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Publication

IDS Bulletin Vol. 18 Nos. 4

Interpreting Africa’s Crisis: Political Science versus Political Economy

Published on 1 October 1987

Summary Summary This article uses a critique of a recent IDS Bulletin on ‘Developmental States and African Agriculture’ to explore the analytic adequacy and political relevance of some kinds of social scientific analysis of Africa’s current economic and political crises. The critique focuses on different variants of political arguing that their claims to explanatory power are rather greater than their achievements. There are many dimensions of Africa’s current problems that cannot easily be handled from within a political economy framework, and in some cases a more orthodox political science perspective may be more useful. Resumen Resumen Interretación de la crisis africana. Ciencia política versus economía política Este artículo usa una crítica de un Boletín reciente del IDS sobre ‘Estados desarrollistas en la agricultura africana’ para explorar la ideoneidad analítica y la relevancia de algunos tipos de análisis científicos sobre la crisis politicoecómica actual de Africa. La crítica enfoca diversas variantes de políticas sosteniendo que su autoatribuído poder explicatorio supera sus logros. Son varias las dimensiones de los actuales problemas africanos las que no pueden ser examinadas fácilmente en el marco de la economía política, pudiendo ser más útil en algunos casos la cíencia política ortodoxa.

Cite this publication

Moore, M. (1987) Interpreting Africa's Crisis: Political Science versus Political Economy. IDS Bulletin 18(4): 7-15

Publication details

published by
Institute of Development Studies
authors
Moore, Mick

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