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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Cultural Determinism, Western Hegemony and the Efficacy of Defective States |
| Author: | Jacoby, Tim |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Periodical: | Review of African Political Economy |
| Volume: | 32 |
| Issue: | 104-105 |
| Pages: | 215-233 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | developing countries Africa |
| Subjects: | images foreign intervention State collapse Politics and Government |
| External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056240500329106 |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that the notion of a defective State, including those designated as 'weak', 'failed' or 'collapsed', has a number of obvious advantages for the West. In the West, there has been a resurgence in cultural understandings of social instability. Thus, the first section argues that, for Western policymakers, the key determinant of State defectiveness is the immutably obscurant and resistant nature of local cultural patterns. Such a view allows relief agencies working in defective States both to ignore their own complicity in existent power relations and the consequences of the West's response - the focus of section two. The third section argues that transforming defective States deemed to be worthy of, and amenable to, remedial action involves deregulating markets, privatizing the public sector and using aid inputs to exploit comparative advantages in labour intensity. Achieving this may involve the strengthening of 'willing' comprador elites, the selective promotion of 'good governance' and, in cases of acute debilitation, the imposition of a new structure of sovereignty conducive to greater Western penetration. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
