Scarcity, Choice and Public Policy in Middle Africa

By Donald Rothchild and Robert L. Curry Jr.

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. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520312159

Donald Rothchild

Donald Rothchild was Professor of Political Science, Emeritus at the University of California, Davis. Robert L. Curry, Jr. is a retired Professor from the College of Social Sciences & Interdisciplinary Studies at California State University, Sacramento.

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SCARCITY, CHOICE, AND PUBLIC POLICY IN MIDDLE AFRICA

Scarcity, Choice, and Public Policy in Middle Africa

DONALD ROTHCHILD and ROBERT L. CURRY, Jr.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY • LOS ANGELES • LONDON

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

Copyright © 1978 by

The Regents of the University of California

ISBN 0-520-03378-7

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-50255

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents 1

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

Acknowledgments

Although frequent appeals are heard for increased interdisciplinary study and research, there is, at present, precious little material of this sort available to the serious analyst or policy maker. This volume attempts to compensate in part for this glaring lack. By uniting the disciplines of political science and economics, it seeks to probe the policy alternatives availing to African decision-makers under the difficult circumstances now prevailing. We hope that this effort will stimulate further policy-relevant research on Third World issues.

In a broad-ranging work of this type, our indebtedness to colleagues, foundations, librarians, university and research institutions, and civil servants in African and non-African countries goes far beyond anything that we can properly acknowledge. We apologize at the outset to all those whose contributions are not given specific recognition here. Nevertheless, for purposes of brevity, we shall limit ourselves to mentioning only those who have played a direct and substantial role in the shaping of this work. Since we have not always accepted their advice, they can in no way be held accountable for the final result.

In particular, we are deeply indebted to Larry Wade, Alexander Groth, David Laitin, Robert Lieber, Glen Gambles,

VIII I Acknowledgments

Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith, Cynthia Brantley, Victor Olorun- sola, Ralph Braibanti, Josephine Milburn, Claude Welch, and Edward Olson for careful and insightful comments on various chapters. Marlyn Madison, Karen Fowler, and Lako Tongun provided helpful research assistance, Mimi Dixon and Patricia Arthur gave secretarial assistance most cheerfully, and Linda Eernisse displayed commendable patience when typing (and retyping) the work in its entirety. A part of Chapter 1 was presented as an Open Lecture at the University of Ghana, Legon and was published by the Ghana Universities Press, and a part of Chapter 4 was published in the Journal of Modern African Studies (vol. 12, no. 2, June 1974). We wish to thank the Registrar of the University of Ghana, Legon and the Journal editor and Cambridge University Press for permission to reuse these materials. The appendix to Chapter 1 is based on pages 69 through 73 of A Logic of Public Policy by L. L. Wade and R. L. Curry, Jr., published by the Duxbury Press. We wish to thank Duxbury for permission to use this section. Financial costs were covered by faculty research grants at the University of California, Davis.

But over and above all of these forms of assistance is the steady and unwavering support we have received from our wives, Edith W. Rothchild and Dana Curry. We are taking the opportunity of dedicating our book to them in recognition of this fact.

DONALD ROTHCHILD ROBERT L. CURRY, JR.

University of California, Davis California State University,

and University of Ghana, Legon Sacramento

PART I

<

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

Political Economy and

Policy Choice in theThird World

Social scientists frequently appear to find themselves in a dilemma: how to remain true to the demands of their professional disciplines and how, at the same time, to identify with the needs and aspirations of the governments and peoples of Africa. As great as this conflict seems on the surface, the apparent gap between these two commitments could be reduced through altered theoretical framework. By focusing on policy analysis, both disciplinary and areal orientations can be juxtaposed, helping social scientists who are concentrating on the Third World to raise the right questions.¹ Thomas R. Dye’s remark that policy analysis might be labeled the ‘thinking man’s response’ to demands that social science become more ‘relevant’ to the problems of our society is as applicable to non-Western as to Western countries.²

4 / Scarcity, Choice, and Public Policy in Middle Africa

Clearly, one way in which social scientists could make a substantial contribution to African development is by helping decision-makers to develop policy objectives and to implement programs to attain them. Rather than assuming a neutral and value-free stance, these analysts might adopt, or at least be sensitive to, the values that could facilitate the probing of complicated issues and the proposing of alternative courses of action to persons in positions of power and responsibility. What is needed, assert Warren F. Ilchman and Norman T. Uphoff, are some ways of assessing the comparative efficiency of policy alternatives and some means of formulating priorities.3 4 We agree, and we view a political economy framework as an appropriate analytical tool to deal with the dynamics of social change that require the formulation and ranking of priorities and the developing and implementing of policy alternatives. In an examination of the decisional choices by public authorities in achieving political, social, and economic goals, political economy offers a useful means of inquiring into the interaction between social, political, and economic organization and process. Such an emphasis on decisional choices orients a political economy approach more toward problem-solving than toward management or maintenance A

Policy analysis combines two critical disciplines that are central to an understanding of the process of transformation occurring throughout Africa today — political science and economics. Their interdependence is shown by the priorities set by decision-makers as well as by the problems of application they have encountered. Thus, even while placing considerable emphasis on productive efficiency, planners find themselves unable to isolate the economic factors they seek to influence from political rules and doctrines or social beliefs and habits.5 Insensitivity to the norms, values, and practices of pastoral people may actually hamper the production of meat or undermine the establishment of viable ranching schemes; similarly, inattention to locally held social stratification patterns may make the diffusion of technological innovation extremely difficult.6 Economic values, then, can only be effectively considered in a broader context, one which places heavy stress on both the political variable and the social-psychological environment.

In emphasizing the elements of choice in relation to political and economic resources, the new political economy serves as a theoretical model for two main groups: the students of developmental processes seeking analytical insights into the efficiency of resource mobilization and allocation in the particular time-place circumstances prevailing in various states, and the decision-maker searching for means to rank priorities, develop alternative policy designs, and choose and implement a specific policy program. Political economy, therefore, performs both analytic and prescriptive functions.7 It makes possible a fuller insight into the vital interplay between political and social process and organization, and economic practices.

Consequently, political economy combines pure and applied social science research, and thus acquires a dual utility appealing to scholars and statesmen alike.

The social scientist or decision-maker utilizing the political economy approach must be wary of a number of possible pitfalls. Later we shall specifically examine the differences in the policy processes between developed and developing societies. Suffice it for now to point out some general problems in the way of easy application of this Western-based theoretical instrument to non-Western circumstances.

First, those utilizing a political economy framework must make a conscious effort to accept the existence and validity of different political cultures in which formal and informal decision rules are shaped. In this sense, it is unwise for them to minimize the variance in meanings which diverse societies give to such widely used terms as democracy, stability, freedom, equality, and efficiency. Different definitions as well as different norms, values, and practices in Third World societies will likely have a distinct impact on the decisional process (for example, the extent to which command as against bargaining procedures prevail). Men are obviously not malleable productive units but human beings with pronounced feelings, interests, habits, and values. As the latter impinge on policymaking, planners may become circumscribed in their capacity to implement transformation: for example, the human costs of transformed productive processes might be too great. It is therefore essential that those adopting a political economy approach view the process of change as much as possible from within a particular situation. By emphasizing the ability of leaders to maximize the goals they set for themselves, the policy analyst can go far in avoiding preconceived preferences that may hinder a rigorous and systematic assessment of policy options under the conditions operating in a particular developing society.

Second, the policy analyst will enhance the effectiveness of his recommendations by avoiding deterministic thinking. All too often Western observers conceptualize change as leading in a sequential manner to a parliamentary type of democracy, while his Eastern counterpart (as distinct from the neo-Marxist theorist) superimposes a rigid form of class analysis and an inevitable proletarian triumph on the African scene.⁸ But over and above these alien preconceptions is another, and possibly more insidious, type of determinism: namely, a self-defeating pessimism. The assumption (whether grounded on conspiracy doctrines or not) that existing international power relations foredoom an indefinite continuance of African underdevelopment does not automatically give rise to realism. A case in point is the prediction of one scholar that few of the African countries are capable of maintaining their current position in the international rank order; to score net gains seems to be well-nigh impossible for many.⁹ For African decision-makers to accept such a gloomy prognosis would be to give up the struggle for transformation before it starts. Why bother to restructure one’s opportunities if the chances of altering the outcome are so restricted from the outset? By contrast, policy analysts probe given environments to find whatever opportunities, large or small, may be present. They experiment with a wide array of problem-solving initiatives, seeking thereby to enlarge choice through a more effective use of available resources. In this sense, realism is commitment to the potential instead of to the actual. Such futuristic orientations leave eventual outcomes undetermined and give policy formers an enhanced role in shaping their countries’ relationship to their environments.

Third, the policy analyst must be cautious about reaching conclusions on alternative courses of action that rest on a narrow time perspective. Yehezkel Dror’s comments on public policy-making in developing countries are pertinent: Comparison with the past, contends Dror, is inapplicable: the preindependence period is too different in most variables, and the independence period too short.¹⁰ He notes, for example, that if the change between past and present net output is insufficient to indicate a future trend, conclusions drawing upon short-term comparisions may be misleading, even fallacious.11 Dror’s point is well taken. In light of the poverty and inequalities inherited from the past, it would be a mistake to evaluate Third World performances in terms of brief postcolonial time spans. Such assessments could lead either to excessive optimism when compared with developmental experience in colonial times or to excessive pessimism when compared with future aspirations. A broader time perspective seems essential in order to minimize the gap between the desirable and the realizable.

Fourth, the policy analyst focusing on Third World countries cannot usefully adopt a static theoretical orientation. The process of transformation involves dissatisfaction with the status quo as well as determination and capacity to alter the inherited order in a significant manner. Essential to this effort at revising social practices is a sense of urgency over the need for expanded options, not a limitation of vision to existing state functions and structures.12 In this sense, structural-functional analysis seems open to the criticism of not going far enough. Although it does enlarge our field for comparison by delineating which functions have corresponding structures in all societies, it affords us little insight into the dynamics of social change affecting all Third World countries (the broadening of the range and extent of organizational goals, international bargaining, exploitation and discrimination, pan-Africanism, regional integration, and so forth). Consequently, there would seem to be grounds for Richard Sklar’s complaint that in today’s Africa, an undue emphasis on the existing state system is likely to promote a conservative outlook that cannot easily accommodate the radical values of liberation, economic freedom, and continental unity.13

And fifth, policy analysts who inadvertently fail to emphasize, or at least recognize, concerns for human betterment court futility and neglect. The realistic problem-solver must aim toward worthwhile objectives if his recommendations are to have a useful thrust — the realism of idealism. To do otherwise, and merely catalog political and economic resources for efficient utilization, would be to engage in a mechanical exercise largely devoid of constructive purpose. Such efforts could, moreover, be used by life-negating decision-makers for goals that seem unworthy of systematic research. In brief, then, the policy sciences must never lose sight of such challenges as inequality, exploitation, and arbitrariness.14 As Zambia’s President Kaunda puts the matter so well: "We cannot succeed in any field, whether it be political, industrial or religious, if we fail to recognize that man is of primary importance."15 It would be truly myopic to overlook the fact that the end goal for the policy sciences is man’s self-fulfillment.

THE UTILITY OF A COMPARATIVE

POLICY APPROACH

Formulated most simply, policy analysis seeks to determine what rational courses of action are open to decision-makers in light of availing societal demands and constraints. It decides major guidelines for action directed at the future, mainly by governmental organs. These guidelines (policies) formally aim at achieving what is in the public interest by the best possible means.16 Through inquiry into real-world decision processes and outcomes, policy analysis tends to be realistic and pragmatic. It de-emphasizes the great isms (e.g., socialism versus capitalism) and stresses instead the fine gradations of choice that may be present in various systems.17 What is assumed to be common to all systems is scarcity of resources and a desire on the part of individuals to improve their, or their group’s, share of the output generated by using the resources. Government is left with a threefold task: (1) extracting resource contributions (taxes, national service, military duty, etc.); (2) setting priorities on the allocation of public resources among various objectives in response to demands by as well as among distinct interest groups and social classes; and (3) establishing regulations on enterprise and activities.18 In principle, rational governmental policies are based on cost-benefit considerations. Where a community secures more direct and indirect advantages (over disadvantages) from pursuing a given line of activity, then the policy can be considered useful and possibly be put into effect. Whether it actually is undertaken depends on whether other competing activities are expected to produce even greater net advantages.19 In making such calculations, the policy-maker must take into account various noneconomic factors involving social values, norms, habits, and practices as well as the more traditional economic objectives associated with productionist ends. Political economy thus seeks to combine the subjective of politics and society with the objective goals of economic growth.20 This interdisciplinary perspective enables the policy analyst to take a broad view of the process of change in transitional societies. The analyst employing a political economy approach is in a position to cope more effectively with such complicated and multidimensional issues as the preconditions for development, political exchange, external costs, transfers of resources, and the exogenous factor in development. The future is seen in terms of a process involving the expansion of resource availability and not merely the allocation of existing resources. Such a concern for growth and experimentation cannot afford the restrictions of static or deterministic assumptions about the political economy of development.

We feel that it is appropriate and useful to offer the reader a rational-choice model included as the appendix to this chapter. The model is heuristic, or nonempirical, in nature and therefore is limited to a set of logical propositions about the rational choice of public policies. Since this model contains the essence of many of the propositions on which the remainder of our volume is based, an understanding of it becomes essential to an appreciation of both our methodological approach and the substantive issues to which our main attention is directed.

If political economy can be useful to scholars and statesmen alike in determining the choices open to decision-makers, what scope exists for comparative analysis? To be sure, a situational approach emphasizes the capacity of the state or region to set priorities on the utilization of scarce resources. At the same time, an analyst need not look inward to the community affected by the decisional process. As Ilchman and Uphoff contend: Policies of different regimes can be compared over time and among countries on the basis of the comparative efficiency of different combinations of resources.²¹ A comparative outlook can, to the extent that it enlarges the awareness of meaningful alternatives on the part of policy-makers, be expected to complement the decisional process at the state or regional levels.

Without attempting to overplay the comparative dimension, it is important to note several ways in which it is useful in policy choice. First, a cross-national approach offers decisionmakers insights into comparable priority-ranking and policyimplementing experiences elsewhere. Policy-makers need not repeat the errors of other localities or countries; instead, the experiences of one political system can act as an example or a warning for another. Despite distinguishing political cultures and environmental circumstances, a number of similar questions confront all states. In matters of recruitment, extractions, budgeting and allocations, regulations, and relations with foreign countries and enterprises, they have much to learn from each other. Moreover, common experiences at the regional level (for example, the Lake Tahoe basin of the western United States and the Lake Victoria area of East Africa) may offer extensive scope for transnational policy analysis. To the extent that comparative policy analysis offers new insights on such issues, it goes far in fulfilling its basic problem-solving mandate.

Second, institutions can be compared in terms of their ability to promote desired policies and outcomes. Such institutions, described as stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior,²² can either make demands on the political system or convert these demands for resources and opportunities; in the latter case, governmental agencies such as the executive and legislative branches, the bureaucracy, and local administrations organize activities, determine priorities, and allocate costs and benefits.²³ By linking structures to the policy process, the political economy approach revives a flagging concern on the part of social scientists with political structures. The renewed focus on institutions reveals much about the way policies are formulated and implemented. Institutions, says Thomas R. Dye, may be so structured as to facilitate certain policy outcomes and to obstruct other policy outcomes. They may give advantage to certain interests in society and withhold advantage from other interests. Certain individuals and groups may enjoy greater access to government power under one set of structural characteristics than under another set.24 Clearly, there is much room for comparative analysis here. Such structurally based foci as federalism, legislative-executive relations, party organization, interest group strategies, and bureaucratic- military encounters can be examined cross-nationally for their impact on policy formulation and implementation. This approach is likely to open up some little used, but potentially profitable, vistas into the economizing process.

Third, the outputs of different political systems may be a suitable field for comparative examination. Such outputs, according to David Easton, consist of authoritative allocations of values or binding decisions and the actions implementing and related to them.25 Regime initiatives with respect to the environment, expressed in the form of rules, regulations, decisions, or actions, embody public policies on such issues as the mobilization and allocation of resources, tax burdens, redistribution of community income, and division of labor. Outputs such as these represent the operational profile of the political system 26 and, notwithstanding certain limitations arising from time-place circumstances discussed below, can be usefully compared for their impact on the environment.27 For example, a cross-national examination of the redistribution of resources from the relatively advantaged to the relatively disadvantaged parts of a polity could suggest much about the decisional efficiency of such actions. It is possible that policy-makers would be in a better position to put more radical reallocative or redistributive measures into effect if they had access to the kinds of information presented by comparative data analysis.

Fourth, comparisions of outcomes, as distinct from outputs, can be highly suggestive.²⁸ Here the policy analyst is concentrating on the consequences of actions rather than the decisions themselves. With a provision in the central budget for a reallocation of resources from the advantaged to the disadvantaged sections of the country, what are the results (anticipated or unanticipated) of these measures? Some findings on the outcomes of regimes in developing countries have already come to light. For example, although the Zambian government remained faithful to its doctrine on corrective equity among the provinces of the country, it actually spent more during the course of the first-plan period in the two major line-of-rail regions, Copperbelt and Central Provinces, than in the remaining six provinces combined; thus 287.8 million Zambian kwacha was allocated to the two more industrial provinces and ZK440.4 million in fact disbursed (53 percent more than planned), while ZK260.9 million was allotted to the other six provinces and 207.4 million actually expended (21 percent less than planned).²⁹ Government expenditure patterns thus pointed to a noticeable gap between promise and performance with respect to redistributional objectives. Moreover, Ira Sharkansky shows that the lower-income population of the least developed countries and of the least developed of the (United States) states were both taxed disproportionately; although taxes based on retail sales and excises were easiest to collect, they were regressive in their effects, as they fell most heavily upon the poor. Such a focus on outcomes, which minimizes the importance of doctrine in favor of actual performance criteria, is important for its ability to distinguish achievement from aspiration.30

And finally, a comparative approach adds perspective to an anlysis of the policy process in a particular political system. Richard Rose’s comments on the manner in which crossnational research enhances the meaningfulness of conclusions is insightful here. Rose states:

The significance of social and economic conditions for public policy can be tested comparatively by positive and null hypotheses. Contrasting countries with very large and very low gross national products per capita are likely to produce predictable and positive results. These findings can be modified in important ways, however, if one studies the aggregate gross national product of a country in relation to government choice about collective goods. It is often overlooked that the total gross national product of the Republic of China, India or France is far greater than that of Norway or the Netherlands; the relationship is reversed only when one analyzes wealth on a per capita basis.31

POLICY CONSTRAINTS: IDEAS, INFORMATION, AND STRUCTURE

In principle, then, policy analysis could be of great use to students and statesmen concentrating on Third World problems. Yet in practice this has not generally been the case. The limited application may be due to the existing literature’s focus on experiences in developed capitalistic countries (particularly the United States). To dwell on such culturally oriented objectives as private enterprise or parliamentary democracy, as do many Western writers, is to limit the relevance of research conclusions as far as many African or Asian observers are concerned. Similarly, Western caution and pragmatism seems out of touch with the radical trends that inevitably mark Third World conditions. Manfred Halpern contends that a modernizing state involves a persistent capacity for coping with a permanent revolution. 32 Unless the public policy literature can become attuned to this ongoing transformation, it risks the stigma of irrelevancy in Third World countries (and First and Second World lands as well).

The limited applicability of current policy science analyses to the developing countries becomes evident from an examination of the methods and tools of research at the disposal of the policy analyst. Not only are African-oriented analysts frequently bound by assumptions implicitly underlying much current policy research, but they are also constrained by inadequate and often unreliable data as well as an inability to relate existing data to comparable situations. In many African lands, statistics are notoriously undependable;33 where such information is available, it is not always clear what measurements are to be applied to the data if meaningful conclusions are to be reached. For example, key indices such as the gross domestic product and the gross national product are subject to different interpretations in essentially modern and traditional economic contexts; therefore, any effort to draw comparisons between them is likely to be misleading, even erroneous.34

These general constraints upon utilizing the burgeoning literature on policy in Third World circumstances are augmerited by the difficulty of having recourse to the input-outputfeedback model so basic to this approach. On the input side, the sources of demands on the regime are somewhat distinct between the more developed and the less developed countries. Whereas interest group and political party pressures for public and private goods are extensive in pluralistic Western societies, such sectors tend to be less organized and effective in the African states.³⁵ Demands for change are readily apparent, to be sure, but these are as likely to emanate from bureaucratic or governmental agencies, locally based expatriate groups, multinational corporate interests, foreign donor agencies, or external powers as from the more conventional political and economic sources of the West. Moreover, interest groups frequently exhibit a greater influence over administrators than over policymakers, and this has a larger impact on the implementation than the formulation of public policy.³⁶

With respect to the processing of demands, further differences emerge between the situations of the more developed and the less developed states. In many of the Third World countries, governmental structures which determine priorities on public issues are notable for their brittleness and ineffectiveness, rather than for the overbearing tendencies so often attributed to them. The reasons are not hard to find. Governmental organs lack the capacity in many instances to cope effectively with the range and intensity of demands confronting them. The most general trend that developed in the [political] sphere in these societies, states S.N. Eisenstadt, was marked discrepancy between the demands of different groups — parties, cliques, bureaucracy, army, regional groups — and the responses and ability of the central rulers to deal with these demands.³⁷

Failure to manage these demands leads directly to instability, lack of continuity, and what Eisenstadt depicts as breakdowns of modernization.

The fragility of a number of structures under Third World conditions has already been indicated. Suffice it here to note the weakness of a single key institution involved in the formulation of public policy: the policy-planning structures variously associated with the national organs of the new African states. Despite the wide acceptance of a need for centralized economic action, such institutions are often unable to integrate and manage demands. Commenting on the lack of central institutional authority in developing countries for enforcing compliance with development plans, one author observes that policymakers in these states will more likely than not "constitute merely another political group competing for attention and influence in the policymaking process.38

The ineffectiveness of these planning agencies to design and implement comprehensive programs for development, especially by comparison with such developed polities as the Soviet Union, stems largely from their difficulties over staff recruitment, reliable information, and relations with administrators and politicians. These organizations must compete with the ministries, parastatal bodies, and multinational corporations for trained persons, and given the prevailing salary structure, they often find themselves in a poor position to attract the most able personnel. Policy-making organizations are also constrained by the information at their disposal. Such information as is available to these planners, derived largely from spokesmen for interest group, subregional, partisan, and bureaucratic sources, is often sketchy and unreliable. Consequently, developmental programs based on this insufficient or misleading knowledge can be the cause of frustration and, even worse, of poor choices on developmental issues. Moreover, the relations between policymakers and bureaucrats or politicians are not necessarily harmonious. The coordination function expected of centralplanning instrumentalities may prove difficult to effect in real- world conditions. Professional administrators have not always responded positively in practice to the leads of policy-planning units; on the other hand, bureaucrats and political officials have been known to resist attempts by these agencies to expand their control.³⁹ The upshot is considerable institutional incapacity on the part of policy-planning organizations at just the point where their ability to offer coordinated direction to the economy seems most essential.

In addition to the structural difficulties besetting policymaking organizations in developing lands are the constraints upon choice which circumscribe their capacity for effective action. Certainly a wide array of factors impinge on that maneuverability: the ability to mobilize sufficient human and material resources, to secure reliable information, to manage interest group demands, to cope with the exogenous variable, and so forth. Something akin to a paradox of choice is apparent. Radical inclinations and solutions seemingly abound; in practice, however, administrators, and perhaps to a lesser extent policy-makers, frequently opt for incremental adjustments. Rather than starting anew to set values and objectives when dealing with social problems (the root method), those disposed toward incrementalism tend continually [to build] out from the current situation, step-by-step and by small degrees (the branch method).40 As Colin Leys points out, many of those involved in policy analysis complain over spending only 10 percent of their time on comprehensive planning, the remaining 90 percent being left to the more mundane tasks of management and control.41

How can one explain this seeming paradox of choice? No doubt the nature of the struggle against colonialism and neocolonialism, the dimension of the problems of poverty, illiteracy, and disease, the bitterness over lingering evidences of racism and exploitation, the glaring inequalities between subregions, races, and ethnic peoples, and the general disillusionment over the rate of change all help to account for the gap between aspiration and reality. Policy-makers and administrators, intent on achieving a high level of performance as rapidly as possible, often pursue short-term options; this course of action may involve, for example, an accommodation with the international capitalistic system, not out of any preference for such connections but because of concern over the costs of severing such relationships.42 It is largely the hostility of the inherited world environment that leaves policy analysts in the less developed countries (LDCs) with limited room for movement. To be sure, they can make some basic value decisions over international alignments, trading partners, and nationalization programs, but having once established these fundamental preferences, the environment impinges and thereby curtails subsequent choices on public policies.

To a degree at least, such a combination of environmental strain and inability to cope effectively is in contrast with the experience of the rich industrialized polities of the West. Not only are Western decision-makers induced by their values and assumptions to adopt reformist policy-making styles, but the very privileged position of their countries in the world community makes such an approach marginally acceptable — so long, that is, as prevailing conditions persist. In developing lands, however, incrementalism reduces the determination to search out and apply alternative courses of economic organization and runs counter to the prescriptions of African socialism as an ideology of development.43 To the extent that modern policy analysis is based on such values and assumptions, it is likely to secure only minimal acceptance from those who reject muddling through and insist, for sound reasons, upon a bolder experimentation associated with comprehensive planning.

As for the implementation and effect of policy (outputs and outcomes), the limited usefulness of the current publicpolicy literature is readily apparent.44 Here liberal Western social science, by its heavy stress on input agencies, seems somewhat incidental to African needs and priorities. Unlike the Marxists, who remain ever alert to the close connection between politics and economics, Western social scientists have all too often failed to pay sufficient heed to the difficulties in the way of accomplishing ends and to the consequences of policy application. The result is an overriding concern with process rather than problem-solving — a ranking of functions and goals sharply at variance with those held by leaders in the African states.45

The significant impact of interest group influence on policy application in the LDCs has already been noted. Such influence arises from interest group access to administrative decision-makers and the extensive pressures for concessions to these sectors deriving from such contacts. Colin Leys has argued recently that there is a fundamental contradiction involved in decision-making caused by the way that developing or underdeveloped countries are related to the global economy. Briefly, his point is that investors from the trading-center countries transfer capital and industrial technology to the periphery rawmaterial-producing countries. In the latter, centrist-company interests are protected by a ruling elite whose policies are designed by two groups: first, the foreign investors; and second, local smaller-scale capitalists whose economic interests coincide with the multinational or international companies from abroad. Each has an interest in relatively low wages and higher prices, each an element in generating higher profits or relatively higher returns on capital. But these are inconsistent with the interest of an emerging working class whose aspirations are for improved material standards of living, or in other terms, higher wages and lower prices. In order to ensure system maintenance and stability, policies must be developed and implemented. Leys asserts that the one option open to policy-makers is to squeeze the local middle-class entrepreneurs — the local capitalist class. And here, he states, is the fundamental contradiction: smaller-scale capitalists, supporting the foreign investors, find that the burden of accommodating emerging working-class demands has been shifted