Development and Change最新文献

{"title":"Local Conceptions of Authority and Political Legitimacy in Africa","authors":"Laurent Fourchard","doi":"10.1111/dech.70045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.70045","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Portia Roelofs</span>, <span>Good Governance in Nigeria. Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-first Century</span>. <span>Cambridge</span>: Cambridge University Press, <span>2023</span>. <span>356</span> pp. £ 26.69 paperback.</p><p> <span>Peer Schouten</span>, <span>Roadblock Politics. The Origins of Violence in Central Africa</span>. <span>Cambridge</span>: Cambridge University Press, <span>2022</span>. <span>256</span> pp. £ 95.78 hardcover.</p><p>The state in Africa has been the object of ongoing analysis and debate. Those who qualify it as ‘failed’, ‘weak’, ‘fragile’ or ‘neo-patrimonial’ rely on a strict Weberian definition which views the state as the monopolist of legitimate physical violence, an autonomous bureaucratic apparatus, the embodiment of popular sovereignty, and a spatially and territorially coherent entity. These features represent an essentially Western ideal type. As an alternative, scholars have explored its long historical formation (Bayart, <span>1989</span>; Cooper, <span>2002</span>; Hibou and Tozy, <span>2020</span>), the interpenetration of the bureaucratic realm and the social world (Mitchell, <span>1991</span>), and the everyday making of the state through processes of negotiation, contestation and bricolage (Hagmann and Péclard, <span>2010</span>). Other scholars have examined the fabric of informal political order, emphasizing, sometimes uncritically, ‘the strength of weak states’ (Meagher, <span>2012</span>). This essay reviews the two books listed above by Portia Roelofs and Peer Schouten, which are part of the ongoing discussion on state-making theory. Both authors reflect on this theory from a local perspective, employing popular understandings of accountability, legitimacy and forms of sovereignty.</p><p>Roelofs book on Nigeria and Schouten's on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are excellent cases through which to examine these issues and to rethink some of the significant challenges Africa faces. These include an outward-looking political economy based on mineral wealth in parts of the territory (for example, oil in Nigeria and coltan, copper and gold in Eastern Congo); decades of armed conflicts, indicating the difficulty of the central state in controlling its national territory; widespread forms of patronage understood as the distribution by politicians of private goods to citizens; and the imposition of structural adjustment programmes by the International Monetary Fund which drastically reduced the state bureaucracy and its capacity to govern societies.</p><p>At first glance, the title of Portia Roelofs book <i>Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-first Century</i> (hereafter <i>Good Governance in Nigeria</i>) might be viewed as provocative. It is surprising to see good governance associated with this country, given that Nigerian politics is often characterized in academic literature by neo-patrimonialism, patronage","PeriodicalId":48194,"journal":{"name":"Development and Change","volume":"57 1","pages":"188-199"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dech.70045","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146217433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How to Vaccinate a Fish: Merck, the Pharmaceutical Industry and Developing Surveillance Capitalism within the Blue Revolution","authors":"Anthony Pahnke","doi":"10.1111/dech.70040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.70040","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This article discusses the strategic evolution of the transnational pharmaceutical firm Merck in the animal agriculture sector, focusing especially on aquaculture. This evolution began in 2019 with Merck's development of ‘big data’ technologies (for example, cloud computing, mobile data and artificial intelligence) to control supply chains through real-time interventions in fish monitoring and tracking, disease treatment and operation maintenance. It argues that Merck's adoption of such technologies is consistent with the capitalist accumulation strategies of the Blue Revolution, which started to promote offshore and inland aquaculture operations to meet the growing global demand for fish in the mid-1980s. Integral to this technological evolution is surveillance capitalism, which requires individuals — in this case, fishers — to collect and share data with corporations that then control them. This study contributes to debates on the concept of surveillance capitalism, noting how Merck's version features an ideology that apparently offers solutions to problems faced by fishers but actually contributes to corporate consolidation.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48194,"journal":{"name":"Development and Change","volume":"57 1","pages":"79-102"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146217379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"China's Belt and Road Initiative in Pakistan: Bureaucratic Coordination and Chinese State-led Development Abroad","authors":"Hong Zhang","doi":"10.1111/dech.70039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.70039","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines China's bureaucratic approach to international development cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, focusing on bureaucratically structured policy coordination as a core mechanism. It highlights the central role of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) — China's top economic planning agency — in coordinating bilateral development agendas with partner countries. Drawing on China's development engagement with Pakistan as a critical case, the author analyses how the NDRC-led mechanism reflects China's state-led development logic and the integration of domestic and international development goals. While this mechanism has enabled the rapid mobilization of capital and infrastructure delivery, it also reveals institutional shortcomings, including a lack of horizontal coordination across Chinese bureaucracies, weak responsiveness to local political dynamics, and difficulties in sustaining cross-sectoral initiatives. Based on fieldwork and documentary analysis, the article argues that China's model of bureaucratic coordination — while potentially influential in shaping global development paradigms — faces significant limitations unless it evolves greater institutional adaptability to operate effectively in complex governance environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":48194,"journal":{"name":"Development and Change","volume":"57 1","pages":"103-129"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dech.70039","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146224403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Capitalist Development or Super-exploitation? Exploring Divergent Patterns of Surplus Appropriation along Coffee Commodity Chains","authors":"Karl Wienhold,&nbsp;Luís Silveira Santos,&nbsp;Luis F. Goulao","doi":"10.1111/dech.70041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.70041","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In 1997, John Talbot reported that the liberalization of the global coffee trade had led to diverging trends in retail and wholesale prices, resulting in a shift of surplus value from farmers to downstream firms. This trend has persisted over subsequent decades amid expanded production, intensified farming, greater consumer product differentiation and deepening farmer poverty. This article investigates these seemingly contradictory processes based on the hypothesis of dual commodity chains for mild and non-mild coffee types, given their distinct production systems, labour processes and consumption formats. In the study, surplus value appropriated at each node of the respective chains is isolated and expressed in constant local purchasing power terms from 1990 to 2019. Results indicate processes of downstream surplus transfer from farmers in both chains. For non-mild coffee, surplus is passed on to consumers, coinciding with expanded production. By contrast, mild coffee shows a surplus transfer of double the magnitude, appropriated at downstream nodes, alongside a slight decline in global output. This pattern is interpreted as the super-exploitation of mild coffee farming labour by transnational merchant capital, driven by the unique characteristics of mild coffee farmers as petty commodity producers.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48194,"journal":{"name":"Development and Change","volume":"57 1","pages":"130-161"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146216923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Two Regimes of Waste and Value: ‘Post-Disaster’ Landscapes in a New India","authors":"Vasudha Chhotray,&nbsp;David Singh","doi":"10.1111/dech.70038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.70038","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this age of ‘disaster capitalism’, catastrophes are neither ‘natural’ nor ‘external’. They are political events mediating and vitally shaping the unequal and exploitative use of environmental resources. India's ‘post-disaster’ landscapes at the turn of the new millennium powerfully demonstrate how visions of the new-normal can be imposed in the aftermath of a catastrophe by indomitable state–capital alliances. Insidious ideas of entrepreneurship and a muscular Hindutva-tinged liberalization have served as the main tropes of post-disaster recovery and management interventions in India over the past two decades. The article demonstrates how these post-disaster landscapes, as seen in the cases of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake and 1999 Odisha super-cyclone, can be understood through regimes of waste and value, which redefine the meanings of space and nature. At their core, these regimes rely on the purposive use of institutions, laws and discourses by powerful actors at multiple levels. The article suggests that the post-disaster landscape offers a unique perspective into the everyday environmental authoritarianism unfolding throughout India today.</p>","PeriodicalId":48194,"journal":{"name":"Development and Change","volume":"57 1","pages":"27-49"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dech.70038","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146216922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bake Sales to Save Nature: Why Wall Street Conservation Survives","authors":"Jessica Dempsey","doi":"10.1111/dech.70035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.70035","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Academics have spent decades analysing the harms and failures of market and finance-led biodiversity policy. Yet, even though ‘selling nature to save it’ looks less like the promised green capitalism and more like a decades-long bake sale in that its efforts are small, piecemeal and rely on copious amounts of cheap capital, the approach remains dominant. Adopting the term ‘Wall Street Conservation’, this article asks why it remains hegemonic, in spite of all the failures. Ruth Wilson Gilmore's potent approach to understanding entrenched systems like the prison–industrial complex provides a critical framework for this inquiry: if Wall Street Conservation is not solving the problem it is meant to, what kinds of problems <i>is</i> it solving, and for whom?</p>","PeriodicalId":48194,"journal":{"name":"Development and Change","volume":"57 1","pages":"3-26"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dech.70035","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146223912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Political Economy of Renewables Capitalism: Moving beyond ‘Climate Change’ vs ‘System Change’","authors":"Murat Arsel,&nbsp;Alfredo Saad-Filho","doi":"10.1111/dech.70033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.70033","url":null,"abstract":"<p>There is a growing tendency to argue that the capitalist mode of production is fundamentally incompatible with climate stability and that ‘system change’ is needed to prevent apocalyptic ‘climate change’. This position overstates capitalism's dependence on fossil fuels. Rather than fossil fuels per se, capitalism requires abundant, secure and predictable energy sources. Furthermore, capitalism cannot postpone the stabilization of the earth's climate indefinitely, as doing so threatens core systemic imperatives: the generation and accumulation of profits and reproduction of capitalism across space and time. The growth in renewable energy generation could bring about a transition from ‘fossil capitalism’ to ‘renewables capitalism’. While this could potentially eliminate the ecological risks of climate change, it would most likely exacerbate existing socio-economic inequalities and environmental injustices associated with increased extraction and consumption of natural resources. The role of counter-hegemonic movements remains crucial for the creation of a democratic and equitable system of production and distribution.</p>","PeriodicalId":48194,"journal":{"name":"Development and Change","volume":"56 4-5","pages":"619-644"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dech.70033","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145730443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Decarbonizing Agriculture and Beyond: What Is at Stake?","authors":"Arindam Banerjee,&nbsp;Anirban Dasgupta","doi":"10.1111/dech.70029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.70029","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This article argues that an effective rethinking of agriculture in the light of the climate emergency should aim to achieve more than decarbonization in agricultural production. The multidimensional ecological crisis precipitated by industrial agriculture can only be addressed through an integrated approach that seeks to restore the ecological balance through sustainable production practices. However, such a programme of reversing the ecological footprint generates its own tensions. Agriculture will continue to be a critical source of food and livelihoods which will necessitate trade-offs regarding the sector's role in restoring and maintaining ecological balance. Fundamental institutional change will be needed to reconcile the ecological regeneration process (in agriculture) with the goals of food production and livelihood provision. The existing political economy of corporate agrifood systems, the neoliberal state and contemporary agrarian social structures could create obstacles to such change. A concerted programme of public action will therefore be required to move forward.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48194,"journal":{"name":"Development and Change","volume":"56 4-5","pages":"755-782"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145719742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Socially Necessary Green Development in India","authors":"Rohit Azad,&nbsp;Shouvik Chakraborty","doi":"10.1111/dech.70023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.70023","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Inequality and climate change are intricately linked, both in terms of the cause and the effect of climate change. The insight that inequality in emissions goes hand in hand with rising socio-economic inequality gives the impression that this is a straightforward, positive relationship, giving rise to the assumption that a mere redistribution of income in favour of the poor and disadvantaged will reverse the climate crisis. Focusing on the Indian context, this article shows that this may be an erroneous assumption. A redistribution of income in favour of those at the lower end of the population may actually lead to higher emissions per capita — the carbon inequality paradox. However, this does not mean that a choice has to be made between emissions and equality. While energy may be required for an egalitarian development, the source of that energy need not be dirty. The authors argue that a green energy transition is vital for any progressive fight against the twin problems of rising emissions and inequality. They propose a green development programme which, as well as promoting this energy transition, encourages socially necessary consumption through state-led expenditure programmes while socially unnecessary expenses of the elite are reined in through aggressive direct and indirect taxes.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":48194,"journal":{"name":"Development and Change","volume":"56 4-5","pages":"928-956"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145719383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Development Rethought or Forgotten? A Review of the UNCTAD Trade and Development Report 2024","authors":"Baptiste Albertone,&nbsp;Tin Hinane El Kadi,&nbsp;Amir Lebdioui","doi":"10.1111/dech.70030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.70030","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;UNCTAD, &lt;i&gt;Trade and Development Report 2024: Rethinking Development in the Age of Discontent&lt;/i&gt;. Geneva: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2024. xiv + 190 pp&lt;/b&gt;. https://unctad.org/publication/trade-and-development-report-2024&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fifty years later, we are living in a new crisis in global development. Only 15 per cent of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are currently on track, with some indicators even having dipped below their 2015 baselines (UN, &lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;). As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres remarked, ‘Instead of leaving no one behind, we risk leaving the SDGs behind’ (Guterres, &lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;). Since 2015, the annual financing gap of the SDGs has increased by 60 per cent, from US$ 2.5 trillion to US$ 4 trillion in 2024 (OECD, &lt;span&gt;2025&lt;/span&gt;; UNCTAD, &lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;). The COVID-19 pandemic proved to be a critical stress test for a system already struggling to manage multiple and overlapping structural trends that had been building since the 2008 global financial crisis. These include rising debt burdens, widening inequalities within and across countries, a slowdown in international trade and a weak investment climate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;These challenges lie at the core of UNCTAD's historic mandate, which is why, before engaging with our critique of its &lt;i&gt;Trade and Development Report 2024: Rethinking Development in the Age of Discontent&lt;/i&gt; (henceforth TDR 2024 or the Report), it is important to first understand and situate the unique and politically significant role that the institution as the principal body advocating for the economic interests of developing nations plays within the UN system. Established in 1964 amid intense debates over the inequities of the post-war international economic order, UNCTAD was created largely at the initiative of countries from the Global South to provide them with a stronger, more unified voice in global economic governance. Unlike more technocratic bodies, UNCTAD was explicitly designed as a platform for multilateral negotiations among countries at different stages of development. It aimed to problematize questions of trade, finance, investment and technology from a development perspective — areas frequently sidelined by established institutions dominated by advanced economies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a result, UNCTAD has been instrumental in advancing analytical work on a range of issues central to development, including the structural disadvantages facing commodity-dependent economies, barriers to technology access, the need for fairer trade rules, the dangers of capital account liberalization, pressures on sovereign borrowers and the importance of industrial policy and policy space for developing countries. In doing so, UNCTAD has consistently served as a counterpoint to more orthodox, market-led approaches favoured and advanced by institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;UNCTAD's analysis and policy recommendations have traditionally been grounded in a structurali","PeriodicalId":48194,"journal":{"name":"Development and Change","volume":"56 4-5","pages":"1084-1110"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dech.70030","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145719575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}