States at Work : Dynamics of African Bureaucracies / edited by Thomas Bierschenk, Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bierschenk, Thomas, Editor.

Contributor:

Bierschenk, Thomas.

Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre.

Series:

African-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (Series) ; v. 12.

Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies, 1574-6925 ; volume 12

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public administration--Africa.

Public administration.

Bureaucracy--Africa.

Bureaucracy.

Economic development--Africa.

Economic development.

State, The.

Africa--Politics and government--1960-.

Africa.

Africa--Economic policy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (454 p.)

Place of Publication:

Brill 2020

Brill 2014

Boston : Brill, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

States at Work explores the mundane practices of state-making in Africa by focusing on the daily functioning of public services and the practices of civil servants. Adopting mainly an ethnographic approach as a basis for theorizing, the authors deal with topics including: bureaucratic cultures and practical norms, operational routines in offices, career patterns and modes of appointment; how bureaucrats themselves perceive and deliver goods and services and interact with service users; the accumulation of public administration reforms and how the different bureaucratic corps react to the ‘good governance’ discourse and new public management policies; the consequences of these reforms for the daily working of state bureaucracies and for the civil servants’ identities and modes of accountability; and the space that exists for bottom-up micro-reforms that build on local innovations or informal arrangements.

Contents:

Studying the dynamics of African bureaucracies : an introduction to states at work / Thomas Bierschenk and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan

Ethnographies of public services in Africa : an emerging research paradigm / Thomas Bierschenk and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan

Seeing like a state agent : the ethnography of reform in Senegal's forestry services / Giorgio Blundo

Factionalism and staff success in a Nigerian university : a departmental case study / Chris Willott

Working in neopatrimonial settings : public sector staff perceptions in Tanzania and Uganda / Ole Therkildsen

"We make do and keep going!" Inventive practices and ordered informality in the functioning of the district courts in Niamey snd Zinder (Niger) / Oumarou Hamani

"I take an oath to the state, not the government" : career trajectories and professional ethics of Ghanaian public servants / Carola Lentz

"We must run while others walk" : African civil servants, state ideologies and bureaucratic practices in Tanzania, from the 1950s to the 1970s / Andreas Eckert

Sedimentation, fragmentation and normative double-binds in (West) African public services / Thomas Bierschenk

The politics of reform: a case study of bureaucracy at the ministry of basic education in Cameroon / Helene Charton

Building state capacities? The case of the poverty reduction unit in Mali / Isaline Bergamaschi

A breeding ground for revenue reliability? Cameroonian veterinary agents and tax officials in the face of reform / Jose-Maria Munoz

Old-school bureaucrats and technocrats in Malawi : civil service reform in practice / Gerhard Anders

Teachers unions and the selective appropriation of public service reforms in Benin / Azizou Chabi Imorou

The state that works : a 'pockets of effectiveness' perspective on Nigeria and beyond / Michael Roll

The delivery state in Africa : interface bureaucrats, professional cultures and the bureaucratic mode of governance / Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9789004264960

9004264965

OCLC:

870646864