Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the Rwandan government's use of neoliberal and developmentalist policies amid its rapid economic recovery since the 1994 genocide.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine whether Rwanda can be classified as a Developmental State, showcasing the similarities and differences with the experiences of East Asian late developers. The term - Developmental State - was coined by Chalmers Johnson (1981) when he studied Japan's Ministry of Trade and Industry enterprises. Through developing detailed case studies, a new group of scholars (Amsden 1989, Wade 1990, Woo-Cumings 1991) argued that latecomers in East Asia, including South Korea and Taiwan, embraced state intervention as they caught up with the industrialised West. Successful examples in East Asia showed that there could be several "pathways from the periphery" (Haggard 1990) but that developmental states shared characteristics as they tackled late development.

Several scholars (Booth & Golooba-Mutebi 2012; Mann & Berry 2015) have classified the Rwandan Patriotic Front's (RPF) government as a developmental state. However, there have been few systematic comparisons of Rwanda with the East Asian developmental states. The Rwandan government actually differs from East Asian developmental states in two important respects: it has had very limited manufacturing sector growth and it has pursued market-led policies to a much greater extent. However, the government has one crucial similarity with previous developmental states - the capacity to adapt to the concerns of different constituencies (donors, domestic elites and the population). Rwandan development has been a product of the demands of these constituencies and has taken a different form when compared to developmental states of the past.