Rethinking Spatial Inequality in Development: The Primacy of Power Relations

Abstract

Why do spatial inequalities emerge and persist? After showing that existing explanations of spatial inequality are at best partial, this article argues that persistent spatial development disparities are the product of the terms on which underdeveloped regions are incorporated into ruling coalitions. In most cases, political elites from lagging regions are incorporated on marginal terms, undermining their capacity to direct public resources to their constituents. Consequently, governments direct more resources to relatively better-off and politically dominant regions, reinforcing spatial inequalities. Our analyses highlight the importance of going beyond a dichotomous assessment of whether disadvantaged regions are included or excluded from ruling coalitions to an examination of the terms of their inclusion.

Political Economy of State Intervention in the “Regional Problem”: Insights from the Savannah Accelerated Development Programme (SADEP) – Ghana

“…It might be argued that economic efficiency and returns to investment drives this pattern of investment, equity is largely neglected which reinforces increasing returns in favoured regions of the South to the detriment of those of the North. Thus regional inequality to an extent is manifested in foreign direct and private investment which is driven by the profit motives of the capitalists (Abdulai, 2014). The data indicates that the mainstay of the economies of the three regions of the North, i.e.…”

“…He argued "Power in this sense manifest in the non-issue, the non-decision" [emphases original] (Mosse, 2007(Mosse, : 1165 on the pressing needs of powerless, poor regions. This is particularly so in the many developing countries where allocation of public funds is characterised by pork-barrel politics (Abdulai, 2014) and based on lobbyist formulae.…”

Islands: balancing development and sustainability?

“…Path dependence entrenches such problems. At every scale, multiple factors, including geography, education and demography, account for why some people and places are better placed to benefit from any change, pointing to both governance and management issues in achieving consensus on balancing economy and environment over several place and time scales to counter the marginalization of islands (Abdulai 2017, Weaver 2017), which are sometimes on the margins of state reach or interest.…”

Rethinking Persistent Poverty in Northern Ghana: The Primacy of Policy and Politics over Geography

“…Yet, as critics have argued, the implicit assumption that the facilitation of out‐migration to leading regions will result in poverty reduction in marginalized regions is problematic (Abdulai ). One extensive review of available literature concludes that the evidence on the impact of internal migration on interregional income disparities remains inconclusive and that much depends on a variety of factors, including the skill levels of migrants and the extent to which migration induces gross fixed capital formation (Ozgen, Nijkamp, and Poot ).…”

“…This was primarily due to pressures from international development partners, particularly the IMF which used some credit arrangements under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility as an instrument of pressure to block the tariff increases (deGrassi ; Oxfam ; Paasch, Garbers, and Hirsch, ). Thus, while approving funds supposedly for poverty reduction, the IMF would seem to have privileged its free trade ideological stance to measures long deemed by state elites as critical to reviving an industry upon which many poor farmers depend (Abdulai ).…”