Soft States

Introduction 

Soft States, Strong States and Development in Africa 

EYASU SOLOMON H. 

Can be reached at EYASOL1983@AOL.COM 

At the outset it is perhaps important to note that over the past twenty years or so African economic 

problems have largely been debated in the context of a narrow of managing economies in crisis 

rather than in the broader context of “development”. The reasons for this are commonly known and 

do not deserve elaboration. However, at the theoretical level the reasons could be understood to 

have had something to do with the decline of “development economics” as the sub-discipline of 

economics which has born in the forties and fifties to address issues relating to the economic 

problems of the then emerging “development economies”. According to Hirschman (1992) the 

ideas put forward at that time shared two basic characteristics: (a) they rejected the monoeconomics 

claim of the universality of neo-classical economic analysis and hence its direct applicability to 

developing countries (due to a number of well known economic features peculiar to these 

countries), and (b) they accepted the mutual benefit claim which asserts that the economic relations 

between the advanced countries (the colonizers) and the developing countries (the ex-colonies) 

could be shaped in such a way as to yield gains for both. 

On the basis of the actual development performance of developing countries over the period 

1950-1970, which showed, among other things, that the path to development is neither linear nor 

smooth, development economics was subjected to two kinds of attack: “The Neo-classical Right 

faulted it for having forsaken the true principles of monoeconomics and for having compounded, 

through its newfangled policy recommendations, the problem it set out to solve. For the neo- 

Marxist, on the other hand, development economics had not gone far enough in its analysis of the 

predicament of the poor countries: so serious was their problem pronounced to be that nothing but 

total change in their socio-economic structure and their relation to the rich countries could make a 

difference; pending such change, so called development policies only created new forms of 

exploitation and dependency” (Hirschman, (1982)). This simultaneous attack on development 

economics resulted in its decline. The series of political disasters that struck a number of 

developing countries since the sixties, ranging from civil wars to the establishment of murderous 

authorization regimes, made it difficult for the discipline to recover. 

Judging “development economics” by its policy content, however, Sen (1982) noted that the 

strategic themes with which it was concerned addressed common problems that still survive despite 

the disappointments of the development experience. These strategic themes include late 

industrialization, rapid capital accumulation, mobilization of underemployed rural labor and 

“planning and economically active state”. A careful analysis of the development record of the 

developing countries in terms of the above policy areas over the period 1960-1980 would show that 

“both in terms of cases of success and those of failure the traditional wisdom of development 

economics is scarcely contradicted”. 

The above conclusion by Sen regarding the policy content of traditional “development 

economics” inclusive of the central role of the “state” in the process of development are 

increasingly being supported by recent evidence on the evaluation of the development experience in 

the various parts of the world. Thus, for example, a careful reading of the World Bank’s (1993) 

East Asian Miracle Report shows that indeed the East Asian state was central to bringing abou the 

miraculous performance of these countries. Moreover, after nearly two decades of advocating a 

minimalist role for the state in “economic management”, the World bank in its 1997 report argues 

for an impossibility theorem regarding the role of the state in economic and social development. In 

the words of its President the World Bank notes that without “an effective state, sustainable 

development, both economic and social, is impossible” (World Bank, 1997: iii). 

The major limitation of traditional development economics was its “insufficient recognition that 

economic growth was no more than a means to some other objectives”. Thus, for example, in terms 

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of capability approach to development as articulated by Sen and operationalised by the UNDP 

Human Development Reports, if “the government of a poor developing country is keen to raise the 

level of health and the expectation of life, then it would be pretty daft to try to achieve this through 

raising its income per head, rather than going directly for these objectives through public policy and 

social change”. This is the crux of the role of the state in the development process. The question 

remains, however, what type of state? And the literature is full of various types1. 

The objective of this portion is to provoke further discussion on the “state” in the context of 

“development” in Africa. The rest of the portion is organized as follows. In section two, we present 

the original logic behind the coinage of the term “soft state”. We note in passing that the “strong 

state” can be defined by default as the opposite of the “soft state”. The original formulation of the 

term was undertaken in the context of development. Since then a search for a “developmental state” 

was mounted. Once again in the context of “developmental achievements” a recent model for such 

a “developmental state” was proposed. We review the elements of this model in section three. By 

definition a “developmental state” is taken to be a “strong state”, and given the developmental 

performance of the recent past the model is base on Asian experience. In section four we test this 

model with respect to Africa. In section five we present the most recent World bank position of the 

role of the “state” in development and its model for the “right kind of state”. Section six concludes. 

The Soft State 

Myrdal (1968) first coined the term “soft state” in the context of development in his monumental 

work on post-independence South Asia. In that context Myrdal characterized Asian states as “soft” 

with reference to the general societal “indiscipline” compare to the emergence of the modern state 

in Europe. According to Myrdal (1968: 896) “soft states” is a characterization of social reality 

meaning that “national governments require extraordinarily little of their citizens. There are few 

obligations either to do things in the interest of the community or to avoid actions opposed to that 

interest. Even those obligations that do exist are enforced inadequately if at all. This low level of 

social discipline is one of the most fundamental differences between South Asian countries today 

and Western countries at the beginning of their industrialization”. 

A correct reading of Myrdal would show that the social reality of the “soft state” at that particular 

point in time was a result of a historical process. To appreciate this we note the following sequence 

in the logic of the coinage of the term (Myrdal, 1986:895-900): 

(i) In an original setting of village life there existed no difference between social life in preindustrial 

European villages and those of developing countries where societies had 

“widely ramifying and stratified systems of obligations defining the duties of different 

categories of village inhabitants” regarding the construction and maintenance of 

infrastructure, the maintenance of local security and defence against aggressors. The use 

of land and employment of labor are similarly regulated by custom. These social 

relationships were defined in terms of relations between individuals and families “rather 

than in terms of a common community interests”; 

(ii) The long-term trends of European social relations have been such that they gravitated 

toward “the perfection of these systems of obligations and their transformation from a 

network of individual relationships into obligations to the community”. Similar long 

term trends that could have been observed about village communities in less developed 

countries were essentially pre-empted by colonialism which “led to the decay of the 

ancient village organization without the creation of a substitute”; 

(iii) The less developed countries emerged as a result of a long struggle against a colonial 

state and the “liberation movements were rebellions against authority, and the 

disobedience to authority was their weapon”. Thus, “disobedience” and “non-co- 


operation” were natural forms of protest and defence “against the enforced colonial 

power structure”; 

(iv) The legacy of the liberation struggle “is a set of anarchic attitudes with an ideological 

and emotional force deriving from memories of resistance against the colonial power. In 

the newly independent countries, this attitude is now being turned against their own 

authorities”. 

The above, then, is the logic behind the origin of the term “soft state”. The logic is based on a 

reading of the immediate post-independence South Asian experience, but could certainly read as 

referring to that of Africa. Central to the analysis, however, is the observation tha the “historical 

trends” of natural emergence of a “strong state” in developing countries, where obligations towards 

the community are codified as a natural time trend from village based cooperative attitudes, were 

derailed by the “colonial encounter”. Like other counterfactuals it will be extremely difficult to 

conjuncture whether the term “soft state” would have ever been coined had there been so such 

encounter2. 

Another important dimension of the above type of analysis informing the coinage of the term, and 

indeed its substantive descriptive content, is the possibility of an appreciation of the nature of the 

origin of the causal factors behind the dismal development performance of Africa in the recent past. 

As noted by a number of contributions to the vast literature on adjustment in Africa, most of 

African authors argue in terms of external causation of the continent’s malaise. In contrast, most 

non-African authors argue in terms of policy mistakes committed by African “soft states”3. 

Developmental States 

Times, of course, have changed since Myrdal wrote his perceptive piece on the political factors in 

the process of development policy making. The “soft states” of that time have become the 

“developmental states” of recent times. In a contribution Leftwich (1995) proposed what he termed 

a “model” for the “developmental state” drawing largely from very recent Asian development 

experience. The set of developing countries used by Leftwich is defined by achieving a per capita 

growth rate in excess of 4% per annum over the period 1965-1990 and includes South Korea 

(7.1%), Taiwan (7%), Singapore (6.5%), China (5.8%), Indonesia ((4.5%), Thailand (4.4%) and 

Malaysia (4.4%), in addition to Botswana (8.4%). The objective of the contribution by Leftwich, as 

declared in the title of the paper, is to bring “politics back” into development discourse in the sense 

that “the single most important factor in generating sustained developmental momentum has been 

the presence in each of a particular type of state, a ‘developmental state’, which must be understood 

politically” (Leftwich, 1995: 401). 

According to Leftwich (1995:401) a developmental state is defined as a state “whose politics 

have concentrated sufficient power, autonomy and capacity at the center to shape, pursue and 

encourage the achievement of explicit developmental; objectives, whether by establishing and 

promoting the conditions and direction of economic growth, or by organizing it directly, or a 

varying combination f both”. On the basis of such a definition, and on the basis of the recent 

development experience of East Asian countries, Leftwich offered six major descriptive 

components to define a developmental state. These can be summarized in the following. 

• The character of the developmental elite: there exists a core of developmentally-determined 

senior politicians and bureaucrats “close to the executive head of government who was instrumental 

in establishing the developmental regime and its culture”. The core elites are characterized by their 

intimacy and linkage with their bureaucratic and political components and by being relatively noncorrupt. 

• The relative autonomy of the state: which is defined as the ability of the state “to achieve relative 

independence from the demanding clamor of special interests” and its ability to override these 


interests when it is necessary to do so. Autonomy in this sense does not mean isolation, but rather 

“embedded autonomy” in the sense of Evans (1989) where the state forges dense ties with various 

actors with the objective of facilitating its economic co-ordination function and its ability of 

implementation of developmental objectives. The autonomy of the state is found to be a positive 

function of regional competition and external threat, the seizure of power by a modernizing 

developmental elite, the dominance of a single party and the inflow of substantial amounts of 

foreign aid, loans and private investment. 

• The economic bureaucracy: means the specific institutions charged with the responsibility of 

managing the interaction between the state and the economy. In shaping development policy, this 

economic bureaucracy is found to have real power and authority, to be technically competent and 

insulated 

• The civil society: by civil society is meant the “web of all privately-organized interests and 

groups, above the family level but below that of the state”. Developmental states are said to have 

emerged in social contexts where civil society has been crushed or was weak to start with. Starting 

from an initial condition, civil societies have been controlled by t he use of internal security 

legislation and agencies, secret police and party organizations. 

• The non-state economic interests: developmental states are found to have consolidated their 

power and autonomy prior to the emergence of influential national or foreign capital and other 

economic interests. Subsequently, the state played a major role in encouraging the emergence and 

growth of private economic institutions and in shaping their scope and focus of activity in the light 

of the articulated development goals. 

• The performance criteria: developmental states are found to have been characterized by “brutal 

suppression of civil rights”, wide measure of legitimacy and sustained record of delivering 

developmental goods. 

On the basis of the above characterization of a developmental state Leftwich (1995: 421) 

concludes that few “societies in the modern world will make speedy transitions from poverty 

without states which approximate this model of a developmental state (ideally, but not necessarily, 

the democratic kind)…Contrary to the current orthodoxy, development requires not less state but 

better state action, and this is more likely from developmental states. Thus calls for governance, or 

democratic governance, which focus on administrative, judicial or electoral good practice, entirely 

miss the point that such virtues can only be instituted and sustained by politics”. 

While one may agree with the general conclusion of Leftwich that effecting development requires 

more, rather than less, “state”, the general characterization of the model of the “developmental 

state” is problematic. The inclusion of Botswana in the set of countries on the basis of which the 

characterization was undertaken could be taken as a bid to be “statically correct”, given that the 

basic emphasis was on “development” performance where in this case development is equated with 

per capita economic growth. 

The first three components of the model are clearly related bureaucratic structures of the “state” 

while the last one is an outcome variable. The “civil society” and “non-state economic interests” 

components could be taken as representing “political stability” factors. Assuming that such 

classification is correct, the question arises as to whether there existed a difference between African 

and Asian states during the period considered by Leftwich. 

The Developmental State: A Test 

Recent information made available by Mauro (1995) enables us to test Leftwich’s model of the 

developmental state. Masuro was able to compile the relevant information about variables relevant 

to our undertaking from the Business International (BI) flies for the period 1980-1983. BI used to 

compute indices on country risks of interests to foreign investors. The indices fall between zero and 

unity with a high figure implying that the country has “good” institutions. Using detailed 


information, Mauro calculated the period averages for the indices for each country. Mauro (1995: 

684) provides the original BI definitions of the relevant indicators as follows: 

• Political change: in the institutional sense: which asks about the “possibility that the institutional 

framework will be changed within the forecast period by elections or other means”; 

• Political stability in the social sense: which asks about the “degree to which the orderly political 

process tends to disintegrate or become violent”; 

• Political change: in the political sense: and asks about the likelihood “that the opposition will 

come to power during the forecast period”; 

• Relationship with neighboring countries: and asks about political, economic and commercial 

relations with; neighbors “that may affect companies doing business in the country”; 

• Terrorism: asks about the degree “to which individuals and businesses are subject to acts of 

terrorism”; 

• Legal system and the judiciary: and asks about the “efficiency and integrity of the legal 

environment as it affects business, particularly foreign firms”; 

• Bureaucracy and red tape: asks about the “regulatory environment foreign firms must face when 

seeking approvals and permits and the degree to which it represents an obstacle to business”; 

• Corruption: and asks about the “degree to which business transactions involves corruption or 

questionable payments”. 

Mauro aggregates political stability factors in one index, given the high correlation between the 

elements and aggregates the “efficiency of the judiciary”, “red tape” and “corruption” into a 

bureaucratic efficiency” index. It is these aggregate indices that we shall use in testing Leftwich 

“developmental state” model. 

Appendix tables (A.1) and (A.2) provide the relevant details for the African (13 countries) and 

Asian (13 countries) samples for which information is available. For the whole sample of 68 

countries for which relevant data is reported by Mauro, Singapore is found to be the country with 

best state institutions scoring the highest score of 10 for all indices. 

Table (1) reports our results of testing the means of the relevant indices for the African and Asian 

samples where figures between brackets are standard deviations. We note that in the Asian sample, 

and except for China, all of Leftwich’s Asian states are included; while in the African sample 

Botswana is not included due to lack of information4. 

Table (1): Developmental State Indices: Africa vs. Asia 

Index Africa Asia Absolute t-value* 

1. Efficiency of the Judiciary 5.18 (2.13) 6.79 (2.43) 2.61 

2. Red Tape 4.80 (1.92) 5.87 (2.36) 1.79 

3. Corruption 5.16 (2.36) 5.62 (2.46) 0.73 

4. Bureaucratic Efficiency 5.23 (1.63) 6.09 (2.32) 1.50 

Political Stability 6.71 (1.37) 7.59 (1.45) 1.82 

Source: Mauro (1995: appendix 3). 

*The critical t-values are 1.71 for the 5% level of significance and 2.49 for the 1% level of significance 

From the above table and at the 5% level of significance the difference between Asian and 

African states is found to be significant as relates to the “efficiency of the judiciary” and “red tape” 

with Asian states having “better” institutions. Regarding “corruption” there existed in the 1980s no 

significant difference between the two regions. Looking at the composite index of “bureaucratic 

efficiency”, the table shows that at the 5% level of significance there does not seem to have existed 

a significant difference between the “state” in the two regions. This is both interesting and 

significant. The significant difference between the two regions at the 5% level is found regarding 


the “political stability” factor where Asian clearly enjoyed much more stable political environment. 

Thus, a further composite index representing Lefteich’s model where the political stability factor is 

given more weight could result in a ranking consistent with his thesis. 

Moving to the 1% level of significance the only remaining significant difference between the two 

regions is found in the “efficiency of the judiciary”. For all other factors inclusive of political 

stability, no significant difference could be detected. 

Judging the African state by world standards, however, could support Leftwich’s model of the 

“developmental state”. Table (2) presents our results in this respect where a sample of 68 countries 

for which information is available. 

Table (2): Developmental State Indices: Africa vs. The World 

Index Africa The World Absolute t-value* 

1. Efficiency of the Judiciary 5.18 (2.13) 6.97 (2.36) 3.83 

2. Red Tape 4.80 (1.92) 6.03 (2.33) 2.67 

3. Corruption 5.16 (2.36) 6.81 (2.54) 3.40 

4. Bureaucratic Efficiency 5.23 (1.63) 6.64 (2.18) 3.18 

5. Political Stability 6.71 (1.37) 7.52 (1.39) 2.27 

Source: Mauro (1995: appendix 3) 

*The critical t-values are 1.65 for the 5% level of significance and 2.33 for the 1% level of significance. 

As is clear from the table the institutions of the state in Africa are significantly lacking compared 

to the average equality prevailing at he level of the world at the 5% level of significance. 

Surprisingly, however, at the 1% level of significance Africa is found not to be significantly 

different in terms of “political stability”. 

The Right Kind of States 

In the context of Africa and in the eclipse of serious minded discourse on development proper, a 

search for the right kind of the “state” was mounted. The search was for the right kind of the state 

that will be capable to implement the “adjustment programs” of the World bank/IMF variety. After 

a brief period of flirting with desirability of instituting a “minimalist” state that does not do 

anything apart from ensuring “peace and security” and guarding “property rights”, the pendulum 

has quickly shifted to looking for a “quasi-activist state” that could do the things that it is better 

suited to do compare to the private agents in the economy. The objective circumstances that led to 

this shift are analyzed by Clapham (1996:814) who notes that it was no “wonder that the 

‘monoeconomics’ which had helped to promote the drive for structural adjustment should be 

supplemented by a ‘monopolitics’ which saw in Western liberal democracy a universally applicable 

formula for good government accompanied by economic euccess”. 

This search for the “right kind of state” gave rise to “political conditionality” in aid programs 

which was added to the technical “economic conditionality” of the original adjustment programs. 

According to Calpham (1996) the newly found political conditionality revolved around three major 

concerns of effective government, accountability and human rights. The content of the first 

concern, which is amenable to imposition by multilateral institutions, argues for the creation of an 

“effective government machinery, which would replace the ‘soft, fat’ state with its inflated 

bureaucracy geared to the needs of political patronage, by a ‘lean hard’ state which employed the 

limited staff needed to provide essential services within a privately managed capitalist economy”. 

The World bank (1997: 25-28) elaborates a framework to explore the practical implications of 

this political conditionality in establishing the “right kind of state”. The framework is based on a 

classification of the two major functions of the state (i.e. addressing market failure and improving 

equity) “along a continuum, from activities that will not be undertaken at all without state 

intervention to activities in which the state plays an activist role in co-ordinating markets and 


distributing assets”. The continuum goes from the minimalist functions of the state (of providing 

pure public goods: defence, law and order, property rights, macroeconomic management, public 

health, antipoverty programs and disaster relief) to activist functions (co-ordinating private sector 

activities and asset distribution). The intermediate functions include addressing externalities 

(provision of basic education and environmental protection), regulating monopoly (utility 

regulation and antitrust policy), overcoming imperfect information (provision of insurance, 

regulation of financial markets and consumer protection) and providing social insurance (pensions, 

family allowances and unemployment insurance). 

On the basis of the above framework a two part strategy for establishing the “right kind of state is 

proposed. The two elements of the strategy are “matching the states role to its capability” and 

“raising the state’s effectiveness by reinvigorating public institutions”. The capability of the state is 

defined as “its ability to undertake and promote collective action efficiently”, while the 

effectiveness of the state is defined as the “result of using the capability to meet society’s demand 

for the” collective goods involved. 

Along the continuum of functions, states can be classified given their capabilities: those with low 

capability need to focus on basic functions of providing pure public goods. Moreover, given 

capability, the state’s effectiveness requires exploring alternative instruments for performing 

functions. Thus, for example, in the provision of basic services “it is not obvious that the state must 

be only provider, or a provider at all”. The relative strengths of markets, civil society and state 

agencies need to be carefully considered prior to taking a decision on the provision of such 

services. 

The second part of the proposed strategy is concerned with reinvigorating the state’s capability. 

The central concept in this component is that improvements in the capability of state can only be 

achieved if the “incentives under which states and state institutions operate. The key is to find rules 

and norms that create incentives for state agencies and officials to act in the collective interest, 

while restraining arbitrary action”. The elements involved for bringing this about are not much 

different from those in Leftwich model of the “developmental state”: efficient judiciary, competent 

bureaucracy and an ability to resolve non-state economic interests. 

A careful reading to the requirement of the “right kind of state” will show that it is perhaps early 

days yet to celebrate a fundamental change in the ruling quasi-development paradigm of the 1980s 

which was associated with the resurgence of neoclassical economics. While the model of the right 

kind of state acknowledges the market failure facets with which “development economics” was 

concerned, and on the basis of which an active role for the state in the development process was 

envisaged at the time, it uses as its reference for judging the capability of the state a minimaliststate 

position rather an objective of development to be achieved during a planning horizon. 

We also note that the “right kind of state” does not have to be democratic: it only needs to be 

efficient in terms of serving a “public interest” the mechanism of its definition is left vague and 

unspecified. Being silent about this could be taken to be agreeing with the general thrust of 

Leftwich’s proposition that “voting can be bad for your wealth”! 

Concluding Remarks 

The above analysis of the issues involved regarding the role of the state in the development 

process should serve to demonstrate that we are still some way to go on agreeing on the 

fundamentals. Central to the issues is the political and social mechanisms required for defining the 

“public interest” in a given social and historical context. The “developmental state” model cal 

clearly sustain “non-democratic” forms of governance where a “developmentally committed” elite 

can define the “public interest”. The political process of generating such a model has been tried in 

Africa with little to show for it. One possible explanation is that because the continent at the time 

was far removed from the “strategic hot spots” of the cold war, it was easy to destabilize the 

creation of the “developmental state”. Such an explanation is clearly based on the “external 


influence” school of explaining the dismal performance of the continent. However, it is not devoid 

of merits, given that there was no significant difference between Africa and Asia on the basis of the 

components of the “developmental state” at the beginning of the 1980s. 

At the other extreme, the possibility of the emergence of a “developmental state” from within the 

African society has been presented by Mkandawire (1992) who was concerned with a democratic 

support for a genuine development strategy on the continent. According to his analysis, some “of 

the coalition which have been construed to lie behind certain policies and which would block 

reform do not in fact exist, and, if they do exist, they are constituted by members with multiple 

affiliations who will be supportive of a whole range of options other than those which can be read 

off from the deterministic specification of political alliances in Africa” (Mkandawire, 1992: 311). 

The empirical evidence on which the above conclusion is based has to do with the political 

resistance to the social impact of the adjustment programs implemented on the continent. This 

political vitality is interpreted as reflecting a call for “egalitarian” development by all newly 

constituted parties in the continent. Mkandawire, however, is mindful that this democratic crave for 

egalitarian development could once again be destabilized from outside5. This is not surprising, for 

Mkandawire is an African development economist, who could be classified as a believer in 

“conspiracy theory”. 

End Notes 

1. Fr examples of political economy classification of “states” see, for example, Lal and Myint 

(1996): autonomous (benevolent dictactor or predatory) and factional (oligarchic or 

democratic). These classifications are based on the “new” political economy by, which is 

meant “the application of the economic principle to areas, which were previously 

considered the province of political science”. The new political economy comprises two 

schools: social choice and public choice schools. Mcguire and Olson (1996) provide a 

political invisible hand that works across the classification of states: autocratic or 

democratic. For an earlier application to Africa see Bates (1981), and for a recent one see 

Azam (1995). 

2. A novel reinterpretation of Africa’s colonial history and its implication for the formation of 

the African state is provided by Mamdani (1996). 

3. for an excellent summary of the various positions, see Calpham (1996). 

4. For a comparison of Africa and Asia on the basis of economic policy stance see Elbadawi 

(1996) where Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are used as a frontier of policy stance and 

where the budget deficit, the real rate of interest, the inflation rate and the parallel exchange 

rate are used as the policy stance indicators. This macro aspect can be related to the 

performance criteria of Leftwich. 

5. He notes that the “big question is whether the international political and economic climate 

will be supportive of both the quest for democratic governance and the egalitarian strategies 

of adjustment and growth”.

Soft States

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