The developmental state is back in vogue in the Global South, where it’s seen as a panacea for sluggish growth, high unemployment, and structural inequality. But not quite in the form that we’re used to. It’s become, as Ben Fine says, something of a floating signifier — an idea of state-led growth that lacks both a theory of the state and the political and economic forces that shape it.

South Africa exemplifies these contradictions. Since the mid 2000s both the South African left — particularly those segments assembled around the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) — and the neoliberal African National Congress (ANC) have actively promoted the idea that South Africa is transforming itself into a modern developmental state.

The appeal of the model for countries in the Global South, including powerful elements of South Africa’s left, stems in part from Brazil’s trajectory under former president Lula Da Silva, who supposedly made a left turn during his second term dubbed the “Lula moment.”