Professional Affiliation

Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Colgate University

Expert Bio

My research focuses on the political economy of developing countries, from the colonial to the contemporary periods. My geographical specialty is southern Africa, but I maintain a strong comparative interest in Latin America. I received an A.B. in History and Political Science from Duke University in 1982. I obtained my Master's degree and my Doctorate in Politics from Oxford University in 1985 and 1989 respectively.Initially, my interest in politics was a personal one. As a child growing up in South Carolina, I witnessed the political loyalties of my parents completely reconfigured by the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. As a result of these momentous events, I became intrigued by the ways in which struggle and protest can change and shape the political process. As an undergraduate at Duke, I pursued this interest not only by studying the civil rights movement and its impact on politics in the South in more depth but also by extending my survey to liberation movements in other parts of the world such as Africa. Of all the movements and countries I studied, the story of Mozambique's struggle for liberation was so captivating that I decided to make Lusophone Africa the focus of my graduate study at Oxford University.Three broad questions have guided my research since graduate school. First, what was the value to Portugal of the empire in Africa? Whether colonies brought costs or benefits to the metropole has fuelled numerous debates in the French and British historiography since Lenin and Hobson first clashed over the purpose of empire a century ago. The question is important because the role that colonies played, or were expected to play, in the development of the metropole also helps to explain why colonies had particular economic and political systems, grew certain crops, and engaged in certain labor processes. Yet, with a few exceptions, the study of the interaction between the Portuguese metropole and the colonies had been largely neglected. Using the production of cotton as the medium through which I explored this process was the focus of my Ph.D. and my subsequent book, which was published with Oxford University Press in 1993.The second question focused on a liberated country rather than the colonial power, the present rather than the past. It asked, "To what extent has colonialism shaped the current development of the state, the economy, and social forces in Mozambique?" In other parts of Africa, much research has debated the impact of the colonial moment on the efforts by independent governments to transform their countries. In recent publications, I have assessed the ways in which political and economic continuities of, and ruptures from, the colonial period have offered constraints as well as opportunities for the economic policy choices that the contemporary government has made since independence. Although grounded in an understanding of the importance of history, my current work at the Wilson Center will adopt a more comparative and theoretical approach to study the process and outcome of economic restructuring in Africa. It asks:"To what extent does governmental commitment to neoliberal policies and the reaction of social forces to the adoption of these policies influence their results?" In this study, I try to shift the debate away from assessing whether African governments are "neopatrimonial" or not, to explaining the variation in the legitimacy and capacity of new economic institutions such as public-private partnerships across a range of countries. The study relies on fieldwork and interviews with governmental officials, company directors, trades unionists, workers, and consumers in South Africa, Mozambique, Angola, and Uganda as well as surveys and databases on privatization and public-private partnerships throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Education

B.A.(1982) History and Political Science, Duke University; M. Phil. (1985) Politics, St. Peter's College, Oxford University; D. Phil. (1989) Politics, St. Hilda's College, Oxford University

 

Subjects

Africa

 

Experience

• Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Colgate University, 1996-present
• Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Colgate University, 1990-96
• Coordinator, African Studies, Africana and Latin American Studies Program, Colgate University, 1999-2002

 

 

 

Expertise

Political and economic transitions, particularly privatization, in Africa including Mozambique, Uganda, South Africa, and Angola

 

 

 

Wilson Center Project

"The Political Economy of Neoliberal Reform: A Comparative Study of Four African Countries"

Project Summary

Many scholars contend that the partial implementation of neoliberal reforms in Africa is due to the persistence of "neopatrimonial" practices engaged in by African states. On the contrary, my study argues that reform outcomes have varied significantly across the continent and thus the neopatrimonial character attributed to African states requires reassessment. I adopt a more nuanced approach to differentiating among reform outcomes by examining a state's commitment to reforms as well as its ability to form a workable coalition of support for its policies. In this study, I compare the reform experiences of Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Angola. I seek to show that the implementation of reforms and their outcomes in Africa fit patterns observed in East and Central Europe and Latin America. Thus, African countries merit inclusion in comparative studies of other regions.

Major Publications

• "Conditions, Commitments and the Politics of Restructuring in Africa," Comparative Politics (forthcoming)
• Transforming Mozambique: The Politics of Privatization, 1975-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
• Politics in the Portuguese Empire: The State, Industry and Cotton, 1926-1974 (Oxford University Press, 1993)