Timber Booms, State Busts: The political economy of Liberian timber

Patrick Johnston

Review of African Political Economy, 2004, vol. 31, issue 101, 441-456

Abstract: This article places the political economy of Liberian timber in the context of the theory of state failure. It explores the relationship between private investment, state failure and war, highlighting how Charles Taylor exploited timber concessions to foreign firms as a proxy for effective state institutions in Liberia. It examines the reasons why foreign investment -- particularly in Liberia's timber industry -- prolonged the civil war and destroyed the country's formal economy. And it challenges the neo-liberal assumption that increased economic activity provides incentives for rulers to build stable institutions and to provide security to investors. Neo-liberal prescriptions coupled with a changing global economy produced no incentive for Charles Taylor, a faction leader from 1989 and Liberia's president from 1997 until exile in 2003, to attempt to develop state institutions or to prevent the collapse of the formal economy.

Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0305624042000295530 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revape:v:31:y:2004:i:101:p:441-456

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CREA20

DOI: 10.1080/0305624042000295530

Access Statistics for this article

Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

More articles in Review of African Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().