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

Includes index.

Preliminary Material -- 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 and 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 / Hélène 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 / José-María Muñoz -- 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 -- Index of Names and Places.

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.