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Abstract
This dissertation provides a historical analysis of American efforts to promote private investment in sub-Saharan African states. I argue that United States policies designed to assist private investors evolved in response to shifts in the strategic environment and the impact of these shifts on long-standing ideas about the national interest interacting with developments in state-society relations. Promotion of investment was a low-cost means to secure access to resources in unstable regions and the development of markets for American goods and was justified by the rhetoric that promotion of private interests played a developmental role and evened the playing field.
During the Cold War, promotion of investment was one aspect of the strategic effort to stem the spread of Soviet influence but it was also an integral part of the incipient strategy to integrate African countries into the capitalist world order. Within the strategic context of this ideological struggle, American administrations designed the first institutions to assist investors and commercial actors began to pressure for specific policies though their interests occasionally conflicted with the changing ideas about United States national security interests. After the Cold War ended, the H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, in response to pressures to minimize expenditure and compete economically with other regions, took advantage of investors' private interests in profit to pursue the administrations' interests in the stabilization and economic development of Africa. The development of a historic bloc characterized by ties between policy-makers and private actors interested in economic opportunities in Africa took shape in the context of increased flows of capital to developing areas. The global terrorist threat to the United States and consequent concerns about access to oil and regional instability altered the political elites' strategic calculation. The W. Bush administration increased development assistance but the institutionalization of neo-liberal trends started during the Cold War and further institutionalized during the Clinton administration continued as the historic alliance between political actors and commercial interests strengthened. This multilevel framework provides insight into the growing role of the United States in Africa and the impact of its economic interventions on possibilities for sustainable economic growth.
