Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Preface
- A note on currency
- Abbreviations
- Kenya and Southern Rhodesia: principal place names
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The political constraints on economic behaviour
- 3 African agricultural development
- 4 The labour market
- 5 European agriculture
- 6 Secondary industry
- 7 Conclusions
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - The political constraints on economic behaviour
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Preface
- A note on currency
- Abbreviations
- Kenya and Southern Rhodesia: principal place names
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The political constraints on economic behaviour
- 3 African agricultural development
- 4 The labour market
- 5 European agriculture
- 6 Secondary industry
- 7 Conclusions
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION: THE CONCEPT OF ‘EXTRA-MARKET OPERATIONS’
In this chapter, by contrast with those that follow it, our focus is on the influence of economic factors on political variables. The dependent variables in question are three areas of economic policy – land policy, railway policy and marketing policy – which had important influences on the pattern of economic development, examined in Chapters 3 to 6 below. Each of these ‘areas of policy’ consisted essentially of intervention in the market for a critical factor of production. What kind of intervention materialises in any given historical case is, of course, a question of which groups have power to intervene in the market and what kind of intervention they perceive as being in their best economic interests. On these matters, however, as Rothschild has reminded us, conventional economic theory is silent:
If we look at the main run of economic theory over the past hundred years we find that it is characterised by a strange lack of power considerations. More or less homogeneous units–firms and households – move in more or less given technological and market conditions and try to improve their economic lot within the constraints of these conditions. But that people will use power to alter the mechanism itself; that uneven power may greatly influence the outcome of market operations; that people may strive for economic power as much as for economic wealth: these facts have been largely neglected.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Settler EconomiesStudies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia 1900–1963, pp. 10 - 70Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1983