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Inclusionary housing policy (IHP) encourages developers to provide affordable housing in well-located areas. This can add to their costs and risks, so the process of policy adoption is complicated and contested. This paper provides a synthesis of the literature and then analyzes the efforts to implement IHP of two South African cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town. The core proposition is that making residential development more inclusive requires at least three ingredients to ensure meaningful change. First, the case for reform needs popular support and an active civil society to secure the backing of political leaders and officials facing resistance from entrenched real estate interests. Second, the policy needs to be feasible in an economic sense and calibrated in an incremental way that will not jeopardize private investment. Third, a robust legal framework is required to institutionalize the changes and to limit disputes and disruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution of services embedded in manufactured products in world trade has greatly increased since the 1980s. So too has services as a direct export. South Africa is an interesting case of an emerging economy that has struggled to diversify its export basket beyond basic commodities, despite having a robust domestic service sector. The article assesses the contribution of service exports to international trade in South Africa. Balance of payments data confirm that services trade is modest compared to merchandise trade. Exports in higher-value services show strong growth, although off a low base. Yet certain kinds of international linkages are not counted in official trade statistics. These service firms are also more productive, report higher output and usually pay better wages than those focused on the domestic market – as mirrored in studies of manufacturing exports. We advocate for further research and greater recognition of tradable service exports in trade policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines third sector social housing in early post-apartheid South Africa, hence offering important new insights into how institutions in emerging economies shape the implementation and impacts of this approach. Based on qualitative research methods, the paper finds that under conditions of weak formal governance, nascent industry capacity and disaffected communities, third sector social housing resulted in serious project failures and squandered public resources. The study employs an institutional lens to understand how formal and informal institutions shaped the implementation of projects and how key stakeholders acted upon conflicting incentives. It discusses five major factors – inadequate formal policy and regulatory framework, limited government capability and support, limited sector capacity, private finance reluctance and adverse informal arrangements – that caused serious difficulties both at the program and project level. The paper argues that developing robust third sector social housing comes with substantial financial, administrative and political responsibilities for governments, and its success depends on the alignment between the formal policy framework and informal institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]