Beyond Diamonds: Embedding the Post-Colonial State in Botswana

Abstract

This study examines Botswana's resource based development course within the framework of developmental state theory. Botswana's path to growth and development challenges existing theories in development studies in that it has avoided the many facets of the natural resource curse, which has set the majority of Africa's resource abundant economies on a path of long-term economic underperformance and low levels of social development. What is most remarkable however, is that growth and development have advanced in Botswana with inclusion of its tribal associations into a modern state bureaucracy while maintaining stable state-society relations - a feat that has been largely unmatched by other countries in the in the developing world. This study will argue in line with the developmental state ethos, that growth and development have occurred in this Botswana as the result of the deliberate actions taken by the government to embed a post-colonial state in Batswana society in ways that have enabled the central government to engage in economic and social development projects and to construct the institutions necessary to realize its development aspirations. This has not only been apparent in the undertakings of the administration to attract and collaborate with international capital, but also in its efforts to mediate between various interest groups and create the institutional framework necessary to enable positive-sum state-society relations under democratic principles.