Scarcity, Choice and Public Policy in Middle Africa

Donald Rothchild, Robert L. Curry Jr.

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520312159
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

New challenges and opportunities have come to the fore as the middle African States have consolidated their independence. In grappling with economic scarcity and restricted choice, decision-makers must transform domestic institutions and practices and reformulate their relationship to the global economy. The authors of this book believe that their efforts can be advanced by resorting to a problem-solving focus. Such an approach will, in their opinion. allow social scientists to remain true to their professional disciplines while permitting them to embrace African-designated objectives. By inquiring into decision processes and results, policy analysis seeks to identify optimal courses of action in the context of prevailing societal demands and constraints.   In general, African decision-makers have adopted three choice strategies with an eye to reducing scarcity and expanding alternatives: accommodation, reorganization, and transformation. When these choice strategies are related to system goals, striking variations in preferences and priorities emerge, the most significant of which concern decision on mobilizing and distributing resources and achieving freedom from external control. In various trade--off situations (involving negotiations by producer cartels, bargaining between multinational companies and African host countries, and external economic assistance) diverse policy patters among the groups in relating to the benefits and costs of particular lines of action appear. Each choice strategy has its own benefit-cost combination. Since no approach may be equally valid cross-nationally, the decision elites of each country are left with the responsibility for determining their own goals and priorities.

Many titles in the Voices Revived program are also newly available as ebooks, offered at a discounted price to support wider access to scholarly work.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 1
• Acknowledgments
• PART I
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1 Political Economy and Policy Choice in theThird World
• PART II
• CHAPTER 2 Changing Institutional Resources
• CHAPTER 3 System Goals, Decision -making Rules, and Collective Choices
• PART Ill IMPLEMENTING POLICY CHOICES FOR DEVELOPMENT
• CHAPTER 4 Global Market Contacts: Bargaining Between Multinational Comp anies and African Governments
• CHAPTER 5 Beyond the Nation-State: Principles of Economic Integr ation
• CHAPTER 6 Policy Integration and Exte rnal Action: A Minimalist Choice
• CHAPTER 7 Global Assistance for Deve lopment: Choosing an Appropriate Policy to Cope with Scarcity
• PART IV CONCLUSION: EVALUATING THE PROSPECTS
• CHAPTER 8 Reducing Scarcity and E xpanding Choice
• Index