States at Work Dynamics of African Bureaucracies

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...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Other Authors: de Sardan, Jean-Pierre Olivier (Editor), Bierschenk, Thomas (Editor)
Format: Electronic Book Chapter
Language:English
Published: Brill 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:OAPEN Library: download the publication
OAPEN Library: description of the publication
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISBN:9789004264960
Access:Open Access