Patchwork Leviathan : Pockets of Bureaucratic Effectiveness in Developing States / Erin Metz McDonnell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McDonnell, Erin Metz, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public administration--Developing countries.

Public administration.

Developing countries.

Physical Description:

1 online resource. 1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Corruption and ineffectiveness are often expected of public servants in developing countries, however some groups within these states are distinctly more effective and public oriented than the rest. Why? Patchwork Leviathan explains how a few spectacularly effective state organizations manage to thrive amid general institutional weakness and succeed against impressive odds. Drawing on the Hobbesian image of the state as Leviathan, Erin Metz McDonnell argues that many seemingly weak states have instead a wide range of administrative capacities. Such states are in fact patchworks sewn loosely together from scarce resources into the semblance of unity.McDonnell demonstrates that when the human, cognitive, and material resources of bureaucracy are rare, it is critically important how they are distributed. Too often, scarce bureaucratic resources are scattered throughout the state, yielding little effect. McDonnell reveals how a sufficient concentration of resources clustered within particular pockets of a state can be transformative, enabling distinctively effective organizations to emerge from a sea of ineffectiveness.Patchwork Leviathan presents offers a comprehensive analysis of successful statecraft in institutionally challenging environments, drawing on cases from contemporary Ghana and Nigeria, mid-twentieth-century Kenya and Brazil, and China in the early twentieth century. Based on nearly two years of pioneering fieldwork in West Africa, this incisive book explains how these highly effective pockets differ from the Western bureaucracies on which so much state and organizational theory is based, providing a fresh answer to why well-funded global capacity-building reforms fail—and how they can do better.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

1. Introduction: Patchwork Leviathans

2. Recruitment: Clustering Distinctiveness

3. Cultivation: Clustered Distinctiveness, Interstitial Experience, and the Lived Foundations of the Bureaucratic Ethos

4. Protection: Coping with and Remaking Disruptive Environments

5. Introducing Comparison Cases: Patchwork Leviathans in Comparative and Historical Perspective

6. Beyond Autonomy: Elite Attention and Pathways to Shelter from Neopatrimonial Influence

7. Dual Habitus and Founding Cadres: The Sociological Foundations of How Discretion Is Oriented to Organizational Achievement

8. Long-Term Outcomes in Pockets of Effectiveness

Conclusion

Methodological Appendix

Notes

References

Index

A note on the type

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Mai 2020)

ISBN:

9780691200064

0691200068

OCLC:

1138628883