Economic Reform and Third-World Socialism: A Political Economy of Food Policy in Post-Revolutionary Societies

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Throughout the 1980s major changes in development policy took place in several Third World socialist countries. This book traces the evolution of economic and food policy in Mozambique, Vietnam, Cuba and Nicaragua and examines why the shift from orthodoxy to reform occurred. The process of economic reform, it is argued, emerged in the context of a crisis of the post-revolutionary state, reflected in the latter’s incapacity to mobilize surplus for basic needs provisioning and accumulation as well as to direct the evolution of the economy and society through planning and hegemony . It is argued, however, that the reform process should not be seen merely as a pragmatic response on the part of planners and government leaders to crisis conditions and external ideological influences. Neither was it simply a case that moderates gained the upper hand on the ideologues . Rather, the reform process was determined to a large extent by specific changes which occurred in the balance of social forces. Particular attention is focused on the way in which different social groups struggled in defence of their economic interests; the nature of changes which had taken place in social structure; developments at the level of civil society; and the way in which different groups influenced the policy process via forms of popular participation .