Description
This paper applies a Polanyian political economy perspective to the understanding of neoliberal fatigue within African business communities. Engaging Polanyi’s concepts of the double movement and re-embedding, it attempts to make sense of an apparent paradox – namely that private sector stakeholders, who ostensibly ought to be beneficiaries of neoliberal reform, are in many cases calling for greater state regulation for equitable development. In particular, the article examines the case of Ghana, a West African country routinely held to be a ‘donor darling’ in terms of faithful adherence to free market prescriptions promoted by the Word Bank, among other Western donors. In the Ghanaian context, it draws upon semi-structured interviews conducted with business people in three private sector communities – the poultry industry, the tomato sector, and the cocoa industry. Through examination of these interviews, the article points to a striking common theme, namely that all three business communities call for the re-embedding of the market to better serve moral goals of poverty alleviation. In this vein, the article provides an original contribution to existing studies of Polanyi by illustrating the efficacy of his analysis for making sense of fatigue with free market reform in African political economies today. Moreover, it demonstrates that private sector actors, perhaps counterintuitively, can prove important advocates for a double movement.
