Short description
The key question for post-apartheid South Africa will be the appropriate use of state power in economic management. The text covers aspects of South Africa's development in the context of domestic and international debates including trade and industrial policy and macroeconomic policy.
Long description
Historically, the South African state has involved itself massively in the shaping of economic development. State intervention has been evident not only in relation to the international flow of goods, capital and technology, but in the exceptional degree of control over the mobility of labour and capital, including the allocation of property rights. The extent of this intervention is unparalleled among the free market economies with which South Africa is usually - though mistakenly - classified. The African National Congress, the chief challenge to National Party leadership as South Africa moves towards a negotiated settlement, has also been influenced by its own statist tradition with its origins in socialist thinking, and by its own belief in the virtues of interventionist economic planning. Like the National party, however, at the crucial moment of transition the ANC is undergoing a process of ideological upheaval. Its dilemma is a result of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the challenge even to mild forms for statism is Western Europe and elsewhere. If negotiations succeed, the key question for post-apartheid South Africa will be the appropriate use of state power in economic management. If South Africa is to avoid the unnecessary costs and conflict that will result from economic mismanagement, there will be a need for more accurate assessments of the state's capacity and of the possibilities for its constructive deployment of that capacity. In this book, some of South Africa's leading economists address these issues, analyzing South Africa's problems and policies and drawing on the world-wide debate for insights, analogies and lessons. State and Market in Post-Apartheid South Africa covers aspects of South Africa's development in the context of these domestic and international debates. These include: the current theoretical debate about the relationship between the state and market; trade and industrial policy; ownership and governance of productive enterprises; macro-economic policy; urbanizaiton and social services; agriculture.