Are there varieties of capitalism in African political economies?

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - Region: Africa grade: 17 University of Cologne (Forschungsinstitut für Politische Wissenschaft und Europäische Fragen) course: Comparative Political Economy: Varieties of Capitalism language: English abstract: Since the last decade scientific research on capitalism has experienced a noticeably grownattention among scholars as well as politicians. One of the most discussed approaches in thisfield of comparative analysis of political economy is the 'varieties of capitalism' theory1developed by Peter Hall and David Soskice. Their approach basically focuses on howdifferent actors may behave in a certain politico-economic state configuration and on howfar this configuration can determine a national type or variety of capitalism as well as theeconomic success of a political economy.This approach though has been designed with a view to the so-called 'developedeconomies' which are to be found in Western and Central Europe as well as in NorthAmerica. In the era of globalization other economies have come into play with theirperformances ranging from real success stories as in several Asian economies toconsiderable failure as in most marginalized Sub-Saharan African economies.After presenting Hall and Soskice's approach and some of its criticisms in order togive a conceptual framework this paper will provide a very brief overview of the politicaleconomy of colonialism followed by a case-study analysis of the contemporary politicaleconomies of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).The main research question is to identify to which extent varieties of capitalismimported from colonial powers have fashioned today's economies in the chosen cases as'economic models' or how far the empirically established colonial economic systems areresponsible for post-colonial developments. The former colonial power in Uganda GreatBritain will be considered as a Liberal Market Economy where