A series of essays and articles from my days in academia. Many of these essays were written in response to a question and some of them no longer represent my current views.
Africa’s relative lack of development has been cause for much debate over the historical factors that have led to their economic status. This essay will be contrasting two views on the matter: the dependency theory of Walter Rodney and the views of Jean-François Bayart and Stephen Ellis. The essay will accomplish this, firstly through outlining …
Historically, famine was thought to be a disaster of nature, damaging human creation. All we could do was weather the storm. Famine was seen as a dramatic decline in food supply. This conception is called Food Availability Decline (henceforth: FAD).[1] In the last century, this conception has changed. With the examination of communist China and …
Read more “Institutions and Famine in Communist China and Postcolonial India”
From the period of 1842 to 1943, Shanghai possessed a worrying lack of sovereignty due to the fragmentation of its political power.[1] Bickers (2012) argued that this led to a myriad of nationalist activities.[2] At this time, foreign imperial powers held power over portions of Shanghai.[3] This resulted in a multitude of often contradictory laws …
This article came to my attention years later (2022) and successfully debunks Sen’s methodology by refuting his statistics. Sen uses forecasts, not actual production records to prove his point. But in actual fact, there was a drastic food shortage. The famine was not man-made, but caused by many natural disasters. The human reaction was going …
In 1964, Kenya gained its independence under the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), led by Jomo Kenyatta. Since then, the country has faced similar problems to much of Africa. Two primary approaches have arisen to explain Kenya’s political and economic crisis: the Institutional and the Neopatrimonialism approach. Institutions are defined as the formal and informal …
Read more “Was the failure of Kenya Institutional or Neopatrimonial?”
The Chinese Famine, despite much research and study, still confuses many. For two decades, the Chinese state covered it up.[1] Even now, researchers must rely on state data.[2] In response to the difficulty of finding trustworthy statistics, many researchers aim to adjust statistics, using a toolset of comparative stats and other factors, while others turn …
Development, despites its deceptively simple name, has no singular discourse or meaning. To many, it refers to the growth of a country’s economy – a state-led drive to improve indicators such as Gross National Product (GNP).[1] This view is problematic. It poses development as a nihilistic venture, with no humane ends. In contrast to these …
Read more “Humanising Development with Sen’s Enhancement of Capability”
Renowned sociologist Max Weber established an important distinction between authority and legitimacy in politics. Weber (1922) highlighted legitimacy as a relationship between the rulers and the ruled (Hague, Harrop & Bresslin 1992:10). He proposed three systems in which governments held authority and were thus given legitimacy. Traditional Authority exists because, as Haywood put it, “[it] …
Read more “Brief Explanation of Weber’s Authority and Legitimacy”
Herbst and Mills (2009) make a compelling argument to provide a solution to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (henceforth: Congo) problems by no longer treating it as sovereign (Herbst & Mills, 2009). This was put forth in the simple phrase that there should be no Congo. Their reason was that Congo does not possess the …
The state should not control the means of production due to the innovation and efficiency that arises from private ownership (Shleifer, 1998:135), the necessity for non-regulated prices creating proper indicatators (Friedman & Friedman, 1980:14) and the dangers of central planning (Hayek, 2007:124). People are more likely to work hard if they are given proper incentives. …