Corporate strategy, state power and compromise: Television manufacture in Southern Africa

In capitalist societies the State must be considered an institution for the preservation and rationalization of a given socio-economic order and of the class relations which it embodies. The State’s raison d’être imposes certain constraints upon its actions. Within those limits state actions may be shaped by a bargaining process in which the interplay between corporate strategies and state power may precipitate a compromise outcome. The birth of television manufacture in Southern Africa furnishes a case study which illumines this framework. Between 1971–76 compromises eventuated around three issues: (i) the number of firms to be al1owed into set manufacture. (ii) their location with South Africa in relation to state efforts to promote decentralization, and (iii) the location of television plants outside of South Africa in surrounding Black African nations. It is such compromises that determine the number, locational pattern and organization of corporations undertaking television manufacture in Southern Africa.