Globalization, Negotiation, and the Failure of Transformation in South Africa ― Revolution at a Bargain?

Globalization, Negotiation, and the Failure of Transformation in South Africa considers the consequences of the coincidence of two revolutions in South Africa at the end of the Cold War. One was the completion of decolonization in Africa, with the advent of African majority rule and democracy in South Africa in 1994. The other was the emergence of the global mode of production as the pre-eminent form of organization in world political economy, that was to force revisions of prior assumptions about development strategies, international diplomacy, nation-building, class struggle and gender relations in all parts of the world. The book explains the social forces, forms of consciousness and structural constraints that undermined Apartheid, preserved national unity and yet, later constrained democratic sovereignty, as the imperatives of global markets clashed with the prior aspirations of the democratic revolution. A unique theoretical synthesis from several critical perspectives, informs this study of South African political economy up to the early years of the twenty first century. It draws practical and theoretical implications for critical application in other parts of the world where challenges of democratic sovereignty, national unity, class and gender dynamics, must be simultaneously negotiated in face of global production, finance and culture, and new forms of rule-making authority.

Michael H. Allen is Professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College and Co-Director of its Center for International Studies. His special areas of interest within the field of International Studies, are International Political Economy, International Law, and the politics of change in Africa and the Caribbean.