States at Work Dynamics of African Bureaucracies

• Other Authors: de Sardan, Jean-Pierre Olivier (Editor), Bierschenk, Thomas (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Brill 2020
• Subjects: Politics & government; Political Science; General
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

States at Work explores the mundane practices of state-making in Africa by focussing 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.