ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies some of the salient features of both the crisis and the response to it by situating them within the global political economy, with its many constraints and occasional opportunities. The experience of depression and drought has undermined the widespread postcolonial tendency toward state capitalism; nascent forces favoring degrees of "liberalization" have been reinforced, partially because of International Monetary Fund and World Bank pressures and partially because of internal contradictions. The breakup of state capitalist policies and structures generates prospects for new movement and alignment reflecting postcrisis realities. Aside from the polar opposites, the intermediate clusters of forces and factors can be encapsulated as African capitalism, corporatism or communism. With the demise of North-South dialogue over any New International Economic Order, African foreign relations have become increasingly realistic: how to survive as both states and classes in the new international division of labor.
