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These are intended to include work published over the length of my career and to cover the main themes of my writing. These are politics, political economy, rural inequalities and rural development policies in Nigeria, and in Africa more generally; land and agricultural policies in South Africa; the World Bank’s policies, their origins, and implications; land and agricultural policies in South Africa; the history of the Cape wine industry; the political economy of structural adjustment; and the theories of development and explaining public policies.

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A book of essays. Together they provided offered new and comparative perspectives on the political economy and politics of Nigeria, and of the common people (mekunnu) of Ibadan. It was published in Nigeria to make my work accessible to students and academics in Nigeria. It includes:

  • Nigeria: a political economy. In G. Williams, ed., Nigeria: Economy and Society, Rex Collings, 1976, 1-54.
  • Politics in Nigeria. (with Terisa Turner). In J. Dunn ed., West African States. Cambridge University Press, 1977, 132-172.
  • The political consciousness of the Ibadan poor. In E. de Kadt and G. Williams, eds, Sociology and Development. Tavistock, 1975, 109-140, reprinted 2001.
citation 
  • In P.C.W. Gutkind and I. Wallerstein, eds, The Political Economy of Africa, Sage, Los Angeles, 1975,131-164, republished in 1985, pp. 141-180 | citation
The study brought into question the assumptions of liberal and radical exponents in which peasants are ‘to be developed’, through an historical analysis of continuities in agricultural and marketing policies to promote rural development policies from the colonial to the post-independence periods in two countries following apparently different strategies.
  • In J. Heyer, P. Roberts and G. Williams, eds, Rural Development in Tropical Africa. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 16-5. | citiation
A critical evaluation the logic of rural development policies of the World Bank (Redistribution with Growth 1975) based on ideas of smallholder agriculture and the ‘Asian’ green revolution as a way to bring recalcitrant peasant producers under the direction of development agencies. It situates them in the history of the Bank’s strategies for macroeconomic, population and agricultural development from its origins in 1944.
The paper contradicted analyses which supposed a tendency towards inequalities among rural households, by a review and statistical examination of findings of empirical field studies of grain, cattle, and cocoa farmers in northern and south-western Nigeria, placing them in the context of classic debates about the development of capitalist agriculture. | citation

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A critique of policies of the policies of overvalued exchange rate, import and currency controls and how they favoured those closest to the state, corrupt and ‘black markets’ and economic dependence. It continues to a class analysis of how necessary fiscal controls and liberalization of trade and exchange rates impose the burden of reforms on the workers and salary earners. | citation

  • In The Power of Development, ed. J. Crush, Routledge, 1995, 158-175, excerpted from the South African Sociological Review, 4 (2), 2-29. Book Preview | citation
A critique of the World Bank’s self-evident ‘nexus of agricultural, environmental, and population problems’ in which more people means less land means lower productivity means less food for everyone. It disregards the evidence that stands in the way of its analyses and prescriptions for land titling and agricultural technologies that are founded in a development discourse that cannot admit its own mistakes.
An interpretation of the text of the World Bank’s agenda for land reform in South Africa. It explains the convergence of thinking between the World Bank (IBRD) and the incoming ANC government, and how generalized theories and analyses of the World Bank’s economic advisers shaped the land and agricultural policies of the ANC’s own RDP.| citation
 A narrative of recurrent themes in the politics of Nigeria between 1939 and 1995. State funds were the object and the means of contests for political office and its benefits. These were engines of class formation, generated ethnic and regional conflicts, undermined the pursuit of public policies, and displaced class politics. The paper identifies reasons for the predominance of military rule between 1966 and 1999 and the constraints on democratic politics. | citation
A critique of Development as an ideological construct whose practitioners share the dualist assumptions of its practitioners and critics. It discusses development practices under state direction and liberal reforms, in Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa, forms of rule, and the confusion of policy-oriented research and research into policy.| citation
The paper bridges the gap between empirical research and conceptual analysis. It identifies democracy as an ‘essentially contested concept’, open to permanent dialogue about its meaning and practice, in an overview of core aspects of democracy and politics as political processes in African countries. | citation
An analysis of the historical legacies of the regulation of the Cape wine industry and intricate political and financial transactions, which allowed the KWV to demutualize its assets. It transferred them to the South African Wine Industry Trust, whose trustees extended its remit to include black empowerment. The purchase of shares in KWV by BEE beneficiaries brought the process full circle, enriching its beneficiaries on the way. | citation
How did agricultural markets work in the wine industry in the 150 years after the emancipation of slaves in 1838? The paper gives an account of wages of labourers and the regulation and prices of wine; of free labour, the living conditions, and the daily provision and wines to workers; of unfree prison labour and farm prisons; and of the ways in which a supply of labour-power could be secured and the limitations to these solutions | citation

( * ) These items were submitted for the degree of D. Litt. by examination of published work by Rhodes University in 2012