This dissertation presents a case study of the Zambian government's decision to reintroduce planning in 2002, after having abandoned it a decade prior. African countries, and most developing countries, share similar experiences in development planning - something Chimhowu, Hulme, and Munro refer to as the 'rise, fall, and return of planning'. The authors refer to the most recent period in the history of development planning - which became evident in most emerging countries in the late-2000s or 2010s - as the rise of the 'new' development planning. On a broad level, the catalyst for the reintroduction of planning in Zambia was an aid harmonisation process that saw multilateral and bilateral agencies attempt to streamline aid inflows into recipient countries, reduce the associated administrative costs for local officials, and generally improve aid efficacy. More specifically, the case study finds that a particular confluence of economic ideas and political interests left the government of Levy Mwanawasa favourably disposed to the reintroduction of planning. In this sense, the reintroduction of development planning formed part of Mwanawasa's attempts to shore up his legitimacy among the electorate and to build a political coalition to withstand a powerful faction within his Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) led by former president Frederick Chiluba. This paper finds that Zambia's Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP) 2006-2010 - the first development plan to be implemented since planning was abandoned in 1991 - was heavily influenced by the Poverty Reduction and Strategy Paper (PRSP) that preceded it. The PRSP was completed as a condition of the multilateral debt relief programme in which Zambia was participating at the time. Significantly, the FNDP did not represent a return to the developmentalism that characterised the post-independence era of development planning. Rather, the FNDP represented a continuation of the 'neoliberal populism' introduced with the PRSP. In practice, this resulted in failed attempts to alleviate some of the costs of adjustment - such as poverty and unemployment - through increased social sector spending. In short, the rise of the 'new' development planning in Zambia was not accompanied by a corresponding return of any sort of 'new' developmentalism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/32294 |
| Date | 28 September 2020 |
| Creators | Musiker, Greg |
| Contributors | Seekings, Jeremy |
| Publisher | Faculty of Humanities, Department of Political Studies |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Master Thesis, Masters, MA |
| Format | application/pdf |
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