One set of mainstream neo-liberal economic theories have several illusions. One of them is that they believe that the world can become, so to speak, “flat”, especially when free market rules prevail. The free market will be in a position to deliver, distribute and re-distribute economic prosperity, wealth and equality embracing all humankind from Chile to Russia and from Scotland to Nigeria and India. Another set of the same neo-liberal stock is more careful. It argues more forcefully than the first one that the market, in order to deliver equality and drive people out of poverty, needs to compound strict rules and legal-institutional frameworks, also by way of completely de-politicising its functions. Effectively, the attempt here is to exclude social struggle and politics from economic decision-making, so that the market rule becomes the only rule – this is the famous German-Austrian notion of “social market economy”, at times also referred to as “ordoliberalism”. Alas, none of these two sets of orthodoxy delivered any of these promises since the 1970s, when their political programmes found expression through the policies of Pinochet in Chile, Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA.
But there is also the international aspect of neo-liberalism which, conventionally, came to be called “globalisation” – some also prefer the term “financialisation”, as finance was the first economic sector that became truly globalised after the official end of the Bretton Woods system in August 1971. Frimpong, using the works of Peter Gowan, Giovanni Arrighi and other political economists that subscribe to the core-periphery
Financialisation takes the form of subordinate financialisation and massive transfers of value occur undermining domestic capital accumulation and developmental policies. Thus, in 2010 an estimated 240 million people in sub-Saharan Africa
Effectively, as the aim of neo-liberal globalisation/financialisation is to increase the financial profit
But has growth not occurred since Ghana’s independence? Frimpong asks. It has, but this growth was slow and not good enough. Funds were diverted to unproductive economic sectors, whereas government elites have been rife with corruption and incompetence. Thus, not only external but also domestic factors contribute to the current malaise of the country and, indeed, of the entire sub-Saharan Africa
One of the most remarkable aspects of this work is that it is both empirically and theoretically informed. It is a work that should be read in the great tradition of “world systems theory”, propounded by Immanuel Wallerstein, Andre Gunder Frank, Christopher Chase-Dunn and Giovanni Arrighi (chapter 2). No accident that most of these theorists began their initial investigation by way of focusing on “third world” countries, either in Africa or Latin America. Frimpong, recognising the theoretical, historical and empirical value of this tradition adopts the same path, yet renewing and revitalising this tradition taking into account new heterodox, Marxian and post-Keynesian contributions. Frimpong’s work is a very significant contribution to the scholarly development of African studies in the UK and internationally and its findings and criticisms to mainstream neoliberal economic theories should be read and debated widely.