A developmental state in SA is a dream deferred
Despite politicians marking it as such, SA lacks the economic chops to genuinely mark itself as a developing state says Anthony Sibiya
A renowned American author, Prof Chalmers Ashby Johnson, is well known for having coined the developmental state concept. For him, a developmental state occurs when the state has a focused role on the growth and development of the economy and undertakes necessary policy measures to accomplish this long-term objective. In this regard, the Southeast Asian countries (known as Asian Tigers), such as Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam and South Korea, are good examples of nations, which, in the context of a developmental state, successfully (though not perfectly) ushered in economic growth and recovery. They departed from the Bretton-Woods orthodox policies of development and employed a Weberian approach, which concerns itself with resourceful and efficient bureaucratic systems that are internal and inter-related (a notion of a strong and capable public service). There is no doubt that the Asian Tigers provide the best practice for global nations to learn from, especially those in Afri...
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