At The American: A Magazine of Ideas Marian L. Tupy has a perceptive piece on the stark differences between Botswana and Zimbabwe. Tupy's conclusion is a bit prosaic: “It turns out that much of the difference stems from the degree of freedom that each populace enjoys.” (Really? It turns out that way, does it? Well I’ll be.)
(And that is not the only dubious conclusion — The American is a product of the American Enterprise Institute which elevates liberal economics to the status of a religion. I generally support liberal economics, but Tupy seems gratuitously close to asserting the free market as a monocausal factor that explains the countries’ divergent paths. For her “freedom” seems to be characterized by a fairly narrow conception of market economics. She also seems happy to take on a Marxist straw man that reduces the complexities of post-independence Africa.)
But banalities of interpretation asideTupy does a nice job of telling a tale of two countries and the article is very much worth reading.
