Embracing a Human Political Economy: A Critique of ‘Abstraction’ within Studies of the ACP-EU Cotonou Partnership Agreement

Abstract

This paper seeks to demonstrate the relevance of a ‘human political economy’ in examining the qualitative connections between economic growth-specifically private sector growth – and the provision of ‘human needs' within developing societies. It does this through consideration of studies of the ‘partnership’ between the African, Caribbean and Pacific states (ACPs) and the European Union (EU), most recently under the ACP-EU Cotonou Agreement signed in 2000. The Cotonou treaty is seen here as an example of a growing number of North-South agreements that have married ‘human needs' discourse to laissez-faire strategies encouraging private sector expansion. The cultivation of a human political economy focussed on direct field engagement with individuals and communities within commodity chains of North-South trade is thus argued to be pivotal if we are more fully to understand the human realities of agreements such as Cotonou and therein to assess them on their own normative ‘human needs' territory. This people-centred research agenda is contrasted with the traditional literature on ACP-EU relations. With reference to the work of C. Wright Mills (1959) and his criticisms of ‘abstracted empiricism’ and ‘grand theory’, the traditional literature is seen as having been largely divorced from qualitative studies of the lived experiences of the people whom ACP-EU co-operation has rhetorically placed at the centre of its ‘development’ narrative. A human political economy involving commodity case studies utilising direct field engagement and participative research methods (for instance, semi structured interviews, focus groups, role play) is thus seen as a means of mediating theoretical and quantitative ‘abstraction’ within ACP-EU studies and therein as a means of building grounded assessments of Cotonou's human needs agenda.

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