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THREE DECADES OF ECONOMIC COLLAPSE –THE NEXUS OF POWER LEGITIMACY AND INSTITUTIONS FRAMED BY COLLECTIVE IDENTITY POLITICS THE CASE OF ZIMBABWE 1980-2010
Wednesday, November 9
4:00pm-6:00pm
Metropolitan Building Room 5183
Committee Members:
Dr. Karina Korostelina (Chair)
Dr. Daniel Rothbart
Dr. John Paden
Abstract
This research shifts the discussion on development outcomes—economic growth and poverty reduction—from exclusively treating institutions as the sole determinants of economic growth and poverty reduction to analyzing institutions as one of the many factors shaping Zimbabwe’s development outcomes. It offers a multidisciplinary mixed method analysis of the impact of the bidirectional multifaceted interaction of power, legitimacy and institutions on development outcomes—economic growth and poverty reduction—within the framework of collective identity politics in Zimbabwe. The choice of using Zimbabwe as a case study was informed by the fact that the country is no doubt confronting a complex set of development challenges that need to be addressed in the context of the nexus between institutions, power and legitimacy if long-term broad-based economic growth and poverty reduction is to be realized. This research underscores that a thorough assessment of the impact of the interaction of institutions, power and legitimacy on development policy outcomes is necessary if one wants to re-evaluate alternative institutional arrangements against the status quo in Zimbabwe. Building on existing research on Zimbabwe’s development outcomes, this research has used theories of collective identity, institutions, power, and legitimacy to explore, analyze and explain the impact of matrices of association between institutions, power, and legitimacy on development outcomes through multidimensional lenses that takes into account the historical and cultural context of collective identity politics and tensions in Zimbabwe over the past thirty years 1980-2010.