During the late 1970s Ghana was described as a collapsed and failed state. In contrast, today it is hailed internationally as beacon of democracy and stability in West Africa. In light of Ghana’s drastic image change from a fragile and even collapsed polity to a resilient state, this thesis contributes to the statebuilding debate by analysing the social change that occurred. Grounded in a critical theory approach the thesis applies a political settlement analysis to explore how power is distributed and changed over time between contending social groups; exploring the extent to which this is embedded in formal and informal institutional arrangements. Ghana’s 2012 elections serve as an empirical basis and lens to observe the country’s current settlement. This approach enables a fine grained within-case comparison with Ghana’s collapsed post-independent settlement. The analysis illustrates that while there has been no transformation of the Ghanaian state, however, continuous incremental structural change has occurred within it, as demonstrated by a structurally altered constellation of power. While internationally propagated (neo-)liberal economic and political reforms had a vital impact on the reconstruction process of state-society relations, Ghana’s labelling as “success story” evokes the distorted idea of a resilient liberal state. The sustainability of Ghana’s current settlement characterised by electoral competitive clientelism depends on a continued inflow of foreign capital. So far the mutually beneficial interest of portraying Ghana as a resilient state by its elites and donors ensures the flow of needed financial assistance to preserve the settlement.

Selon Mushtaq Khan, le développement économique serait conditionné par la convergence entre les politiques incitatives menées par l’État et des organisations en direction des secteurs et agents productifs et les intérêts stratégiques de la coalition au pouvoir. A partir des trajectoires diverses de pays émergents (Pakistan, Bengladesh, Inde), il a systématisé cette combinaison de conditions économiques et politiques dans une typologie des Political Settlements. Inspirée des théories néo-institutionnalistes (North, Rodrik), et du Public Choice, tout en distinguant rent seeking (Krueger, Buchanan, Tullock) et profit seeking (Bhagwati), cette démarche permet d’aller au-delà de la théorie de la bonne gouvernance (reprise par la Banque Mondiale). Cette thèse est une tentative d’étendre cette grille d’analyse encore en cours d’élaboration au cas d’un pays pétrolier, l’Algérie, pour étudier dans le temps long les différents moments du processus d’industrialisation, encore inabouti et de désindustrialisation. Elle débute par une étude empirique testant la relation entre bonne gouvernance et croissance économique sur un panel de pays, dont le résultat non significatif justifie le choix d’élargir cette notion au pouvoir politique. L’un des résultats est que, tant pour la période coloniale que postindépendance, les moments d’industrialisation dominés par une coalition industrialiste, furent trop courts pour déboucher sur un political settlement de clientélisme compétitif à développement potentiel, capable de générer des comportements profit-seeking. Une nouvelle typologie redéfinit les coalitions et distribution du pouvoir, dont celle à parti dominant autoritaire supportant un développement potentiel à horizon court. Il s’agit de savoir comment l’Etat bénéficiant de ressources en hydrocarbures peut ou non transformer une rente naturelle en rente productive et comment au niveau macroéconomique se sont succédées par rupture, des phases d’industrialisation trop brève pour être cumulatives et de désindustrialisation. L’enquête menée dans une entreprise publique, la SNVI, a permis d’illustrer au niveau microéconomique comment les politiques d’assainissement et d’incitation productive n’ont pas transformé les comportements rent-seeking. S’ouvrent des perspectives de recherches vers d’autres pays pétroliers ayant réussi un développement industriel et la transformation d’une rente pétrolière en rente productive. Les travaux sur la rationalisation des choix budgétaires peuvent aussi être mobilisés pour voir comment l’Etat alloue les ressources budgétaires issues des revenus pétroliers qui pourraient inciter les comportements productifs. / The problem of the thesis is based on the study of the nature and the role of the institutions in the process of economic and industrial development in Algeria. The theses is founded on an institutional analysis inspired by Mushtaq Khan (2009). The economic development would be conditional by the convergence between orientation of the distribution of rents by the state, and polotical interests of the coalition in power. The thesis explores from 1830 and nowadays the convenient periods or not in the industrial development and looks for the political obstacles and the captation of unproductive rents.

During the late 1970s Ghana was described as a collapsed and failed state. In contrast, today it is hailed internationally as beacon of democracy and stability in West Africa. In light of Ghana’s drastic image change from a fragile and even collapsed polity to a resilient state, this thesis contributes to the statebuilding debate by analysing the social change that occurred. Grounded in a critical theory approach the thesis applies a political settlement analysis to explore how power is distributed and changed over time between contending social groups; exploring the extent to which this is embedded in formal and informal institutional arrangements. Ghana’s 2012 elections serve as an empirical basis and lens to observe the country’s current settlement. This approach enables a fine grained within-case comparison with Ghana’s collapsed post-independent settlement. The analysis illustrates that while there has been no transformation of the Ghanaian state, however, continuous incremental structural change has occurred within it, as demonstrated by a structurally altered constellation of power. While internationally propagated (neo-)liberal economic and political reforms had a vital impact on the reconstruction process of state-society relations, Ghana’s labelling as “success story” evokes the distorted idea of a resilient liberal state. The sustainability of Ghana’s current settlement characterised by electoral competitive clientelism depends on a continued inflow of foreign capital. So far the mutually beneficial interest of portraying Ghana as a resilient state by its elites and donors ensures the flow of needed financial assistance to preserve the settlement. / Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); European Commission Marie Curie Pre-doctoral Fellowship programme

Moving beyond a focus on institutional frameworks to the deeper forms of politics and power relations that determine their functioning, this thesis explores the political dynamics of growth and structural transformation in Kenya. Deploying a conceptual framework that combines political settlement analysis, which explores how the underlying structure of power shapes incentives for elites to adopt developmental forms of governance, with two concepts from the state business relations literature, the deals and rents spaces, which together link macro level political settlement analysis with a meso level analysis of specific economic actors, the thesis offers new understandings for Kenyas economic development. It argues that Kenyas period of comparatively good growth during the 1960s and 1970s, generally attributed to the inheritance of reasonably coherent institutions at independence as well as favourable external dynamics, actually owed more to Kenyas relatively stable political settlement, which allowed ruling elites to unveil a closed ordered deals regime that provided favoured investors, predominantly from President Kenyattas Kikuyu ethnic group, but also foreign firms, with sufficient credible commitment to invest in productive activities. Similarly, the thesis finds that Kenyas declining performance during the 1980s and 1990s, explained in the literature by worsening external conditions and the capture of increasingly outdated colonial era institutions, was driven more by the ruling coalitions increasing vulnerability, which incentivised then President Moi to prioritise short term politics of survival over sound economic management, particularly after the transition to multi party politics in the 1990s. This resulted in an extremely closed and increasingly disordered deals space, undermining investor confidence and growth. However, a key finding of the thesis, and one that challenges a general view within the literature that corruption permeated all areas of Kenyas economy during the 1980s and 1990s, is that key sectors like horticulture and garments, which made vital contributions to foreign exchange and vote winning employment, were relatively insulated from these political dynamics, helping to explain why Kenya did not suffer a complete growth collapse. Finally, the thesis finds that improved economic outcomes from the early 2000s did not flow from the enactment of donor demanded reforms, as the literature suggests, but rather from increased order within the deals space. This was driven by a reduction in the ruling coalitions vulnerability as well as the ideological predilections of President Kibaki, Mois successor, whose deeply held ideas drove him to implement his economic vision in the face of countervailing political incentives. Critically, the thesis finds that Kibaki enforced ordered but closed deals in Kenyas financial services industry, giving influential banking and telecommunication firms the regulatory space and certainty that they required to innovate with products like mobile money, kickstarting a financial services revolution that has, amongst other things, significantly improved the availability and costs of credit. However, a key finding is that the closed deals predominant in banking and telecommunications, combined with the open deals found in export focused sectors like horticulture and garments, where firms have utilised their increased holding power to push for further openings in deals, has led to the emergence of a dualistic deals space that, if not tackled through incremental governance reforms, undermines the prospects for Kenya achieving a long term growth acceleration and structurally transforming its economy. These findings inform the thesis policy recommendations, which include a focus on how pockets of effectiveness can play a critical role in promoting growth in otherwise unfavourable governance contexts.