The conclusion of Money, Value, and the State reflects on the rise of a neoliberal government of value. The architecture of political economy for postcolonial Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda—their currency management, agrarian credit, export monopolies, and price controls—was similar to how many other nation-states managed capitalism, exerted sovereignty, and cultivated citizenship in the postwar decades. And like many other parts of the world, by the late-1970s, the government of value in East Africa was challenged by new models of determining worth. The neoliberal proviso to “get prices right” targeted the legitimacy of the moneychanger state: instead of controlling the conversion between currencies and managing exchange rates, central banks would delegate power to commercial firms. It was likewise a call to eliminate state monopolies on the valuation of export crops and other commodities in favor of merchants’ power to set prices. Yet, instead of merely being a project of marketisation, neoliberalism was always a theory of state power and the ethos of citizenship. As structural adjustment was imposed—haltingly, imperfectly—by international creditors and their East African partners, the problematic of price continued to imply far more than the value of a commodity. It was a call to revalue the relationship among people and between citizens and states. As a result, the state government of value has not disappeared--it has been disavowed by central banks and bureaucracies that dismiss popular claims-making in favor of serving the sovereignty of capital.

This chapter explores Tunisia's history as an authoritarian country that struggled with economic developing, ultimately resulting in a parasitic crony capitalist class closely allied with the regime. While the Arab Uprisings ushered in democracy, they failed to replace these crony networks as business engaged with parties in the new democracy. Unlike Egypt, Tunisia remained a democracy, but the presence of crony capitalists as party funders undermined reform efforts and the ultimate success of the democratic project.

The last chapter is devoted to the fundamental transformation of the European Macroeconomic Constitution and particularly its objectives during the last decade that has also changed the ECB from a central bank of stability to a central bank of crisis. The great promise of the EMU that the properly designed and constitutionally protected macroeconomic framework would guarantee economic stability and prosperity has failed. In particular, the sole focus on price stability objective and constraints for national economic policy failed to ensure economic, fiscal, or even financial stability. The ECB 2021 strategy review tried to reflect these changes. The chapter analyses, how the ECB could seek to readjust its role in the euro area economy by incorporating new objectives. The discussion starts by analysing how and why the role of price stability has changed, which is followed by assessments of how the broader stability objective have gained more practical and eventually also formal importance. Furthermore, the objectives of structural economic adjustment and increasingly environmental sustainability are discussed as the new candidates for the objectives of the European Macroeconomic Constitution and the ECB. As an Epilogue, the book concludes with a broader forward-looking perspective on the options available.

When Milton Obote was inaugurated as Uganda’s first prime minister in 1962, the future of the country that Winston Churchill had called ‘the Pearl of Africa’ looked brighter than ever. Independence from Britain had come with a carefully constructed federal constitution that gave some internal autonomy to the ancient kingdom of Buganda and its king, while Obote and his government could still maintain effective control of a country with diverse ethnic and interest groups.

Independence brought democratic institutions at a time when the economy was booming. The ‘cash crop revolution’ involving cotton and coffee that started with the construction of the railway from Uganda to the Kenyan port at Mombasa in 1901 had spread rapidly during the following half-century. In the first decade of independence, coffee exports more than doubled.

Chapter 2 examines questions of governance in colonial contexts. It considers how conceptions about governance of corporations bear similarities to approaches to colonial governance by colonial powers. The thin European staffing that is typical during colonialism, emphasis on reducing costs and covering colonial costs with local taxes, and focus on extraction draw attention to ways in which colonial corporate governance reflected decision-making and investment choices more appropriate for short-term corporate decision-making than long term decisions about entire societies that might impact millions of people. The internal construction of colonial governance and the often- problematic bifurcation between English law and customary law in British colonial contexts is also explored.

This chapter examines three intersecting dynamics underpinning regional order during the 1990s. The first dynamic centres on the Gulf. The chapter examines Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent divergence between Iranian and Iraqi hegemonic strategies, as well as Saudi Arabia’s efforts to preserve its primacy in the face of a moderating Iran and rising domestic opposition. The second dynamic concerns the rise of Islamist, including jihadist, opposition movements as by-products of renewed neoliberalisation and growing disillusionment with the New World Order. The chapter discusses the rise of Islamist opposition with a particular focus on Egypt. The final key regional dynamic was the Arab-Israeli peace process, and the chapter discusses the ways in which the ‘dualistic’ foreign policies of Syria and Israel reflected their broader hegemonic strategies.

The essay surveys a broad selection of literary responses to tourism, which plays a significant role in the Caribbean. While the tourism economy is not inconsequential, the authors in focus tend to portray the commercialization and commodification of the archipelago, often marketed through the fantasy of paradise islands, in a negative light. Targeting the ‘leisure imperialism’ of tourism ideology, they trace an unsettling legacy in which the violent past of sugar and slavery survives in the smiling servitude of industrialized tourism. The superficial discourse of love and peace, the hedonism imposed on the sunny tropics, the supposedly willing sycophancy of the locals eager to please wealthy tourists are all dismantled through humour and dark satire to reveal a bleak underside of drugs, sex, exploitation, antipathy and social rot. However, calls for responsible, ‘slow’ tourism more beneficial to the locals hope that the industry may be ethically operated.

This chapter employs original data on land reform and property rights to empirically test the theory. Using data from Latin America from 1920–2010 and cross-tabulation, regression, and instrumental variables analysis, the chapter find strong evidence in support of the theory that property rights gaps are generated by authoritarian regimes where the ruling coalition of political elites does not overlap with landed elites. In contrast, property rights gaps are typically closed by democracies, especially when peasants are in the ruling coalition and legislative fractionalization does not give opposition lawmakers a chance to block reform. Property rights gaps are also closed by both authoritarian regimes and democracies when countries are forced into structural adjustment programs. And left-wing ideology and state capacity play a role well in property rights gaps. This chapter also finds that the governments that redistribute property without rights also distort crop prices to render beneficiaries dependent on the government, and through a comparative analysis of nationalizations of banks and natural resources shows that the withholding of property rights over land is strategic.

This chapter traces the shift in African development policies from the era of modernization in the 1950s to the emergence of Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) in the late twentieth century. As colonialism waned and African nation-states came into existence, international organizations and foreign governments replaced imperial powers as the primary investors in African development. The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank were at the forefront of this movement. African nationalists and the leaders of newly independent countries forged permanent ties to international development agencies and wealthy donor nations such as the United States and the Soviet Union, the post–World War II superpowers hoping to convince African rulers to support their side of the Cold War. The internationalization of African development expanded during the 1980s when the now widely criticized SAPs of the IMF and the World Bank eroded both state power and state-sponsored social services in African countries. Rising political leaders who made big promises to their constituents in the era of independence during the 1960s found their hands tied by the internationalization of development and Cold War politics over the next two decades. Some, however, managed to play these politics to their advantage.

Chapter 8 takes a broader historical view of humanitarian aid in Africa by revealing how nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are the “missionaries” of the twenty-first century. In the wake of the 1970s and 1980s Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) of the IMF and World Bank, NGOs stepped in to fill the gap in social services that the now bankrupt and inept African governments could not provide. Until recently the vast majority of these NGOs have been international NGOs (INGOs) established, run, and funded by Europeans or North Americans. Like the missionaries who came to end the slave trade and bring “civilization” to Africa a century earlier, INGOs function on a platform of humanitarianism, human rights, and development for the poor. Whether in the form of slave narratives collected by abolitionist missionaries or television commercials asking for donations to help feed starving African children, not-for-profit organizations have generated an industry of fundraising in order to “save” Africans. More recently African individuals and communities have launched local NGOs that target causes they deem most important, such as women’s economic inequality, environmental degradation, and cultural preservation.

This chapter argues that market metafiction has emerged as the vanguard fictional style of the post-financial crisis period. It begins by discussing the work of Tao Lin and Chris Kraus. The remainder of the chapter analyses two recent works of market metafiction that exemplify the paradigm, even as they register and contest differing financial and literary market logics. In Ben Lerner’s 10:04 (2014), attempts to deal with risk and uncertainty central to derivatives trading provide models for “hedging” between different forms of literary value, so that underperformance in market terms may be offset against critical approbation. In Teju Cole’s Open City (2011), meanwhile, the depredations of what David Harvey calls “the Wall Street–IMF–Treasury complex” are seen to be of a piece with the global publishing industry’s exploitation of images of African suffering. In his novel, Cole deliberately sidesteps these stereotyped and voyeuristic images, while at the same time acknowledging the privilege that permits him (now a relatively affluent and highly educated New Yorker) to perform precisely such a resistance to market-dictated convention.

This chapter argues that market metafiction has emerged as the vanguard fictional style of the post-financial crisis period. It begins by discussing the work of Tao Lin and Chris Kraus. The remainder of the chapter analyses two recent works of market metafiction that exemplify the paradigm, even as they register and contest differing financial and literary market logics. In Ben Lerner’s 10:04 (2014), attempts to deal with risk and uncertainty central to derivatives trading provide models for “hedging” between different forms of literary value, so that underperformance in market terms may be offset against critical approbation. In Teju Cole’s Open City (2011), meanwhile, the depredations of what David Harvey calls “the Wall Street–IMF–Treasury complex” are seen to be of a piece with the global publishing industry’s exploitation of images of African suffering. In his novel, Cole deliberately sidesteps these stereotyped and voyeuristic images, while at the same time acknowledging the privilege that permits him (now a relatively affluent and highly educated New Yorker) to perform precisely such a resistance to market-dictated convention.