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States at work : dynamics of African bureaucracies
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Online
- 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 ...
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.
Details
- Creator
- edited by Thomas Bierschenk, Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Contributors
- Publication
-
- Brill 2014
- Boston : Brill, 2014
- Physical Details
-
- 1 online resource (454 p.)
- ISBNs
- 9789004264960, 9004264965, 9004264787
- OCLC
- ocn870646864
- Includes index.
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- English
- 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 / 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