
Democratizing the Developmental State
Elena Pérez-Lagüela
Contact: eplaguela(at)ucm.es
Associate Professor, Comillas Pontifical University, Madrid, Spain
Elena Pérez Lagüela holds a PhD in Economics (honours) from the Complutense University of Madrid, where she also completed her Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations and Master’s Degree in International Economics and Development. Her area of specialisation is Heterodox Development Economics and, more specifically, the Political Economy of Agricultural Development. She studies agricultural-led development strategies, focusing on the articulations and linkages that agriculture establishes with the rest of the productive sectors, and their repercussion on the productive structure, external insertion and sustainability of agricultural economies, together with the mediation of these processes by the socio-political relations that frame them. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science and Administration at the Complutense University of Madrid and at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town. She has taught in the Department of Applied Economics, Structure and History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, in the Department of Economics, Business and International Relations at the Universidad Europea de Madrid and in the Department of International Relations at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas. Elena has been a visiting researcher at SOAS, University of London. She has participated in collective works and is the author of several articles published in national and international indexed journals. Outside academia, Elena has worked for the Spanish Sociological Research Centre, the Financial Times, FUHEM and Economists without Borders, in areas related to development and cooperation.
Research project
Varieties of state-led development in Africa: developmental (yet democratising?) trajectories in Angola, Ethiopia and Rwanda
As the discussion concerning state capacities and the role of peripheral states in developing processes has returned to central stage, we propose a comparative analysis on three case studies (Angola, Ethiopia and Rwanda) that can contribute to shed light on contemporary narratives and dynamics of state-led development in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. However, concerns about the democratic health of the regimes sustaining developmental efforts in these countries have arisen. Hence, our research proposal is built on two main research objectives: a) to produce a cartography of state-led development trajectories in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa, and b) to explore transitions to democracy in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. Our main hypothesis states that ‘Economic development is pursued as a means to legitimise governments that, while often democratically elected, govern in an autocratic and exclusionary manner’. To this end, we intend to carry out systematic research on these issues based on an eight-month long work plan that shall produce two academic articles subject for submission to journals indexed in high-impact rankings.