Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

The Elephant in the Room: Off-shore companies, liberalisation and extension of presidential power in DR Congo

Marriage, Zoe

The Elephant in the Room: Off-shore companies, liberalisation and extension of presidential power in DR Congo Thumbnail


Authors



Abstract

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, donors promoted rapid liberalisation and presidential elections in the aftermath of the war, and after two terms, President Kabila has not left office. This article engages with the question of how liberalisation and elections are connected, and how they are related to the extension of presidential power. It finds that the international market for minerals has shaped the domestic political economy but its nature has effectively been ignored in the formulation of donor policy; efforts at regulating trade have been concentrated on due diligence of origin in Congo but have not addressed the secrecy of international trade. Liberalisation has removed control of economic resources from Congo, provided returns for elite politicians and funded violence to control the disenfranchised population. The offshore companies are the elephant in the room; without acknowledging them, analysis of the liberalisation and its interaction with presidential tenure lacks assessment of the opportunities, interests and power that shaped the processes.

Citation

Marriage, Z. (2018). The Elephant in the Room: Off-shore companies, liberalisation and extension of presidential power in DR Congo. Third World Quarterly, 39(5), 889-905. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2018.1447373

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 27, 2018
Online Publication Date Mar 22, 2018
Publication Date Mar 22, 2018
Deposit Date Mar 13, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 13, 2018
Journal Third World Quarterly
Print ISSN 0143-6597
Electronic ISSN 1360-2241
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 39
Issue 5
Pages 889-905
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2018.1447373
Keywords DR Congo, democratisation, liberalisation, conflict minerals, donors, offshore
Related Public URLs https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2018.1447373

Files

30_08_2018_The elepha.pdf (1.2 Mb)
PDF

Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.





You might also like



Downloadable Citations