Maldevelopment: anatomy of a global failure

Abstract

Aims at a political analysis of the crisis in development in the Third World, particularly Africa, setting the discussion within the changed realities of post-Cold War international relations and the crisis facing socialism in practice and ideology. The first four chapters examine the various dimensions of this crisis of development: an economic survey; the drift of the 1975-1985 decade; the crisis of state and society; and Africa's vulnerability. The second four chapters offer some elements for a response: an exposition of an alternative development based on social and political democracy and delinking (neither statism nor liberalisation); the political and social conditions for such a development path; inter-African and South-South cooperation; and a discussion of the need for and likelihood of the emergence of a "polycentric' world. Such an international order would not be based on the duopoly of the superpowers but on numerous regional spaces founded on close cooperation and interdependence. Such interdependence, however, would be different from the current transnationalisation of economies where the weak are forced to submit to the demands of the strong. -M.Amos