Coffee Statecraft: Rethinking the Global Coffee Crisis, 1998-2002

This paper offers a rethinking of the global coffee crisis from 1998 to 2002. In seeking to account for the crisis, most official international institutions and non-governmental organisations have focused on the dynamics of the coffee market, its volatility and unpredictability, in the wake of the decline of the International Coffee Agreements in 1989. The result has been a dominant consensus around the 'market' as the cause of underdevelopment and its potential solution, with the 'state' receding ever further into the background. As an alternative to this consensus, this paper argues that the state and the market are inseparable and, more specifically, that coffee statecraft , both good and bad, has been and continues to be central to the everyday operations of the coffee industry. Drawing specifically on the role of the Vietnamese state, it argues that coffee statecraft played a key role in the crisis - typically portrayed as primarily market-driven - and proposes greater attention be paid to the geopolitical actions of southern states, the role of the state during times when it seems most benign or invisible, and the centrality of coffee statecraft in steering development outcomes.