Convenor(s)
de Simone Sara / Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale
Labzaé Mehdi / Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
The worldwide influence of good governance, development buzzwords and discourses on African governments’ policy design is widely acknowledged in academic literature and by international policy-makers. As conditionality gave way to post-conditionality regimes blurring the internal-external dichotomy, public action is increasingly less a product of mere national politics. Blueprint administrative reforms, training and capacity-building programs for administrative and government officers are funded – and often organized – by international donors’ agencies in pursuit of a neutral bureaucratic institutional order consistent with a Weberian idea of the State. However, in Africa as elsewhere, especially outside of capital cities, bureaucrats are the real embodiment of the state, the medium through which people experience government in their daily lives; and this makes the “performance” of African administrations extremely variable from place to place. Moreover, bureaucrats find themselves constantly interacting with a number of other national and international actors (NGOs, CSOs, private investors, etc.) that participate in the performance of state functions, and influence the repertoire of actions they can draw upon in their everyday work. Through the discussion of empirical cases, this panel wishes to address everyday interactions between these actors and bureaucrats which, we believe, contribute to state making even more than laws and policies.
La formation de l’État au quotidien : entre fonctionnaires et programmes de développement
La littérature scientifique se fait de nos jours largement l’écho du lexique du développement et de la bonne gouvernance dans la formulation des politiques publiques sur le continent africain. La mise en forme de l’action étatique n’est pas qu’une affaire nationale, et le régime de « post-conditionalité » s’est étendu sur le continent. Des packages de réforme, des formations à destination des fonctionnaires et des programmes de « construction de capacités » sont financés et organisés par les agences de développement des pays bailleurs, qui véhiculent souvent une conception wébérienne de la rationalité bureaucratique. Pourtant, en Afrique comme ailleurs, et particulièrement en dehors des capitales, les fonctionnaires sont les incarnations principales de l’Etat, à travers lesquelles les citoyens rencontrent l’Etat au quotidien. Les formes de l’Etat peuvent donc considérablement varier au sein du territoire national. De plus, les fonctionnaires interagissent quotidiennement avec des expatriés travaillant pour des programmes de développement, des ONGs, ou des investisseurs privés qui participent à la délivrance de service par l’Etat, et donc à la définition de la forme de celui-ci. Ce panel se penche sur ces interactions entre « développeurs » de toute sorte et fonctionnaires, ces interactions participant certainement davantage de la formation et construction de l’Etat que les lois et politiques publiques.
Ewald Jonas / Linnaeus University
Mhamba Robert / University of Dar es Salaam
Reversed blue print. The failure of Local Government Reform in Tanzania
This paper present fresh field work data from case studies carried out from January 2014 to Mars 2015 on to what extent the Tanzanian Local Government Reform Programmes (LGRP) 2000-2013 has brought about more democratic decision making processes – and state building on local level. The LGRP is a typical “Blueprint administrative reform funded and guided by international donors’ agencies”. The main findings is that the outcomes of the LGRP on improving the democratic processes at the local level has been limited. We examine to what extent various actors, including national and local CSO, at various levels can exercise horizontal and vertical accountability. We also look at the role of large international mining companies and local governments. Our findings indicate that the LGR have inadequately changed the existing power relations, political elite interests and ideology of the political actors. Real power still lies in the hands of the ruling party elites at the National and District level and constrains power sharing at the Local Government Authority (LGA) levels and at the Ward, Village and Sub village level. The LGR has not provided adequate mechanisms, processes and incentives to hold political elites and the duty bearers to account, neither vertically nor horizontally. Power distribution has remained Top-Down with increasing conflict of interest between the Top and the Bottom.
Dodworth Kathy / University of Edinburgh
“We are 50% government”: NGO co-production of the state in Tanzania
Tanzania has traditionally been viewed as a highly authoritarian, expansive state with a pronounced scale and depth of presence in many areas of public and private life. Whilst its machinery remains weighted towards its political and economic centres, local government reform from the late 1990s has precipitated a degree of ‘districtization’ (Kelsall 2000), whereby political elites have reconfigured around district hubs. District Councils and its bureaucrats, rather than the presidentially appointed District Commissioners, have been on the ascendency as the locus of political power. This is central to how people experience the state in the everyday, but also to the evolving legitimation strategies of district-based NGOs. NGOs, ambiguously located between the public and private spheres, oscillate between proximity to and distance from district officials. This paper seeks to examine the strategic association by NGOs to the District Council and its representatives in Bagamoyo district, spotlighting one INGO in its particularly pronounced affiliation. This NGO draws heavily on its proximity to local government in order to legitimate its presence in its everyday practices, particularly at a village level, forming a key part of how it is understood and interpreted by its ‘beneficiaries’. This process is pronounced to the point whereby the NGO’s staff are co-producers of state power and hierarchy, as well as co-performers of state functions, claiming ‘we are 50% government’.
Al Dabaghy Camille / IRIS, EHESS
Interactions transnationales routinières dans le gouvernement municipal, une perspective malgache.
Je partirai de l’observation d’une banale réunion entre les agents d’une commune malgache (Diégo-Suarez) et leurs partenaires français à propos d’un dispositif d’ensevelissement des déchets pour interroger la transnationalisation du gouvernement municipal. L’analyse de la scène révèle que ce qui pose problème est bien moins le dispositif technique en question que l’existence d’une communauté transnationalisée de développeurs et de développés de la ville, communauté qui est postulée par l’aide française et qui devrait être actualisée à travers des décisions collégiales. Or cette actualisation s’avère conflictuelle : les décisions ne peuvent être prises. Les différents développeurs de la ville ont en réalité des représentations incompatibles de l’échelle légitime et pertinente du gouvernement de la commune malgache. Si l’on met en regard ces représentations d’échelles avec des trajectoires personnelles et professionnelles, des dynamiques de structuration sociale inscrites dans un espace-temps plus large, on peut rendre intelligible la variété des stratégies qui s’expriment dans la réunion et aboutissent à son échec. En croisant une perspective constructiviste des échelles et une approche sociologique des carrières, l’ethnographie de réunions de travail routinières peut contribuer à une analyse du gouvernement en « situation développementiste » qui ne réifie pas des forces causales globales et ne sacrifie l’une à l’autre ni l’intersubjectivité ni les rapports de domination.
Labzaé Mehdi / Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Running with the hare and hunting with the hounds ? Ethiopian land administration agents, the Party, and development projects
Many foreign-funded programmes are active within the Ethiopian land administration. They work on a day-to-day basis with Ethiopian civil servants, providing them with trainings, funds, technical materials, and grants to study abroad. At the same time, Ethiopian civil servants remain subject of heavy control mechanisms put in force by the ruling party. Whereas some state agents would like to quit the civil service and work for development projects,others invest in their public career and party involvement. Some othes manage to keep good relations with both, hoping that opportunities might come from one side or the other. Describing contrasted social and professfional trajectories of several Ethiopian land administration agents, the communication discusses some of the consequences these navigations have on state agents’ attitudes towards politics and on the framing of land policies.
Eveslage Benjamin / School of Oriental and African Studies
Sexual Health or Rights?
In the post-2015 development agenda, international development organisations are incorporating LGBT rights under a new framework called sexual and reproductive health and rights. However, there has been little acknowledgement of the theoretical and practical tensions that arise when incorporating sexual rights into development work. Specifically, this paper analyses the tensions between sexual health and sexual rights by asking, “How has the provision of sexual health impacted sexual rights?” In answering this question, focus is placed on the logics and strategies that sexual health interventions employed while targeting key populations in Ghana, covering a period of 16 years (1998-2014). This chapter argues Western-funded sexual health organisations, and a changing socio-political context in Ghana, facilitated a paradox between sexual health and sexual rights in Ghana. In this predicament, the strategic choices made by sexual health coordinators and implementers with the aim of maximising uptake of sexual health services among sexual minorities had the effect of 1) co-opting sexual rights efforts, 2) silencing public activism and 3) incentivising gender conformity and “African” conceptions of sexuality among its clients and leadership. The chapter concludes by synthesising the findings and contextualising these tensions within the broader issues of implementing a SRHR framework in international development and how (mis)conceptions of sexuality led to these problems.