Interest group politics and the implementation of adjustment policies in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

A clear conventional wisdom existed about how the politics of adjustment would work - what the political problems would be, what challenges these would pose to politicians who sought structural adjustment and how donor agencies could assist the successful meeting of those challenges. In this paper, a sketch of this conventional wisdom is given, followed by a summary of the findings of the recent study by Mosley, Harrigan and Toye (1991) as they relate to the politics of implementing adjustment policies in three developing countries - Ghana, Malawi and Kenya. Finally, the implications of these findings are examined in the context of current calls for greater democratisation of political life in developing countries. -from Author