| This work explores the role and function of large-scale business associations (BAs), which are increasingly important actors on the economic and political stage of African countries as they emerge from decades of statist controls. Researchers have long regarded African capitalists as parasitic and rent-seeking. Moreover, a prominent current in the broader political economy literature suggests that economic interest groups, including BAs, are overwhelmingly interested in "distributional" and rent-seeking activities rather than productive, developmental behaviors. As a result, we are predisposed toward pessimism in African cases and the inevitable conclusion that groups such as BAs are "bad for development." Marshaling data from official BA and government documents and reports, as well as personal interviews with BA principals and members and government officials, this study challenges these dim assessments. It begins with a number of key questions, such as, what do African business associations do that might affect development and democracy? In what context and why do BAs play productive roles? can those roles be sustained over time, and if so, what are the long-term developmental impacts of such behaviors? Drawing upon representative cases from Zimbabwe and Zambia, this research finds that the roles and behaviors of formal business associations in Africa are far more nuanced and occasionally "productive" than previously assumed. In fact, occupying the "meso"-institutional range, midway between the state and the wider society, BAs may affect governance in both the economic and political spheres and can offer an institutional voice to an increasingly important set of actors in developing countries, as the state retreats--under pressures both internal and external--from political and economic life. BA behaviors both productive and distributional may result in positive spillover effects that benefit more than just their own members. The concluding chapter examines the implications of BA behaviors in Zimbabwe and Zambia for economic and political development. |
