Paper short abstract:

This paper explores Ghana’s latest efforts to build an integrated bauxite-to-aluminium industry and, particularly, how these are being complicated by emerging uncertainties, inequities and contestations associated with the energy transition agenda both nationally and transnationally

Paper long abstract:

A growing body of research has started exploring how countries are positioning and ‘greening’ their heavy industries in response to the ‘global energy transition.’ However, to date, the vast majority of this research has examined the interventions of, and challenges faced by, relatively high-income countries with established heavy industries, rather than lower-income countries with fledgling ones and aspirations to continue expanding them. Our paper responds to this lacuna by examining the case of Ghana, a country that– in large part because of the conditions of late(late) development– has long struggled to realise its founding president’s vision of developing an integrated bauxite-to-aluminium industry but is now facing even greater challenges due to the global energy transition and surging demand for ‘green’ manufactured products. Transnationally, Ghana is confronting a deeply unequal and unpredictable global political economy, one in which it and other countries in the Global South are struggling to access the latest ‘green’ technologies or devise long-term strategies for powering their industries because of constant shifts and reversals in the energy transition taxonomies of key export markets and financial institutions in the Global North. Nationally, meanwhile, tentative government plans to feed parts of Ghana’s aluminium industry with relatively ‘green’ hydropower (also Ghana’s cheapest source of electricity) are provoking pushback because of the trade-offs involved, while other contestations are emerging around moves to expand bauxite mining into forest reserves. Collectively, these issues may frustrate Ghana’s ambitions once more, even though an integrated bauxite-to-aluminium industry could generate significant economic benefits for the country.

Paper short abstract:

I would present how political-economic factors shape resource-rich countries' economic development in the age of GVCs and the clean energy transition

Paper long abstract:

Over the last ten years, there has been an increase in the demand for critical minerals driven by the clean-energy transition agenda. Increased demand for critical minerals presents new opportunities for resource-rich developing countries. At the same time, global value chains (GVCs) have changed how goods are produced, including renewable energy products. This opens opportunities for resource-rich developing countries to participate in global trade and benefit from the increased demand for critical minerals. However, as a number of GVC literature has shown, the such benefit would not rise automatically. Hence, the question is, what factors enable these countries to benefit from the increased demand for critical minerals? This paper tries to answer this question by using the case of nickel in Indonesia. Indonesia has used nickel to attract investment and boost trade in more sophisticated products, which fosters upgrading in the nickel value chain. The paper unpacks factors contributing to this upgrading. It highlights that linking up with lead firms is crucial for upgrading efforts, as they positively impact the accumulation of production abilities. However, such linkages will not arise automatically without the government's active involvement. The paper also examines how the domestic political and economic environment allows the state to implement policies that foster relationships between domestic economies and leading firms.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation draws on a forthcoming book that examines how the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front sought to maintain political order through the structural transformation of the economy, and why the party collapsed amid mass protests and factional divisions.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation draws on a forthcoming book that examines how the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF, 1991-2019) sought to maintain political order through the structural transformation of the Ethiopian economy, and why, ultimately, the party collapsed amid mass protests and factional divisions, leading to civil war in 2020. The EPRDF initially consolidated power and secured mass acquiescence in an agrarian society through the expansion of party-state structures and control over the distribution of land and agricultural inputs. However, rapid population growth resulted in land shortages and made structural transformation and mass employment creation imperative to continue this mass incorporation. Despite rapid economic growth, the failure to create mass industrial employment resulted in a growing distributive crisis that was a major factor underpinning mass protests that began in 2014. These mass protests magnified emerging divisions within the ruling elite, and directly precipitated the EPRDF’s collapse. The Ethiopian case highlights the challenges of late-late authoritarian development. On the one hand, the fragmentation of production into global value chains has severely constrained the potential of industrial policy to deliver mass employment and rising living standards. On the other, delayed demographic transitions have resulted in rapid population growth that places intense pressure on access to land, jobs and services. Consequently, late-late development constrains state-led development as a strategy for resolving mass distributive pressures—an important driver of development according to prominent theories.

Paper short abstract:

We argue that the framework of structural transformation (ST) is inadequate to understand the specific nature of capitalist development in contemporary times. The study reveals that the process of ST is highly complex and heterogeneous due to embeddedness in social institutions and local ecology.

Paper long abstract:

Much of the dominant literature in development economics, taking off from the experience of the developed economies, posits the idea of structural transformation as gradual ‘modernisation’ of the overall structure of the economy, where the traditional/non-capitalist sectors give way and support the modern/capitalist sector. However, many of the economies across the global South have not been able to experience this expected path of structural transformation as the majority of the workforce is still engaged in the non-capitalist agriculture sector for their livelihood. At the same time, the majority of people migrating from the agriculture sector find precarious employment in the urban non-capitalist informal sector.

We argue that the framework of structural transformation is inadequate to understand the specific nature of capitalist development in contemporary times. In this regard, focusing on India, we provide some illustrations from a nationally representative household-level survey and discuss in detail the case of two villages in South India which have been surveyed in 1994 and later in 2018. The study reveals that the process of structural transformation is highly complex and heterogeneous which goes against the linear understanding of the process. The nature and direction of these changes are influenced by the capitalist system’s embeddedness in social institutions and local ecology. These illustrations sharply point out that the capitalist trajectories of two adjacent villages, even after falling under the same region or administrative unit, can differ significantly depending on how the forces of change interact with the social and institutional structures and ecological limits.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the role of economic groups in Argentine development. It specifically delves into the examination of the formation of corporate strategies and preferences, as well as their reactions to shifts in the macroeconomic and institutional landscape.

Paper long abstract:

The research on economic groups has had varied contributions, particularly in emerging and late-industrializing countries. The study of these organizations covers debates such as forms of ownership, varieties of capitalism, relations between economics and politics, and their organizational forms vis-à-vis the classical classification elaborated by Chandler (1977) and Williamson (1975, 1985) for large U.S. firms (Amsden, 1989; Barbero & Puig, 2016; Colpan et al., 2010; Granovetter, 1995; Khanna & Yafeh, 2007; Schneider, 2009).

This paper analyzes economic groups in Argentina during the 21st century. Before the 1990s, these groups were central to shaping accumulation models. Neoliberalism then led to their decline and foreign ownership of major companies, especially those privatized. However, the 2001 economic crisis and Kirchner governments (2003-2015) favored national capital and challenged foreign ownership, especially in the energy industry, enabling the emergence and establishment of new economic groups.

This paper aims to ask what strategies were deployed by the economic groups to achieve this, as well as the reading of the macroeconomic and institutional situation that led to the strategies implemented by their managers.

We hypothesize that the expansion of the economic groups did not follow a uniform pattern; instead, they adopted differing control concepts, resulting in diverse business profiles.

In order to carry out the objective, we work by combining tools from the qualitative and quantitative paradigms. We primarily use interviews with shareholders, directors, and business managers to understand the decision-making process. Corporate reports and documents will also be analyzed, as well as official documents and resolutions.

Paper short abstract:

We develop an analytical framework combining political settlements analysis and Jessop’s theory of the capitalist state to explain the rise and fall of state-led industrialization in Ethiopia. Including accumulation strategies and attempts at hegemony can better account for shifting policy regimes.

Paper long abstract:

State-led development is experiencing a renaissance in many low- and middle-income countries. However, unlike in the ‘developmental states’ of East Asia, we do not yet have a good understanding of why some states embark on long-term projects of structural transformation while others fail. In this paper we ask under what conditions targeted industrial policy regimes aiming at rapid industrial development are likely to be sustained. A rich literature has used political settlement theory to analyze how ruling coalitions can build rent control and management systems that allow for effective economic statecraft in support of structural transformation. We contend that, for all of its evident strengths, political settlements analysis, with its focus on coalition building or elite bargaining, struggles to explain the choice of particular accumulation strategies. Drawing on Jessop (1990, 2008, 2016) we develop an extended political settlements analysis that views the state itself as an institutional ensemble wherein various factions strategically pursue accumulation strategies, seek to push the state apparatus in particular directions and, crucially, attempt to develop and defend hegemonic narratives to justify and support their actions. We apply this framework to an in-depth case study of Ethiopia between 1991 and 2022, which was hailed as an ‘African developmental state’ before recently jettisoning much of its industrial policy regime and descending into civil war. Empirically, we draw on qualitative interviews with Ethiopian policy makers, government officials, company managers and trade unionists conducted over various rounds of fieldwork between 2015 and 2022.

Paper short abstract:

This paper employs the case of Rwanda to show how domestic political vulnerabilities have shaped the country's externally dependent economic development strategy. The resulting external dependence reminds us of the precarious nature of 21st century late development.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1994 genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)-led government has led the country through a period of miracle growth. This has led observers from a wide range of methodological and ideological positions - from the World Bank to heterodox development scholars - to applaud the country's progress. While a large chunk of academic literature questions the country's democratic credentials and human rights record, there is comparatively little analysis of how Rwanda's growth has compared with East Asian developmental states and other rapidly growing African countries. Rwanda's growth success has been substantially different from that of past developers: there is limited manufacturing growth and there are very few signs of the emergence of a domestic capitalist class . This paper argues that Rwanda's externally-dependent strategy has done little to address balance-of-payment (BoP) constraints, which are the central characteristic of late developing countries and most former colonies. The continued salience of BoP constraints becomes more difficult to address given dependence on external actors and the continued difficulties of promoting effective state-business relations domestically. This paper works in a structuralist tradition to show how the challenges of contemporary late development have become increasingly externally dependent. This is because without governments retaining access to domestic capital or working closely with a domestic capitalist class, development strategies are inevitably dependent on finance and legitimacy from external capital whether foreign governments or multinational capital.

Paper short abstract:

This study investigates the drivers and obstacles of upgrading along Botswana diamond value chain. It maps the structure of diamond value chain, role of policy in upgrading activities and overlapping roles of state as a facilitator, regulator, producer, and buyer, in diamond value chain in Botswana.

Paper long abstract:

Natural resource extraction through mining, which is a key economic activity in resource-rich countries, is often associated with negative impacts on our ecosystems. To stimulate long-term growth, resource-rich countries have attempted to upgrade along value chains, by adding value and processing their natural resources to attain higher returns. Botswana has implemented policies which support the local beneficiation of diamonds as a pathway to stimulating economic diversification. This research draws on literature focusing on industrialization through commodities and the role of state in global value chains, to investigate the drivers and obstacles of upgrading along the diamond value chain in Botswana. Questions that emerge include, what is the scope of upgrading activities in Botswana’s diamond value chain? What is the role of the state in creating & shaping upgrading activities in Botswana’s diamond value chain, and how has this evolved overtime? This research is part of a PhD thesis which uses semi-structured interviews, document reviews and secondary statistical data to map out the structure of the diamond value chain in Botswana, the role of policy in upgrading activities and the overlapping roles of the state as a facilitator, regulator, producer, and buyer, in the diamond value chain. The presentation will use secondary data and statistics to assess the evolution, drivers, challenges, and pockets of success in Botswana’s diamond industry. This research contributes to literature on fostering policies that stimulate growth and economic diversification in resource-rich countries.