State Power and Economic Crisis in Senegal

in shaping patterns of postcolonial economic development. This reassessment requires a departure from the and instrumental models of the state that now dominate the literature on capitalism in Africa. These models are predicted on the assumption that the state in Africa performs functions necessary for the reproduction of structural features of neocolonial or dependent capitalist economies. In the face of the pervasive process of economic decay which is a striking feature of Africa's current crisis, this functionalist assumption becomes difficult to sustain. The contours of the current crisis suggest that and instrumental models have directed attention away from aspects of state power and its use that play an important role in shaping economic structures in contemporary Africa.