits into ongoing work on Saharan slavery and speaks to the issue raised
above about social structure and hierarchy.(45) In addition, it draws
attention to issues recently explored in an edited book by Robin Law,(46)
among which was the impact of ending that slave trade on the desert and
desert-edge societies which had been affected by it. While confirming the
significance of trade across and into the desert, the findings presented in
Law do not go as far as Webb in arguing that, at least towards the end of
the seventeenth century, the importance of the Saharan trade was greater
than that of the Atlantic,(47) nor do they tend to support Webb's hypothesis
that the prices of slaves within West Africa probably dropped following the
ending of the Atlantic trade.(48) To date, evidence suggests that increased
slave use for domestic production both in the sahel and the Sahara kept
demand sufficiently high to support pre-existing price structures.(49)
There will undoubtedly be those who will not be able to resist some
retaliatory number crunching or fine tuning of Webb's environmental
calendar. But generally speaking, current research seems more interested in
pursuing the impact of the trade (and the Europeans) either through regional
studies, which bite off lengthy chronological chunks in which this
particular theme is followed through into the colonial era,(50) or through
examining the influence which European writings had on local level discourse
and ultimately, on historians' interpretations of that discourse. Both
Taylor's thesis on the Mauritanian sahel and John Hanson's work on Malian
territory to the east, are cases in point.(51)
Webb's vantage point of the southern desert-edge notwithstanding, any
discussion of 'desert frontiers' in the Saharan context must comprise the
northern perspective as well. In large part a consequence of research
conditions in Algeria, that 'northern component' has been almost exclusively
defined as Moroccan, and research has also tended to be the prerogative of
Moroccans.(52) But while earlier work tended to focus on distinguishing
Moroccan from 'other' (be it Saharan or Sudanese, Mauritanian or Malian),
Saharan-centred research, in relocating the 'centre', will tend to be less
concerned with the identity of the so-called peripheries and more interested
in how their interaction with Saharans shaped and reshaped desert
society.(53) One area where this is clearly the case is in current studies
of Saharan Islam. Glen McLaughlin's work on Muhammad Fadil and the evolution
of his zawiya and Sufi way in the nineteenth-century Mauritanian Sahara led
him to look at a region stretching from Morocco and the Western Sahara into
modern Senegambia and Mali.(54) Said Bousbina's work is defined by similar
connections: the articulation of the Moroccan-born Tijaniyya tariqa in the
West African Soudan, and the subsequent impact of the literature produced by
its adherents.(55) Or, alternatively, new work will look at frontier
relations on both shores in a comparative fashion, being shaped both from
the Saharan and the Atlantic side by common historical processes.(58)
A key variable shaping the current direction of research and publication is
the combined use of new texts and new theories to critique them. While not
all Saharan scholars are Arabists and Islamicists, most are undertaking
fieldwork of considerable duration, working with local written and oral
texts with the assistance of local scholars or students, and working with
textual analyses appropriate to them. In that sense, work in the Sahara is
well placed to make major contributions to the methodology of African
history. As a society increasingly 'Islamized' and 'Arabicized', the Saharan
'case study' combines layers of written and oral tradition married with
earlier oral traditions whose cultural motifs can still be discerned. The
overlay first of European observation, then European language(s) and
ultimately power and religion in the colonial context only further enriches
the intellectual territory. We have not yet explored at all, for example,
the links between European perceptions of the 'Moors of Barbary' (the
'Barbarians') and their literary and pictorial presentation of Saharan
'Moors' in the pre-colonial era in the same way as we have begun to treat
the subject vis-a-vis Europeans and Saharans in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. And Cleaveland's work draws attention to the fact that
the earlier, Berber, matrilineal past is not as absent even from the written
texts and certainly not from the oral ones, as we have tended to assume.(57)
His work, as well as Taylor's, will also be pushing us further to question
how gender assumptions both in the formation and the interpretation of the
texts have influenced historical interpretations to date.(58)
While unquestionably overexploited by current North American university
bureaucracies for its political capital, 'interdisciplinarity' has truly
enriched the study of Saharan history. In France, history seems to have
become increasingly integral to research in sociology and anthropology.(59)
And on the American side, Webb's book derives its principal originality and
impact from its roots in ecology and environmental study, reflecting the
widespread communication between development work and academe which Webb
himself epitomizes.(60) Taylor's and Cleaveland's recent theses reflect the
impact of post-modernist, post-colonial study on history; it must be said as
well that Cleaveland's research reflects a very healthy dose of
anthropological fieldwork. The theses currently underway in Canada to some
extent straddle these tendencies (as well as the Sahara itself), and will
undoubtedly take on new directions over the course of their completion.(61)
Clearly, more broadly-based approaches to the process of defining Islam and,
in turn, constructing Islamic identity will continue to characterize
research in North America, Britain and north/west Africa.
If there is a general statement to be made both in relation to the
contribution of Webb's book and the overall intellectual vitality of the
field, it is that the Sahara is far from being 'constructed' in any
indisputable fashion. It is unlikely that Webb's vantage point of a
violence-ridden, racially conflictual southern frontier will ultimately
prove the most revealing of the Sahara's highly complex social 'reality'.
But it will generate debate around its central hypotheses, and force a good
deal more attention to issues of ecological change. Indeed, the publication
of Webb's book signals the emergence of that 'Saharan field' as an
accredited form for exciting, international scholarship, actively debating
and reshaping the contours of the Sahara itself.
1 See The Saharan Studies Bulletin, published biannually by the Saharan
Studies Association (contact John O. Hunwick, History Department,
Northwestern University).
2 Nehemia Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali (London, 1973; rep. New York,
1980). A revised edition of this work is currently being prepared, directed
by David C. Conrad, and Rod and Susan McIntosh. See Levtzion's own
'revisions', 'Berber Nomads and Sudanese States: the historiography of the
desert-sahel interface' (Paper presented at the International Conference on
Manding Studies, Bamako, Mali, 1993).
3 E. W. Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors (2nd ed., London, 1968).
4 Boubacar Barry, La Senegambie du XVe au XIXe siecle. Traite negriere,
Islam et conquete coloniale (Paris, 1988) and the introduction by Samir
Amin. See also discussion in A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West
Africa (Longman, 1973), 78-112.
5 Ralph A. Austen, 'The trans-Saharan slave trade, a tentative census', in
Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn (eds.), The Uncommon Market: Essays in
the History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1979), 23-72; most
recently his 'update', 'The Mediterranean slave trade out of Africa: a
tentative census', in Elizabeth Savage (ed.), The Human Commodity,
Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (London, 1992), 214-48; and
the seminal work which continues to generate controversy, Philip Curtin, The
Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census (Madison, 1969).
6 For example, Marion Malowist, 'The social and economic stability of the
Western Sudan in the Middle Ages', Past and Present, XXXIII (1966), 3-15;
and A. G. Hopkins' rejoinder, 'Underdevelopment in the empires of the
Western Sudan', Past and Present, XXXVII (1967), 149-56; John Ralph Willis,
'The Western Sudan from the Moroccan invasion (1591) to the death of
al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (1811)', in J. F. Ade Ajayi and Michael Crowder (eds.),
History of West Africa, i, 441-83; J. Spencer Trimingham, A History of Islam
in West Africa (Oxford, 1962); Samir Amin, 'Underdevelopment and dependence
in Black Africa: historical origin', Journal of Peace Research, II (1972),
105-19.
7 A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History, see general discussion in 'The
domestic economy: structure and function', 51-77; and more specifically,
'External trade: the Sahara and the Altantic', 79-86. Hopkins drew attention
to the significance of Saharan trade and production in these chapters,
calling for more research along those lines. He also noted that the Sahara
had its own 'merchant princes' who were as deserving of attention as those
of the Niger Delta. Unfortunately, this part of his work seems to have had
less impact (and less acknowledgement) than much of the rest.
8 With E. K. Stewart (Oxford, 1973). This book focused on the
nineteenth-century Gebla (south-western Mauritania).
9 James L. A. Webb, Jnr., 'Shifting sands: an economic history of the
Mauritanian Sahara 1500-1850' (Ph.D. thesis, Johns Hopkins University,
1984).
10 James L. A. Webb, 'The trade in gum arabic: prelude to French conquest in
Senegal', J. Afr. Hist., XXVI (1985), 149-68; 'The horse and slave trade
between the Western Sahara and Senegambia', J. Afr. Hist., XXXIV (1993),
221-46. Revised versions of these articles constitute chapters 5 and 4
(respectively) of Desert Frontier.
11 S. Baier, An Economic History of the Central Sudan (Oxford, 1980); P.
Lovejoy, Salt of the Desert Sun (Cambridge, 1985); E. A. McDougall, 'The
Ijil salt industry: its role in the precolonial economy of the Western
Sudan' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1980), 'Camel caravans of
the Saharan salt trade: traders and transporters in the nineteenth century',
in C. Coquery-Vidrovitch and Paul E. Lovejoy (eds.), The Workers of African
Trade (Beverly Hills, 1985), 99-122, and 'Salts of the Western Sahara:
myths, mysteries and historical significance', Int. J. Afr. Hist. Studies,
XXIII (1990), 231-57; K. Vikor, 'The oasis of salt: the history of Kawar, a
Saharan centre of salt production' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Bergen,
1979).
12 Bonte has published extensively; of most interest to historians, perhaps,
are 'The constitution of the Emirate and the transformations of systems of
production in the Adrar (Mauritania)', Production pastorale et societe, XVI
(1985), 33-53; 'Une agriculture saharienne. Les Grayr de l'Adrar
mauritanien', Revue de l'occident musulman et de la Mediterranee, XLI-XLII
(1986), 378-96; 'Tribus, fractions et etat: Les conflits de succession dans
l'emirat de l'Adrar', Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, XXII-XXIV (1987-8),
489-516; his long-awaited doctorat d'etat, 'L'emirat de l'Adrar' is in the
final stages of completion; C. Hames, 'Statuts et rapports sociaux en
Mauritanie precoloniale', in Etudes sur les societes de pasteurs nomades,
Cahiers du Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Marxistes, XXXIII (1977), 10-21;
A. W. Ould Cheikh, 'Nomadisme, Islam et pouvoir politique dans la societe
maure precoloniale (XI-XIX siecles)' (These de doctorat, Universite de Paris
V, 1985); many of the central themes in this thesis are summarized in his
Elements d'histoire de la Mauritanie (Nouakchott, 1988); see also his
'Herders, traders and clerics: the impact of trade, religion and warfare on
the evolution of Moorish society', in John G. Galaty and Pierre Bonte
(eds.), Herders, Warriors and Traders: Pastoralism in Africa (Boulder,
1991), 199-218.
13 M. Abitbol, Tombouctou et les Arma (Paris, 1979), Tombouctou au milieu du
XVIIIe siecle d'apres la Chronique de Mawlay al-Qasim b. Mawlay Sulayman
(Paris, 1982), 'Le Maroc et le commerce trans-saharien du XVIIe siecle au
debut du XIXe siecle', Revue de l'occident musulman et de la Mediterranee,
XXX (1980), 5-19; E. Hodgkin, 'Social and political relations on the Niger
Bend in the seventeenth century' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham,
1987); J. O. Hunwick, Shari'a in Songhay: the Replies of al-Maghili to the
Questions of Askia al-Hajj Muhammad (Oxford, 1985), Z. Tamouh, 'Le Maroc et
le Soudan au XIXe siecle (1830-1894): Contribution a une histoire
inter-regionale de l'Afrique' (These du doctorat de 3eme cycle, Universite
de Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paris I, 1982).
14 'Le pilier et la corde: recherches sur la poesie maure', Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African Studies, XLVIII (1985); 'La mauritanie en
noir et blanc: Petite promenade linguistique en hassaniyya', Revue du Monde
Musulman et de la Mediterannee, LIV (1989), 90-105; and the ongoing project
which has so far produced seven volumes of invaluable reference,
Dictionnaire hassaniyya-francais (Paris, 1988-). Hassaniyya spills over
Mauritania's borders into southern Morocco and Mali, following Saharan
population movements.
15 A. Tauzin, ' Sexualite, mariages et stratification sociale dans le Hodh
Mauritanien' (These du Doctorat de 3eme cycle, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1981); 'La ruse des femmes: Presentation d'un
corpus de contes Mauritaniens', Litterature Orale Arabo-Berbere, XV (1984),
89-118; 'La femme partagee: Controle et deplacement de la sexualite feminine
en Mauritanie', in Collectif, Cote femmes, Approches Ethnologiques (1986),
147-57; 'Le gigot et l'encrier: Maitres et esclaves en Mauritanie a travers
la litterature orale', Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Mediterranee, LIV
(1989), 74-90. Tauzin's interest in oral literature has recently resulted in
the publication of her fascinating Contes arabes de Mauritanie (Paris,
1993).
16 H. Norris, Shinqiti Folk Literature and Song (Oxford, 1968) and Saharan
Myth and Saga (Oxford, 1972), remain classics. His broad view of the 'trab
al-Shinqit' is developed in The Arab Conquest of the Western Sahara (Harlow,
1986).
17 One might add the hitherto unpublished work of Dennis Cordell on Saharan
demographic history, with particular attention to the slave populations of
oases, much of which has been presented at various congresses over the past
decade, most recently at the International Economic History Conference,
Milan 1994, and the [American] African Studies Association meeting,
Columbus, Ohio, 1997.
18 Ould Cheikh, 'Nomadisme, Islam et pouvoir politique'.
19 Meaning, literally 'white'.
20 A medieval commercial idiom developed largely in the context of the salt
trade which reflected strong Soninke influences in Berber-based dialects.
21 Chapters 3, 5, and 6 speak directly to these issues. In the last section,
he examines in detail, and then rejects, the arguments which associate the
emergence of the 'bidan' with the late seventeenth-century war of Shurr
Bubba. This argument is summarized in 'Herders, traders and clerics', with
specific reference to the work of Boubacar Barry and Constant Hames.
22 These themes are succinctly sketched in The Arab Conquest, ch. 1, 'The
historical geography of the Western Sahara and its peoples', 2-10, and most
directly addressed and developed in Part IV, 'The Arabisation of the Western
Sahara', 135-78.
23 Saharan Myth and Saga, 78-9 (n. 6); 92-3.
24 Norris' Sharan Myth and Saga remains the seminal introductory study of
this process.
25 Defined in a general sense in Meyer Fortes and E. Evans-Pritchard (eds.),
African Political Systems (London, 1940); with respect to nomads in Neville
Dyson-Hudson,' The study of nomads' in William Irons and N. Dyson-Hudson
(eds.), Perspectives on Nomadism (Leiden, 1972), and most influential for
studies of the Sahara, Ernest Gellner's 'Introduction to nomadism', in The
Desert and the Sown (Berkeley, 1973). Most recently, Timothy Cleaveland
devotes most of the concluding chapter of his thesis to the subject:
'Becoming Walati: a study of politics, kinship and social identity in
pre-colonial Walata' (Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 1995); see ch.
8, 'Segmentary theory, economics and social identity'.
26 In 'L'emirat de l'Adrar', Bonte emphasizes the significance of the 'town
culture' which emerged as a consequence of sedentarized zawaya intellectual
and economic activities.
27 Pers. comm., Dec. 1996. I would like to take this opportunity to
acknowledge Pierre Bonte's generosity in sharing with me parts of his thesis
prior to its being examined, as well as his thoughts on a range of topics
concerning Saharan history.
28 McDougall, 'The Ijil salt industry'. These themes have been further
explored in McDougall, 'The economics of Islam in the southern Sahara: the
rise of the Kunta Clan', in Nehemia Levtzion and Humphrey J. Fisher (eds.),
Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa (Boulder, 1986), 45-60, and 'Banamba
and the salt trade of the western Sudan', in D. Henige and T. McCaskie
(eds.), West African Economic and Social History: Studies in Memory of
Marion Johnson (Madison, 1990), 151-69.
29 McDougall, 'The view from Awdaghust: war, trade and social change in the
southwestern Sahara from the eighth to the fifteenth century', J. Afr.
Hist., XXVI (1985), 1-31.
30 For example, see McDougall, 'The question of Tegaza and the conquest of
Songhay: some Saharan considerations', in Le Maroc et l'Afrique
subsaharienne aux debut des temps modernes (Rabat, 1992), 251-82; and
McDougall and Mohamed Nouhi, '... you have known power': Zwaya development
and the evolution of Saharan politics, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries'
(Paris/Rabat, forthcoming).
31 This framework is set out in ch. 1, ' Ecological change and emergence of
the desert frontier, 1600-1850', 3-26.
32 The central argument is outlined on pp. 48-9, but it permeates the whole
analysis. This is not the place for a detailed critique of this
presentation; suffice it to say that there are some problems with Webb's
interpretations of the evidence regarding locations of 'border towns' from
which slaves were said to have been taken, as well as with the identities of
the so-called Moroccans and the ability of the maghzan or Moroccan 'state'
to have orchestrated such regular incursions through the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries.
33 The issue of the impact of drought was discussed at some length following
the presentation of McDougall and Nouhi, '... you have known power', during
the Table Ronde on 'L'ordre politique tribal au Maroc Saharien et en
Mauritanie', Guelmime, Morocco, 1996. The paper was somewhat critical of
Webb's ecological determinism while accepting the role of drought in shaping
seventeenth-century political economy. Ould Cheikh endorsed the view that
the impact of the drought had been significant, whereas Bonte argued that
the seventeenth century was no more nor less a watershed than most other
centuries.
34 This is not to say that concerns about issues of trade, commerce and
production are not being explored, merely that they are being set in
somewhat different frameworks of analysis or are being explored through the
use of different research techniques and evidence. Gislaine Lydon (History,
Michigan State University) is currently exploring the role of the Tekna in
Mauritania through the study of an extensive collection of local oral and
written texts. David P. Gutelius (History, Johns Hopkins University) is
preparing a dissertation on market growth in the context of the Nasiriyya
Muslim brotherhood in southern Morocco, c. 1640-1830. For Gutelius, 'the
market' is about negotiating identities, moral values and ideas as well as
prices and profits; see his 'Research note' in Saharan Studies Association
Newsletter, v, i (May 1997), 8-9. McDougall's current research examines
nineteenth-century trans-Saharan connections from the perspective of family
history. and documentation, and focuses on the role of marriage(s) in
consolidating and protecting property. On the other hand, it could be argued
that the regeneration of the journal African Economic History in recent
years is a sign to the contrary, as is the appearance of two economic
history textbooks: Ralph Austen, African Economic History: Internal
Development and External Dependency (London, 1987), and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza,
A Modern Economic History of Africa (Dakar and Oxford, 1993).
35 M. Villasante-Debeauvais, 'Solidarite et hierarchie au sein des Ahl Sidi
Mahmud: Essai d'anthropologie historique d'une confederation tribale
mauritanienne, XVIIIeme-XXeme siecle' (These de doctorat, Ecole des Hautes
Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1995).
36 R. Taylor, 'Of disciples and sultans: power, authority and society in the
nineteenth-century Mauritanian Gebla' (Ph.D. thesis, University of
Illinois-Champaign-Urbana, 1996).
37 The working title of Nouhi's Ph.D. thesis is ' Islam, identity and power
in (eastern) Mauritania'.
38 There is also the problem, presented in the introduction, of just who is
constructing whose identity. Webb notes that the black peoples of Senegambia
did not develop a ' broad term of cultural identity to refer to all (Black)
sedentary peoples in the region (in juxtaposition to the nomadic
populations), probably due to their illiteracy ...' (p. xxvi). In other
words, the 'black' identity he uses was not created by the same process as
the 'white' or bidan, but rather was a creation of the bidan construction
itself. Nouhi is looking at a similar phenomenon with respect to the zawaya
who have created the hassan in the process of constructing their own
identity.
39 R. Taylor, 'Of disciples and sultans'. See also Taylor's papers presented
at the African Studies Association meetings: 'History and tribal discourse
in the Southwest Sahara' (St Louis, 1991); and 'Genealogy, gender and tribal
discourse in the pre-colonial Southwest Sahara' (Toronto, 1994). He is also
much more hesitant about the 'identity' of the Moroccans about whom Webb
speaks. In a lengthy note exploring what is known, and not known, about
these so-called 'ormans' or ' Moroccans', Taylor refers to them as 'nomadic
warriors from the northwest Sahara ... [whose] identity and intentions ...
are much in doubt'; 'Of disciples and sultans', 77, n. 38.
40 Cleaveland also argues that segmentary lineage theory continues to
influence Bonte's work; see, ' Becoming Walati', 12.
41 The most overstated case was made by Constant Hames some years ago when
he presented Mauritanian society through the optic of Indian 'castes'. In
spite of the fact that his subsequent views have become more nuanced, the
earlier construction has had a lasting influence; see his 'La societe maure
ou le systeme des castes hors de l'Inde', Cahiers Internationaux de
Sociologie, XLVI (1969), 163-77. Charles Stewart signalled issues of spacial
flexibility and variability in Islam and Social Order (see especially, 64,
[ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]), but historians have been slow to
pursue the implications of these issues.
42 See also Taylor's work on 'Genealogy, gender and tribal discourse'. An
attempt to convey something of the complexities of 'being slave' in a
changing colonial context was made in McDougall, 'A topsy-turvy world:
slaves and freed slaves in the Mauritanian Adrar, 1910-1950', in Suzanne
Miers and Richard Roberts (eds.), The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison,
1988), 362-90. See also the life story of a female Saharan slave/freed-slave
in McDougall, 'A sense of self: the life of Fatma Barka (North/West
Africa)', Can. J. Afr. Studies, forthcoming.
43 Most recently, see Webb, 'The mid-eighteenth century gum arabic trade and
the British conquest of Saint-Louis du Senegal, 1758', J. Imp. and Comm.
Hist., XXV (1997), 37-58.
44 This is a seductive argument which is developed on pp. 65-7, especially
in nn. 69 and 70. However, one feels obliged to call attention to what might
be described as a 'statistical sleight of hand'. Having 'assumed' a total
number of slaves entering the Sahara between 1700 and 1809 from 'below the
southeastern Frontier' (a total derived as a percentage of another total,
derived in turn as a percentage of the total number of slaves entering the
Atlantic trade from the whole of the Senegambia, which is itself a disputed
figure!), Webb arrives at an annual export simply by dividing the total by a
decade. These very roughly estimated 'annual averages' are then compared
with specific export figures for the Atlantic trade during the same decades
to arrive at comparative volumes! There are some other 'assumed percentages'
regarding population which also need more careful and judicious treatment
before being applied as they are here.
45 See, for example, McDougall, 'A sense of self'; 'Topsy-turvy world';
'Salt, Saharans and the trans-Saharan slave trade: nineteenth century
developments', in Savage, The Human Commodity, 61-88: and in progress,
entries on' Saharan Slavery' and 'Slavery in Morocco' for Paul Finkleman and
Joseph C. Miller (eds.), Encyclopedia of Slavery (New York forthcoming).
Bonte devotes a full chapter to 'Esclavage et affranchissement' in '
L'emirat de l'Adrar'. Ralph Austen has recently shown interest in Saharan
slaves and especially 'freed slaves' or haratin (generating discussion on
H-AFRICA in the autumn of 1996). Katherine Mosely continues work begun some
years ago in southern Morocco on the social and economic positioning of abid
and haratin. And there are currently at least three theses either in
progress or recently defended which deal with Haratin to some significant
extent: Meskerem Brhane, 'Narratives of the past, politics of the present:
Identity, subordination and the haratines of Mauritania' (2 vols.) (Ph.D.
thesis, University of Chicago, 1997); Madia Thomson, 'Desert crossings: a
cultural history of trans-Saharan trade and migration in southern Morocco,
1600-1830' (Boston University, in progress); and Urs Peter Ruf, 'Dissolving
slavery: changing configurations of hierarchy and dependency among slaves,
haratin and masters in Central Mauritania' (University of Bielefeld, in
progress). A panel organized by Raymond Taylor at the 1997 African Studies
Association annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio, on 'Hierarchy and social
change at the desert's edge' involved several of these scholars.
46 Robin C. Law (ed.), From Slave Trade to 'Legitimate' Commerce: the
commercial transition in nineteenth-century West Africa (Cambridge, 1995).
47 The argument is developed pp. 82-90.
48 Webb, Desert Frontier, 67; that said, more work needs to be done on the
subject before generalized conclusions can be drawn.
49 See Law, From Slave Trade, 6-11, and the chapters by Paul E. Lovejoy and
David Richardson, 'The initial "crisis of adaptation": the impact of British
abolition on the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa, 1808-1820', 32-56, and
by McDougall, 'In search of a desert-edge perspective: the Sahara-Sahel and
the Atlantic trade c. 1815-1890', 222-3.
50 See, for example, Villasante-Debeauvais, 'Solidarite et hierarchie',
which explores the history of the Ahel Sidi Muhamed tribe from its formation
in the Tagant in the eighteenth century through its twentieth-century
fortunes; Abdallah ould Youba ould Khalifa, whose thesis encompasses the
history of Tidjika from its seventeenth-century foundation to the 1960s:
'Les aspects economiques et sociaux de l'Oued Tijigja: De la fondation du
ksar a l'independance' (These de doctorat, Universite de Paris I, 1990-1);
and Gislaine Lydon, whose projected work on the Tekna will encompass the
pre-colonial, colonial and contemporary economic situation.
51 Taylor, 'Of disciples and sultans.'; John H. Hanson, 'African testimony
reported in European travel literature: what did Paul Soleillet and Camille
Pietri hear and why does no one recount it now?', History in Africa, XVII
(1991), 143-58. Mohamed Hassan Mohamed's current research on the Beyrouk
family of Wadi Noun, the 'northern Sahel', holds exciting promise along the
same lines. The Beyrouk family is represented in much of the travel
literature of the nineteenth century and has entered African history largely
through studies of the trans-Saharan trade, as well as the discussion of
European attempts to tap into that trade by establishing themselves in
coastal ports/forts.
52 The economic, political, cultural and religious roles played in Saharan
history by the peoples of Tuat, Tafilelt and Tindouf are indisputable (if
also largely undocumented), but serious research in the Algerian Sahara has
not been a political possibility for many years, and the situation does not
look likely to change for the better in the near future! On the Moroccan
front, however, there has been considerable interest and activity. It is
somewhat ironic that those historians for whom the Sahara is next door base
their research almost solely on written texts, while those from North
America and Europe are inclined to do fieldwork! See for example, Z. Tamouh,
'Le Maroc et le Soudan'; Jamal Bellakhdar, Abdelmalek Benabid, Jacques
Vittoz, Jean Marechal, Tissint. Une oasis du Maroc presaharien. Monographie
d'une palmeraie du moyen Dra (Collection Etudes Sahariennes, Al Biruniya,
1992), a multi-disciplinary work which contains a sizable historical section
(pp. 45-158); Larbi Mezzine, Le Tafilalt. Contribution a l'histoire du Maroc
aux XVIIIe et XVIIe siecles (Rabat, Faculte des Lettres et des Sciences
Humaines, Serie these 13, 1987). Mustapha Na'imi has published several
articles and chapters dealing with the Tekna confederation (southern
Morocco/western Sahara) and their role in Saharan political and economic
history, for example 'Espace tribal et specificites sahariennes en 1592, in
Le Maroc et l'Afrique subsaharienne aux debuts des temps modernes, Institut
des Etudes Africaines, Serie Colloque et seminaires, no. 2, Universite
Mohammed V, Rabat (Casablanca, 1995), 119-30; 'The evolution of the Tekna
confederation caught between coastal commerce and trans-Saharan trade', in
E.G. H. Joffe and C. R. Pennell (eds.), Tribe and State: Essays in Honour of
David Montgomery Hart (Wisbech, 1991), 213-38; 'Le pays Tekna: centre ou
peripherie?', Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc, CLIX-CLXI (1987-8),
231-45. Since its inception in 1990, the Institute of African Studies at the
Universite Mohammed V, Rabat has encouraged research involving
Moroccan-African connections. The Institute has published a number of public
lectures by visiting scholars, among which are several concerning Saharan
history: Adam Ba Konare, 'Les relations politiques et culturelles entre le
Maroc et le Mali a travers les ages' (Rabat, 1991); John O. Hunwick, 'Les
rapports intellectuels entre le Maroc et l'Afrique sub-saharienne a travers
les ages' (Rabat, 1990). Fatima Harrak (a professor of history associated
with the Institute) is currently working on trans-Saharan intellectual and
religious connections with Mali, and Zahr Tamouh is currently supervising a
thesis which examines representations of the so-called 'conquest' of Songhay
by Morocco through Arabic and European literature.
53 Naimi's recent work, cited in the preceding note, is an example of this
shift, as is the thesis research of Gutelius, Nouhi and Mohamed, cited
above, and Madia Thomson (History, Boston University) is beginning research
on cultural connections across the Sahara.
54 G. McLaughlin, 'Sufi, saint, sharif: Muhammad Fadil wuld Mamin: his
spiritual legacy and the political economy of the sacred in
nineteenth-century Mauritania' (Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University,
1997); see 'Author's Abstract' in Saharan Studies Association Newsletter, v,
i (May 1997), 8-9. See also F. Belhachemi, 'L'itineraire d'une lignee issue
de Sidi Muhammed al-Kunti al-Saghir (XVeme-XVIeme siecles) depuis le Sahara
Occidental jusqu'au Damagaram', Revue de Geographie Alpine, Numero 'Special
Niger' (1994).
Journal of African History, Vol.39, No.3
COPYRIGHT 1998 Cambridge University Press
(c) 1998 Information Access Company. All rights reserved.
This article may only be stored on a computer network for a maximum of 30
days.
Sources:IAC TRADE AND INDUSTRY DATABASE
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY 01/10/1998
<<...>>
<<...>>
<<...>>
|
< < <
Date Index > > > |
World Systems Network List Archives at CSF | Subscribe to World Systems Network |
< < <
Thread Index > > > |