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Research stream on State Bureaucracies
This stream of APPP research is exploring the scope for improvement in the way public administrative services in Africa perform their theoretical roles as promoters and regulators of development and providers of public services. While this is central question for policy, it is a particularly challenging one for empirical research. Typically, policy discussions about how to reform Africa’s civil services are grounded in quite a thin body of research-based knowledge about how the relevant bureaucracies actually function.
The stream is led by Dr Giorgio Blundo of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Marseille. It builds on the unmatched research record of the network of researchers around the EHESS-Marseille and LASDEL in Niger and Benin, of which the well reviewed book Everyday Corruption and the State (Blundo et al., Zed Books 2006) is emblematic. It represents a new departure for this group of researchers in an important respect, however:
- The previous studies were comparative across West African countries, using fieldwork evidence to demonstrate that the everyday informal procedures and practices followed by officials are quite similar across a range of sector and country contexts that appear at first sight quite different.
- The State Bureaucracies research is comparative in a different sense: it is comparing the ways officials construct and reconstruct their de facto roles, with different implications for their ability to deliver key public goods, in selected sectors and countries.
As the approach uncovers significant patterns of difference, with important implications for policy, we plan to extend the empirical scope of this stream, to Anglophone countries and new sectors.
An information sheet providing additional description and contact details for the stream is downloadable from here (
English 180KB). Downloadable publications particularly relevant to the stream include the Research Progress Report, Discussion Paper 5 and 7, and Working Paper 4.
Latest Downloads
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Bureaucracies Etatiques Fr More Info |
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State Bureaucracies Eng More Info |
