This book has been a long time in its writing, but fortunately as the decade has rolled on we have found that the simplistic private-good, public-bad propositions that heard in 1990 have been largerly discredited. The reader will find that s/he has a vast interdisiplinary range of concepts and analytical frame-works to explore.
One major purpose of this book is to account for the policies adopted by African governments. We assume throughout that politcal action is purposeful behavior, and that among the major purposes of governments are the pursuit of certain social objectives and the resources needed to achieve them.