This chapter introduces the ‘structuralist’ form of political settlements analysis employed in this book. The political settlements framework, initially developed by Mushtaq Khan, has gained increasing popularity but has evolved in very different directions. Political settlements analysis (PSA) was appealing to scholars because it encouraged analysis of power relations shaping development policy, highlighting how distributions of power among organised groups shaped how institutions operated. Influential donor-funded research programmes have aligned it more with neoclassical economics, and this has led to the obfuscation of the structuralist and historical materialist roots of the framework. This chapter elaborates the structuralist and historical materialist roots of political settlements analysis. It highlights the differences between non-structuralist and structuralist approaches to political settlements analysis in relation to the concept of holding power and its components: economic structure, rents, ideas and ideology, and violence and conflict. The chapter highlights how PSA can be used to help understand the contemporary transnational nature of vulnerabilities shaping late-development challenges.

This chapter describes Rwanda’s record within the manufacturing sector. Until recently, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) did not prioritise manufacturing-based growth because of the high transport costs associated with its landlocked geographical position. While there has been some attempt at refocusing on industrial policy since 2015, because of a rising trade deficit and the urgent need to create employment, there has not been substantial progress. Rwanda has not achieved significant advances in increasing industrial employment, production and exports. After presenting the evolution of Rwanda’s industrial policy, the chapter provides detailed examples of three sectors: apparels (textiles and garments), construction materials and pharmaceuticals. In line with dynamics in other sectors, domestic capital has been marginalised in favour of supporting RPF-affiliated firms or relying on foreign investors. Some foreign investors like Volkswagen and BioNTech have invested in Rwanda with much fanfare, but most success has been driven by RPF-affiliated firms. Rwanda’s hopes for structural transformation fall at a key domestic hurdle: building effective state–business relationships aimed at technological capability acquisition for latecomer firms.

This chapter explores the regulatory challenges posed by the ‘extreme public sphere’: Alt Tech platforms that serve as media infrastructures for far-right ideologies. Triggered by the deplatforming of extremist accounts from mainstream platforms, platforms such as Gab, Bitchute, and Rumble emphasise near-absolute freedom of expression and minimal content moderation. These platforms amplify toxicity and potentially radicalise users through echo chambers. The chapter critiques the European Union’s regulatory responses, including the Digital Services Act and Codes of Conduct/Practice on hate speech and disinformation. These instruments assume that platforms are economically motivated, incentivised to maintain ‘clean’ environments for advertisers and users. However, Alt Tech platforms primarily act politically and rely on donations and subscriptions rather than advertising. As they have fewer users than mainstream platforms, they evade the risk audits and stringent obligations mandated for Very Large Online Platforms. Despite nominal compliance with legal requirements, such as user-driven moderation, Alt Tech platforms continue to host significant volumes of hate speech and disinformation. While regulation is essential, addressing the broader societal conditions that enable far-right ideologies – structural discrimination, inequality, and distrust – is critical. A whole-society approach that considers the entire communicative ecosystem could foster a more inclusive and resilient digital public sphere.

Chapter 8 assesses the remarkable musical achievements of Opus 4 – the composers Milimir Drašković, Miodrag Lazarov Pashu, Miroslav Savić, and Vladimir Tošić – and their peers as champions of minimalism, conceptual art, performance art, and Fluxus. This analytic-stylistic commentary, with score excerpts and compelling photographs, illustrates the influence that US minimalists and experimentalists, especially Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and John Cage, had on these young composers. The chapter examines Miloš Raičković’s approach to minimalism and the development of his “new classicism,” the conceptual approach in Drašković’s music, Lazarov Pashu’s ideosemas and action-composition, Savić’s theatrical “body art,” and Tošić’s reductionist control of limited pitch and rhythmic materials. This chapter examines the Yugoslav “neo-avant-garde” scene that developed at the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade, with appropriate emphasis on Fluxus as a link between Western and Eastern blocs.

This chapter describes the evolution of the mining sector in Rwanda, both its domestic mining sector and in relation to the trade of minerals from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Trading minerals from mineral-rich Eastern DRC has benefited Rwanda’s domestic economy through providing access to foreign exchange revenues. However, dependence on minerals from the DRC has been a double-edged sword. While providing significant revenues and being central to national security interests, increased reliance on the DRC contributes to the empowerment of individual business and military elites that may later become threats to the RPF’s ruling coalition. The RPF has transformed the domestic minerals sector with increased investments in geological investigations, as well as significant increases in domestic production. Dynamics in the domestic minerals sector mirror the elite vulnerability characterising other sectors. Though individual elites initially benefited from privatisation efforts, there is increased reliance on government-owned firms (like Ngali) for its most ambitious upgrading strategies. Attempts at beneficiation have been impeded by difficulties in developing effective domestic state–business relationships and challenges in centralising control over supply chains.

This chapter provides a snapshot of Rwanda’s evolving political settlement and economic development trajectory. The chapter begins by highlighting significant structural vulnerabilities that shaped Rwanda’s domestic politics historically, including ethnicity-based inequalities and political contestation, historical divisions associated with the royal family and aristocracy, refugee issues, inadequate employment opportunities and regional inequalities. It then highlights the rapid growth that took place in Rwanda over the last three decades, which has also been accompanied by significant export diversification. It then provides a brief political settlement analysis of present-day Rwanda, highlighting how development is being contested transnationally, pointing to the key vulnerabilities characterising its hub-based strategy. In particular, it describes how increased elite vulnerability has meant that the government has been reluctant to support domestic capital. As a result, the Rwandan government has failed to develop effective state–business relations aimed at achieving structural transformation.

The book is motivated by the question of analysing how Rwanda’s development trajectory can contribute to our understanding of why structural transformation remains so elusive. This chapter introduces the central contributions of the book. First, the book employs structuralist political settlements analysis to highlight how contemporary late development is contested transnationally, prompting the need for analysis across different scales. Second, the book describes how African growth has been largely driven by the services sector and Rwanda is emblematic of contemporary African growth experiences, especially since, like elsewhere on the continent, structural transformation has remained elusive. Third, the book contributes to existing literature on Rwanda by highlighting that the Rwandan Patriotic Front prioritised services-based strategies partly to reduce its reliance on domestic businesspeople because of the elite vulnerability that has characterised its rule. This strategy has yielded growth and export diversification without achieving structural transformation because elite vulnerability has inhibited effective state–business relations. The introduction also includes a discussion of the methodology employed in the book and the structure of the chapters that follow.

While early postwar musical modernist explorations seemed progressive during the 1950s, Yugoslav composers faced European and American avant-garde trends at the inaugural Music Biennale Zagreb in 1961. Founded by Croatian composer Milko Kelemen, who refused to conform to the demands of socialist realism, the Zagreb Biennale was the most significant cultural event in Yugoslavia in the early 1960s and continued to play a pivotal role in the country’s cultural diplomacy over the next three decades. Taking advantage of the Cold War political divisions, Yugoslavia’s unique position as a “liberal” communist state that did not belong to either bloc, and an economic model that adopted elements of socialism and capitalism, Kelemen devised a plan that reads like a Cold War spy novel. Pitting the Soviets against the Americans and Western Europeans with fabricated stories, Kelemen managed to secure the participation of the most recognizable figures in contemporary music in the US and Europe. Consequently, his festival became one of the most relevant international festivals of contemporary music and a forum for Yugoslavia’s engagement with Western avant-gardism.