Research Catalog

Title

States at work : dynamics of African bureaucracies / edited by Thomas Bierschenk, Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan.

Publication

• Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2014].
• ©2014.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Bierschenk, Thomas.
• Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre.

Description

xiv, 440 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

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. Book jacket.

Series Statement

Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies ; volume 12

Uniform Title

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

Subject

• Since 1960
• Public administration > Africa
• Bureaucracy > Africa
• Economic development > Africa
• State, The
• Administration publique > Afrique
• Bureaucratie > Afrique
• Développement économique > Afrique
• Politique économique > Afrique
• Afrique > Politique et gouvernement > 1960-...
• Africa > Politics and government > 1960-
• Africa > Economic policy

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

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.

ISBN

• 9789004264786 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 9004264787 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 9004264965 (e-book)
• 9789004264960 (e-book)
• 9789004264960 (e-book) (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

^^2013046380

OCLC

• 878187773
• SCSB-11370170

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library