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Developmental States in Sub-Saharan Africa: Reflections on State, Development, and Foreign Policy

This article examines discussions on state development in the context of sub-Saharan Africa by concentrating on the nexus of state, development, and foreign policy. First, the article notes ambiguity to still exist on what the essential characteristics of a developmental state are, both in general as well as in sub-Saharan Africa, mainly because developmental state scholars see development as a context-dependent process. Also, scholars often even analyze different aspects of developmental states in the same context (i.e., quality of democracy, developmental outcomes, analysis of what is, and reflections on what should be). Second, even though the developmental state framework endorses a perspective that sharply contradicts the neoliberal orthodoxy, the case may be that the two occasionally converge on some policy proposals. Thus, if the goal is to formulate and implement effective policies in sub-Saharan Africa, it is better not to derive an oversimplified dichotomy between developmental state and orthodoxy. Lastly, the article highlights relatively recent attempts to have occurred investigating developmental states’ foreign policy dimension in the context of South Africa, thus offering a novel and timely research agenda.