The political economy of corporate governance reform in South Africa

Abstract

This study describes the political-economic dimension of corporate governance reform in South Africa. It then investigates the relationship between corporate governance institutions and systems on the one hand and the political, economic and historical context of South African society on the other. The study establishes the political, economic and historical determinants of corporate governance reform as they evolved in the course of South African corporate history. The study concludes that South African corporate governance reform and such reform in the Commonwealth economic systems have a lot in common in terms of their historical evolution. This is despite the reasons for such reform being vastly different. The outcome of the political process in South Africa, for very specific reasons, is that a specific shareholder model of corporate governance became the corporate governance system in South Africa.