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Developmental State and Development Alternatives: Lessons from Cuba

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The Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy

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Abstract

This chapter interrogates Cuba’s development trajectory across three epochs namely precolonial, colonial and postcolonial. The country’s historical experience like other countries in the global South reflects its incorporation into the global capitalist system within the context of imperialism. In understanding the transformation of postcolonial Cuba, the chapter focuses on the dynamics of the Cuban State as an example of a developmental state. Particular attention is paid to the ideological and institutional basis of Cuba’s alternative development strategy. The chapter concludes that country’s development success story holds potential for other Third World countries being confronted by the crisis of underdevelopment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Lewis, P., “From Prebendalism to Predation: The Political Economy of Decline in Nigeria,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 34, no. 1 (March, 1966) 79–103; Aderemi, A. and Agaigbe, F., “Challenges of Economic Development in Africa: The Dichotomy of a Debate and the Africanist View,” in Oloruntoba, S. O. and Falola, T. eds., The Palgrave handbook of African politics, governance and development (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 589–606; Odukoya, A., “Settler and Non-settler Colonialism in Africa,” in Oloruntoba, S. O. and Falola, T. eds., The Palgrave handbook of African politics, governance and development (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 173–186.

  2. 2.

    Whitehead, L., “On Cuban Political Exceptionalism,” in Hoffmann, B. and Whitehead, L. eds., Debating Cuban Exceptionalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 2.

  3. 3.

    United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Indices and Indicators: 2018 Statistical Update (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2018), 23.

  4. 4.

    Radice, H., “The Developmental State under Global Neoliberalism,” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 6 (July 2008), 1153.

  5. 5.

    Frieden, J. A. and Lake, D. A., International Political Economy Perspectives On Global Power and Wealth, 4th ed. (London: Routledge, 2000), 1.

  6. 6.

    Johnson, C., MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982); Deyo, F. C., ed., The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1987); Amsden, A., Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Evans, P., “Predatory, Developmental and Other State-Apparatuses. A Comparative Political Economy Perspective on the Third World State,” Sociological Forum 4, no. 4 (1989), 561–587; Wade, R., Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Castells, M., “Four Asian Tigers with a Dragon Head: A Comparative Analysis of State, Economy and Society in the Asian Pacific Rim,” in Applebaum, R. and Henderson, J., eds., State and Development in the Asian Pacific (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1992); Beeson, M., “Politics and Markets in East Asia: Is the Developmental State Compatible with Globalisation?” in Stubbs, R. and Underhill, GRD., eds., Political Economy and the Changing Global Order (Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2006), 443–453.

  7. 7.

    Öniş, Z., “The Logic of the Developmental State,” Comparative Politics 24, no. 1 (October 1991), 110.

  8. 8.

    Radice, H., “The Developmental State under Global Neoliberalism,” 1154.

  9. 9.

    Mkandawire, T., “Thinking about developmental states in Africa,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 25, no. 3 (May 2001), 240.

  10. 10.

    Ibid, p. 291.

  11. 11.

    Johnson, C., “The Developmental State: Odyssey of a Concept,” in Woo-Cumings, M., ed., The Developmental State (Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999); Evans, P., “Constructing the 21st century Developmental State: Potentialities and Pitfalls,” in Edigheji, O., ed., Constructing a Democratic Developmental State in South Africa Potentials and Challenges (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2010), 45–48.

  12. 12.

    Johnson, C., “The Developmental State: Odyssey of a Concept,” 53.

  13. 13.

    Leftwich, A., Developmental states, effective states and poverty reduction: The primacy of politics (Geneva: UNRISD Project on Poverty Reduction and Policy Regimes, 2008).

  14. 14.

    Evans, P., Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

  15. 15.

    Marx, K. and Engels, F., Manifesto of the Communist Party. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1848), 15.

  16. 16.

    Robinson, M. and White, G., eds., The Democratic Developmental State: Political and Institutional Design (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  17. 17.

    Meyns, P., “Botswana – A Developmental State in Africa,” in Meyns, P. and Musamba, C., eds., The Developmental State in Africa: Problems and Prospects (Institute for Development and Peace, University of Duisburg-Essen, 2010), 42–54.

  18. 18.

    Edigheji, O., A Democratic Developmental State in Africa? A concept paper (Johannesburg: Centre for Policy Studies, 2005), 9.

  19. 19.

    Öniş, Z., “The Logic of the Developmental State,”120.

  20. 20.

    Mollaer, Ö., “Developmental State: A Theoretical and Methodological Critique,” Bulletin of Economic Theory and Analysis 1, no. 1 (2016), 2.

  21. 21.

    Musamba, C., The Developmental State Concept and its Relevance for Africa, in Meyns, P. and Musamba, C., eds., The Developmental State in Africa: Problems and Prospects (Institute for Development and Peace, University of Duisburg-Essen, 2010), 30.

  22. 22.

    Ibid, 30–35.

  23. 23.

    Simons, G., Cuba: From Conquistador to Castro (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 77.

  24. 24.

    Ritter, A., The economic development of revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and performance (London: Praeger Publishers, 1974), 10–11.

  25. 25.

    Knight, F. W., The Caribbean. The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 120–158.

  26. 26.

    Higman, B. W. “The sugar revolution,” Economic History Review LVIII, no. 2 (2000), 213.

  27. 27.

    Martínez-Fernández, L., Figueredo, D. H., Pérez Jr., L. A. and González, L., Encyclopedia of Cuba: people, history, culture (New York: Greenwood Press, 2003), 1.

  28. 28.

    Alvarez, J., Cuba’s Agricultural Sector (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2004), 5.

  29. 29.

    Frank, A. G., “The Development of Underdevelopment,” in Mingst, A. K. and Jack, L.S., eds., Essentials Reading in World Politics (New York: W.W. Norton Company).

  30. 30.

    Ritter, A., The economic development of revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and performance, 45.

  31. 31.

    Ibid, 14–15.

  32. 32.

    Martínez-Fernández, L., Figueredo, D. H., Pérez Jr., L. A. and González, L., Encyclopedia of Cuba: people, history, culture, 12.

  33. 33.

    Ritter, A., The economic development of revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and performance, 17.

  34. 34.

    Boorstein, 1968: 9.

  35. 35.

    Ritter, A., The economic development of revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and performance, 20.

  36. 36.

    Ibid, 45.

  37. 37.

    Joseph, R., Democracy and prebendal politics in Nigeria: The rise and fall of the second republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

  38. 38.

    The Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, 1976 (as Amended to 2002).

  39. 39.

    Ibid, Article 9.

  40. 40.

    Betancourt, R. B., The Role of the State in a ‘Democratic’ Transition: Cuba (Cuba Transition Project. Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies, University of Miami, 2004), 19.

  41. 41.

    Ritter, A., The economic development of revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and performance, 84.

  42. 42.

    Ibid, 1.

  43. 43.

    Jonathan, G., “Cuba: A development model that proved the doubters wrong,” The Guardian, August 5, 2011. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/aug/05/cuban-development-model

  44. 44.

    Betancourt, R. B., The Role of the State in a ‘Democratic’ Transition: Cuba, 24.

  45. 45.

    Article 5, The Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, 1976 (as Amended to 2002).

  46. 46.

    Johnson, C., MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975, 314–5.

  47. 47.

    Green, B., Capital and class in Cuban development: Restructuring the socialist economy, (M.A. thesis, Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies, Simon Fraser University, Canada, 1966), 27–28.

  48. 48.

    Ritter, A., The economic development of revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and performance, 2.

  49. 49.

    Ibid, 128.

  50. 50.

    Ibid, 167–168.

  51. 51.

    Granma Weekly Review, Speech of October 27, 1969, November 2, 1969, 1.

  52. 52.

    Hoffman and Whitehead, 2006: 12.

  53. 53.

    Ritter, A., The economic development of revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and performance, 87–88.

  54. 54.

    Rodriguez (2011: 70).

  55. 55.

    Amin (2006: 27).

  56. 56.

    Ritter, A., The economic development of revolutionary Cuba: Strategy and performance.

  57. 57.

    Hoffmann, B. and Whitehead, L., “Cuban Exceptionalism Revisited,” in Hoffmann, B. and Whitehead, L. eds., Debating Cuban Exceptionalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 189.

  58. 58.

    Evans, P., “Constructing the 21st century Developmental State: Potentialities and Pitfalls,” 37.

  59. 59.

    Hoffmann, B., “Bureaucratic socialism in reform mode: The changing politics of Cuba’s post-Fidel era,” Third World Quarterly 37, no. 9 (2016).

  60. 60.

    Ninalowo, A., On the crisis of underdevelopment (Lagos: Prime Publications, 2007), 6.

  61. 61.

    Sen, A., Development as freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 3.

  62. 62.

    Wallerstein, I., The Modern World System (New York: Academic Press, 1974).

  63. 63.

    Amin, S., Delinking: Towards a polycentric world (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1990).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Akoka, Yaba, Lagos State, Nigeria

    Ebenezer Babajide Ishola

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  1. Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa

    Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba

  2. Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba

  3. Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Toyin Falola

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Ishola, E.B. (2020). Developmental State and Development Alternatives: Lessons from Cuba. In: Oloruntoba, S.O., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy. Palgrave Handbooks in IPE. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38922-2_33

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