Negotiating Policies in an Aid-Dependent State. A Comparative Analysis of Higher Education and Land Policies in Tanzania

Since the 1970s, Tanzania has attracted particular attention from the international donor community. In fact, Tanzania has been the biggest recipient of development assistance in sub-Saharan Africa. Numerous authors and development experts have dealt with this empirical evidence and have shaped Tanzania as a donor darling. However, these research studies lack an analysis of the impact of this specific political economy on the policy process. Undertaking a comparative analysis of two policy fields (higher education and land policies), the aim of this paper is to grasp the effects of transnational stakeholder networks on policy-making. Our assumption is that the synergy between political economy and the policy-making process can only be analyzed through the theoretical lens of state-building. Authors argue that the state actors are generally bypassed in the process of creating higher education (privatization of public universities) and land (land grabbing) policies. However, our empirical results show that policies are negotiated by a variety of public and non-public stakeholders and shaped by its historical path. In the context of transnational policy-making, we thus observe a two-way relationship between politics and policies that will be discussed in this article.