The missing link : state capacity, service delivery and the politics of the developmental state in South Africa

D.Litt. et. Phil. (Political Studies)If, in theory, the developmental state is no mere declarative fiat, the main proposition of this thesis tends towards a reduction of the South African state to subjective constraints that have detoured the post-2004 policy and strategic thrust towards its realisation. Although the South African government has declared a developmental state, the state lacks the necessary capacity to become a state that delivers service to the citizenry and thus meet declared developmental goals. The importance of state capacity to deliver services is, to be sure, paramount. This study is an assessment of state capacity to deliver services in the context of South Africa’s aspiration to become a developmental state. In contemplating the pursuit of this developmental agenda, there is room for caution. First, without requisite technical and institutional capacity, South Africa lacks the core capabilities of a developmental state to interpret policies and link them effectively with service delivery interventions. Thus, on a balance of evidence, strong countertendencies against developmental outcomes are manifest. There also arise another complexity that is not as straightforward. The complexity arises as much from problems of normative definitions of the developmental state as the particularities in the South African context of the state as both a subject and object of transformation. Common and distinctive features of the developmental state thus co-exist in a sort of dualism of a modern and effective state and a transformative state. In the view propounded in this study, there is an embedded subjectiv dynamic of state capture, less as a developmental state with a transformative thrust and more allied to the idea of the embedded autonomy of political elite. The South African state, in other words, has yet to combine its institutional form and national character with the service delivery capabilities of an effective state in a definitive developmental state capable of mediating historical and contemporary challenges of racial redress, economic growth and distribution in an economic context of internationalisation