The Origins and Demise of South African Apartheid: A Public Choice Analysis (Hardcover)

~ Anton D. Lowenberg (Author), William Hutchison Kaempfer (Author)

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Product Description

In the early 1990s, South Africa experienced a remarkable transition to democracy. Nelson Mandela was freed from prison, his previously outlawed ANC was legalized, and all-race elections were held in 1994. What motivated South Africa's former white leaders to hand over the reins of power to a black government? And what are the prospects for economic and political freedom in post-apartheid South Africa?
The Origins and Demise of South African Apartheid addresses these questions, using public choice models to distill the essence of apartheid, to examine the reasons for its emergence in the first instance, and to study its subsequent evolution as the economy's structure changed. The authors evaluate the role of foreign economic sanctions and other international pressures in precipitating the fall of apartheid but find that domestic economic problems, caused by apartheid policies themselves, were more important than foreign sanctions in crippling the South African economy. Further perpetuation of apartheid would have meant even further declines in living standards for white as well as black South Africans.
The authors also examine the postapartheid constitution for clues on South Africa's future prosperity. Finally they identify procedural and substantive weaknesses in the constitution that need to be addressed in order to create the foundations for a truly free society.
The book will appeal to a wide audience of economists and political scientists, especially those interested in public choice and comparative systems, as well as to South Africa scholars in the fields of political science, history, and economics.
Anton D. Lowenberg is Professor of Economics, California State University, Northridge. William H. Kaempfer is Professor of Economics, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press (September 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0472109057
• ISBN-13: 978-0472109050
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,961,365 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent study on the politics and economics of apartheid, March 27, 2000

By	Excerpt from "The Independent Review" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

Ten years ago, I wrote South Africa's War against Capitalism. Inspiration for the title came from the kind of arguments I heard during my several trips to South Africa, comments made by blacks and their supporters in the struggle against apartheid. The essence of their argument was that apartheid was a by-product of laissez-faire capitalism. For these people, including many academics and politicians, some variant of socialism would provide the cure. My research and counterarguments would have been far more productive and persuasive if I had had the benefit of the insightful analysis set forth in Anton D. Lowenberg and William H. Kaempfer's new book, The Origins and Demise of South African Apartheid: A Public Choice Analysis.

Lowenberg and Kaempfer provide powerful evidence for the Public Choice argument that South Africa's apartheid "was essentially a massive bureaucracy whose raison d'etre was the production of market regulations designed to effect wealth redistribution away from blacks and white mining and industrial capital owners in favor of white workers and agricultural capital owners. These regulations reflected the preferences of the median voter in an electorate dominated by white labor and rural constituencies." (p. 39)

Many people attribute the demise of South Africa's apartheid to international sanctions. Lowenberg and Kaempfer arrive at a different conclusion: "The white South African Government abdicated power because of a recognition that apartheid policies were becoming too costly to maintain. The main costs associated with apartheid were self-imposed as a consequence of years of misguided development strategies on the part of the National Party government and its predecessors. Although external events such as the oil price shocks of the 1970s and international reaction to apartheid after the Soweto riots of 1976 contributed to the slow growth of the South African economy, even more significant was the fact that the economy had undergone changes which had turned the apartheid system, once an asset for important groups of the white population, into a liability." (p. 218)

Lowenberg and Kaempfer devote several chapters to the sanctions issue. They show that despite claims that the goal of sanctions is to make targeted countries change objectionable domestic policies, sanctions more likely serve the interests of pressure groups within the sanctioning countries....

Therefore, the Lowenberg and Kaempfer hypothesis suggests, for example, that the United States might impose sanctions on the importation of South African wine, textiles, and coal and not to create domestic resistance, because abundant substitutes exist for those goods. Moreover, domestic producers might cynically support embargoes on wine, textiles, and coal imports as a means of gaining monopoly power. The United States embargoed South African agricultural products, but European nations, which were heavy consumers of produce from South Africa in the winter, chose not to embargo that category of goods.