State bureaucracy and governance in West francophone Africa. Empirical
diagnosis, historical perspective
J.P. Olivier de Sardan1
Introduction. The African state victim of « essayism »
The contrast is startling between the very abundant literature about "the State in
Africa" and the very small number of empirical studies devoted to its “real” daily functioning.
One has the feeling that for decades, journalists, politicians and many researchers, whether
African or Africanists, focus on a tireless search for the "essence" of the African State,
neglecting a concrete analysis of the administrations, the public services, the bureaucratic
system, the relations between civil servants and users. In a sense, it is the State as an "entity",
and not as a complex social process, which has focused the interest. Hence the multiple titles
associating the African State to whatever adjective: according to the authors, the African State
is clientelistic2, predatory3, sorcerer4, patrimonial5, neo-patrimonial6, criminal7, imported8,
kleptocrat9... The African State has always been quickly characterised, generally without any
means to apprehend its concrete reality, as it is lived daily by its civil servants or its users.
This qualificative profusion has more to do with essayism than with investigating, and
is based more on second-hand work, “chamber” reflections or unconstrained impressionism,
than on empirical observation and investigative data, collected according to rigorous
procedures. Indeed, this "essayism" does not necessarily emanate from professional
researchers and takes sometimes provocative10 or exasperating11 forms. Yet, it also exists in
erudite forms, particularly in the field of political sciences insofar as, in spite of some
stimulating already well known12 Africanist works, this discipline is mainly, if not exclusively
based - with some rare exceptions (more frequent on other continents than in Africa) - on
documentary analyses, on statistical data (questionable as soon as it has to do with Africa13)
and on short investigations, and not on long stays in the field and intensive empirical data.
Such in-depth, qualitative methods essential to understand the daily functioning of the
administrative and public services, come in fact under the competence of socioanthropology14, but unfortunately for the latter, it has shown very little interest up to now in
1
Resarch Director, EHESS, CNRS and IRD, LASDEL, BP 12901, Niamey (Niger) [email protected]. This text is a
revised version of a contribution initially written for the colloquium of CODESRIA in Dakar in December 2003.
2 Médard, 1981.
3 Darbon, 1990.
4 Hours, 1985.
5 Médard, 1990, 1998.
6 Médard, 1991.
7 Bayart, 1997.
8 Badie, 1992.
9 Bayart, Ellis & Hibou, 1997.
10 Cf. Kabou, 1991.
11 Smith, 2003.
12 Cf. Médard, 1991; Bayart, 1989; Mbembé, 2000.
13 Cf. Sivaramakrishnan, 2000.
14 Because the traditions of empirical research of qualitative type (based on field studies, participative
observation, free interviews, case studies) are common to anthropology (heiress of ethnology) and to some socalled “qualitative” sociology (stemming from the School of Chicago), we prefer to use the term “socioanthropology”.
1
the modern African State, because of the theoretical and ideological past of the Africanist
ethnology. In a sense, I wish to combine here political sciences’ topics with socioanthropological methods, as it seems to me to be the "successful recipe".15
In other words, in the worlds of publishing and research much more is spoken about
the African State than is really investigated about its common, usual, routine functioning. The
State as a topic for conferences and bookstores rarely reports on what one may call the State
"for real"16, the everyday State17, the concrete State18 or even the local State19. That is why
we have for a few years undertaken with the LASDEL (in Niamey, and now in Parakou) a
number of in-depth collective, “socio-anthropological” investigations, led by a network of
African and European researchers, on several West African countries (Niger and Benin of
course, but also Senegal, Guinea, Mali and Ivory Coast) 20 in order to eliminate this deficit in
empirical knowledge.
An astonishing convergence as regards the contemporary "governance" forms emerges
from these field investigations, in countries with extremely varied economic contexts, and
very different pre-colonial and post-colonial histories.
The meaning of "governance", as I define it, has to be explained here. This term is,
above all, not to be thought of here in a moralist and normative sense, as in the World Bank
glossary (where it is associated with strategies which the Bank intends to promote on the level
of public policies); moreover, I extend it greatly, including much more than just governments
and senior civil servants of the State; it also includes the operating modes of the public
service, the professional culture of the civil servants, the forms of administrative management,
and the relations between government officials and users or citizens. It is thus about neither
"good policy", nor about "policy at the top", but about the whole processes of treatment and
delivery of public goods and services, particularly by the official State apparatuses, but also
by other operators, such as development institutions, or the associative world, which
sometimes make up for the State, sometimes replace it, or sometimes support it by sectoral
"perfusions".
15
Different previous drafts of such a combination are to be found, from Balandier (1992) to Abélès (1990) or
Dozon (2003), according to perspectives and methods differing from ours. But before our research this
combination had never been implemented to conduct systematic comparative studies on concrete sectors of
contemporary African States. I will however mention the pioneering work of Price (1975) on recently
independant Ghana. In a workshop of the EHESS, R. Fardon has suggested – in an undoubtedly undeserved way,
corresponding though to our ambition –, that our attempt recalled the use of Evans-Pritchard’s methods and
postured towards the Zande witchcraft (Evans Pritchard, 1972), applied to corruption or to the analysis of
administrative services.
16 According to Y. Jaffré’s phrase, 1999.
17 Subject of the colloquium of APAD in Leiden (2002).
18 Title of the book by Padioleau, 1982.
19 Current research programme of the LASDEL.
20 Cf. some recent publications, for example: “Les pouvoirs au village: le Bénin rural entre démocratisation et
décentralisation” (T. Bierschenk & JP. Olivier de Sardan, eds, 1998); “La corruption au quotidien” (G. Blundo
& JP. Olivier de Sardan, eds, 2001); “Une médecine inhospitalière. Les difficiles relations entre soignants et
soignés dans cinq capitales d'Afrique de l'Ouest” (Y. Jaffré & JP. Olivier de Sardan, eds, 2003). Cf. also the
collection “Études et Travaux du LASDEL”, and the book in progress on “Les pouvoirs locaux au Niger” (J-.P.
Olivier de Sardan & M. Tidjani Alou, eds). My analysis here owes a lot to my close and long term collaboration
with the different co-authors of these works I wish here to thank also all the research fellows of the LASDEL,
and especially Mahaman Tidjani Alou and Nassirou Bako Arifari, as well as G. Elwert, D. Fassin, J-.F. Lantéri,
P. Lavigne Delville, P-.Y. Le Meur, C. Lentz, M. Niang, and T. Bierschenk for their remarks on the first version
of this text.
2
So, we have investigated over recent years a few administrations services (health,
justice, customs, municipalities) as well as forms of indirect official delivery of public
services or goods (development projects, NGOs, chieftancies). I will only summarise here the
results relating to the official sector in the traditional meaning, in the form of a series of
common characteristics. I will then suggest an historical analysis of the colonial emergence of
modern bureaucracy in Africa, as one factor among others, explaining the present situation.
Diagnosis. A same type of daily governance
In all the countries where we worked, the same type of "governance" was
implemented de facto, beyond public speeches and official organisation charts, and this, in
spite of very different post-colonial political histories21. For example, Senegal and its stable
democracy under a long hegemony of the Socialist Party, -Benin and its intensive "beninomarxist" experience, Mali or Niger with their successive single party regimes and military
dictatorships. In spite of changes of regimes or official ideology, the sudden jolts and coups
d'État, national conferences, cohabitations and political changeovers, all of these countries
have ended with very similar systems of "real" functioning of the politico-administrative
apparatuses, from the base to the top.
In other words, a body of common characteristics largely structures the Frenchspeaking States of West Africa, beyond, of course, the undeniably national characteristics.
Whether these characteristics in the Central or Southern African countries or in English or
Portuguese-speaking African countries are similar or not, is another question22. I could not
come to a conclusion based on my own studies.
The inventory of these common characteristics suggested here (all empirically based),
although far from exhaustive, is sufficiently significant. It includes the following features: the
central weight on all levels of clientelism, great distance between a formal chart and the real
division of the tasks, systematic "privilegism", "a culture of impunity", "room for suspicion",
"each-one-for-oneself-ism", the generalised exchange of favours, corruption that turned
systemic, usual contempt towards anonymous users, lack of motivation of the civil servants,
low productivity, and control of a double language. Other equally important elements could,
of course, be mentioned, some of which we developed elsewhere on the basis of empirical
investigation: polycephaly of the local political arenas23, low capacities of regulation of the
State24, importance of intermediaries of all kinds25, pluralism of the norms26, difficulties and
myths of community management... 27.
Firstly, let us clear up a misunderstanding: all the characteristics, which we will
mention here, also exist in the northern countries. We are, in any case, not claiming these
features exist in Africa, and not in Europe! They simply do not have the same extension and
intensity in the northern countries as in the African countries. One may say that the "sauce
ingredients" are the same everywhere, but the proportions change and, in fact, the sauce does
not taste the same at all. Corruption for example does exist in Europe, but it is sectorialised (in
21
Whatever the various rhythms and modes, depending on the successive regimes in each country, the final
result is however very close nowadays.
22 Botswana has thus been, for a long time, referred to as a positive example, very different as regards the
governance forms.
23 Cf. Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 1998.
24 Idem.
25 Cf. Blundo & Olivier de Sardan, 2001, and infra.
26 Cf. Chauveau, Le Pape & Olivier de Sardan, 2001.
27 Cf. Olivier de Sardan & Elhadji Dagobi, 2000.
3
the field of civil engineering, for example) and relatively masked. It isn’t to be found
everywhere or visible at all levels, in a sector like health for example, which on the contrary,
in Africa, is a field of generalised corruption. In the same way, clientelism is indeed
extremely important in the industrialised countries. However, recruitment or evaluation based
on competencies remains, despite everything, largely widespread within the public services,
which is hardly the case in Africa. Lastly, the contempt towards anonymous users has not
disappeared among the French or German bureaucrats. The concept of public service remains
strong there, however, and the improvement of the quality of the service provided to the user
has been significant for two or three decades. So, one is far from the African situation, where
the anonymous (and poor) user is rather systematically badly (or not) served, but ignored,
humiliated, or racketeered.
Finally, here is a last essential point. We retain here only the common factors, in other
words the main tendencies that emerged massively from our investigations, in the five
countries and the few sectors studied. Yet, it should not be forgotten that no administration is
monolithic, and that the civil servants are not all alike, in their profiles or in their functions.
Some of the services achieve procedural tasks; some others deliver engineering tasks; some of
the State apparatuses have above all repressive or controlling roles, whereas others implement
educational, therapeutic or management know-how. In the same way, there are undoubtebly
some official enclaves which operate better than the average, and where the gaps between
rules and practices – such as informal privatisation - are definitely less pronounced than in the
following general description. This is why there is a need, from now on, for further detailed
investigations, taking the whole of the public or parapublic services into account28.
Clientelism
Social sciences somehow neglected this old concept, which yet has the merit to give
an account of the numerous phenomena of factional solidarity, patronage, bonds of affiliation
and partisan preference, which one meets daily at all levels of African administrative services.
Appointments, assignments, promotions, pushing "somebody on one side" thus follow the
rather systematic logics of network, of individualised protection and redistribution which
really have very little to do with duly established profiles of positions or competence criteria.
From the top to the bottom of the State apparatus, the recent generalisation of the multi-party
system has moreover thrown up a huge and omnipresent system of partisan preferences, on a
well established priority basis of personal recommendations and of "patrons’" interventions at
the expense of professional criteria: electoral clientelism and its post-electoral and preelection repercussions29 thus superimposed on the other pre-existent forms of clientelism.
In Niger for example, each coalition party in power is entitled to a quota of positions,
from the top to the bottom of the administrative services, for which it chooses the militants it
intends to "thank". So, in a survey conducted by the LASDEL on the local State, we have met a
teacher in Tahoua, with no experience of the administration who was appointed sub-prefect,
because he had served the party; commentary of a local civil servant: "it is like giving a car to
somebody who has no driving licence"; in any case, he will be judged above all by his capacity to
improve his party’s score at the elections. Another example: tax collectors on the markets are
chosen all over the country by the political parties, in order to reward their militants and to feed the
28
29
Hence the research programme we intend to develop on the local state in a few middle African towns.
Cf. Banégas, 2003.
4
party cash box before the Public Revenue Department (Trésor public); they are said "to have two
pockets, one for the state and one for themselves" (and their party).
The formal and the real
The organisation charts, official texts, charts and maps, listings and plannings, are
indeed far from lacking in our countries, and draw the contours of a reassuring and functional
bureaucratic world. Yet reality is very different, very far from this smooth image. The tasks
carried out are not the ones that were planned; the agents do things other than those for which
they are officially recruited and paid; voluntary and other informal back-up agents, without
pay slips, perform a considerable part of the regular tasks; budgets are purely fictional; posted
instructions are never respected. The real, daily functioning of any administrative service in
the studied countries, cannot be deduced from the written texts governing it: only a
meticulous observation makes it possible to acknowledge to what extent the practice is
different from those texts. Some of the tasks are achieved by an informal sector, to some
extent internal or peripheral to the public services.
In the health centres, at all levels, agents very often achieve tasks which have nothing to
do with their official competencies or training. Keepers dress wounds, labourers perform
injections, ward orderlies deliver babies, nurses issue prescriptions, doctors carry out only the
bureaucracy. Moreover, up to a third of the staff can be "voluntary" staff, off any register and
unknown to the administration: housewives seeking an occupation, "first-aid agents" trained by the
Red Cross, unemployed parents of an agent, new graduates from the medical schools without
assignments...
The « each one for oneself-ism »
In spite of clichés and stereotypes praising the community solidarity, the African
continent is indeed, at least with regard to the public sector (but undoubtedly also beyond it)
the kingdom of the "each one-for-oneself-ism". In the administrative services, the team game
is more or less unknown, and no one interferes in his/her colleague’s work. A meeting
involving a collective discussion aimed at improving quality or labour productivity is
extremely rare. Each one carries out their tasks in a kind of "bubble" (two or three people can,
of course, professionally live together in the same bubble), where no one penetrates, and
which does nothing but cross or knock into other bubbles. Everyone applies the proverb "If
you go through a village of one-eyed people, close an eye and walk!" 30
In the law courts of Niamey, Cotonou or Dakar, the judges ‘rub shoulders’ without
consulting each other, the clerks work on their own, the heads of department are pleased as long as
there is no problem (or sometimes receive a rent on the illicit intrigues of their subordinates), and
there is no real control of the quality (and sometimes of the reality) of the services of the agents.
Even the labourers are not really controlled and are largely left to themselves (all the more since
they are well aware of each other s’ small tricks).
"Each one tries to preserve their field of action as a personal property. "When you tell a
colleague that he does not do his work or that he’s done it badly, he will tell you: mind your own
business!" says a voluntary worker " (Moumouni, in Moumouni & Souley, 2003)
30
Quoted by Souley, in Moumouni & Souley, 2003.
5
« Rooms of suspicion »
Any form of collective action immediately gives rise to considerable suspicion,
rumours and accusations, from inside as well as from outside. In the rural field, there is no cooperative, grouping, association or management board, which has not been overtly or covertly
the object of accusations of misapropriation. The world of the political parties is perceived by
everybody and anybody as a world of intrigues, of ceaseless inversions of alliances, of arm
wrestling and blows “below the belt”, betrayals and transhumances. And the politicoadministrative apparatuses do not escape this law of suspicion. There is hardly a head of
department who is not potentially corrupted, partial, or partisan in the eyes of his
collaborators and subordinates; in the same way, any decision of a judge is automatically
suspected of being taken to please X, or because Y gave a bribe-containing "envelope".
In fact, we cannot say anything about the reality of all these accusations, and some are
probably unfounded or slanderous. What remains attested, however, is the extent and the
pregnancy of these "rooms of suspicion" in the administrative services as anywhere else,
which mortgage the construction of minimal relations of confidence or safety, necessary to
the satisfactory delivery of public or collective services.
In Niger, the zarma term baabize-tarey (meaning being the children of the same father)
connotes jealousy and competition, in everyday as well as in political life. The election of a chief
for life, against other candidates who are also his brothers or his cousins (his baabizey) who will
consequently remain his opponents for life, symbolises this. The frequent consultations of
soothsayers, magicians and other marabouts ready to denounce a relative, a friend or a collaborator
in the circle close to the patient who would be responsible for his passed, present or future
sorrows, maintain this climate of overall mistrust.
« Privilegism »
Any position in the public services is first and foremost assessed according to the
access to privileges that it permits. Insofar as the wages are derisory and never-increasing
almost everywhere, and as the investment in work itself is weak, the privileges in fact, formal
or informal, licit or illicit, make the difference. The goal of the game is, to some extent, to
extend these privileges to the utmost, as far as possible, sometimes immoderately, either
because of the material interest, the resources, or because of the prestige they provide. The
"advantages of one’s position" are thus genuine "markers" of a status, and operate as signs of
"distinction" (in the sense of Bourdieu) towards the colleagues, the subordinates and the users.
The privileges range from the reserved and private use of a telephone line to the service
car "appropriated" by the civil servant, from obtaining remunerative "assignments" to the villa that
goes with the position, from mobilising subaltern employees for one’s own shopping to the
unlimited use of air-conditioning, the use of gas coupons of the service as a means of gratification
or as a self-granted bonus, the appropriation in fact of the professional buildings to do some
business or to receive one’s friends, etc... The comparatively luxurious world of the "projects"
(with its four-wheel drives, its splits and its functional offices) appears as an ideal of privileges to
which everyone aspires; and to be the "focus point" (the correspondent) of a project supporting
whatever department in the public service is a very desired position, because of the access that it
grants to some advantages, even minor, particular to this magic world of projects.
6
Contempt for anonymous users
Whatever public service, cadastral survey, post station, registry office, police station
or medical centre, the anonymous user will make a bad start, finding himself in a hostile field;
he has to go round an assault course and nobody will help him - quite the contrary. The civil
servants regard him as an intruder and a troublemaker, even as a prey (cf here below), and
intend to be as little disturbed by him as possible. His ignorance of procedures does not invite
help, but rather reprimand. Whereas the external social world privileges the values of
propriety, hospitality and respect, the bureaucratic universe, on the contrary, seems to be
based on the contempt of the user, and of his time, in particular.
During the interviews, the users of the health services kept saying: "one does not even
look at us". It expresses well their feelings of not being respected, of being non-existent and
humiliated.
"He does not look at you, he only speaks, you do not understand, and then he gives a
prescription... I told him that my daughter’s body overheats, he did not even look at her" (Fanta, 24
years old, Abidjan, quoted by M. Koné, 2003)…
"I was trying with a ward orderly to encourage a parturient to push. She was very tired
and moaned a lot. This was irritating the midwife, who told me: "tear her, they are all like that,
ready to go with men, enjoying to come but unable to control themselves when faced with pain;
How shameful are these children nowadays" (...) I was about to do it, I had told the ward orderly to
give me a blade, but I still wanted to wait for a while. Then, with a sudden jump, the parturient
pushed and the expulsion started. Afterwards, everything went all right. I was relieved. The
midwife told the parturient "you are lucky, because if I had to make you give birth, I would have
torn you from the beginning" "(FL, trainee student, second year at the midwife school, ENSP,
Niamey, quoted by A. Souley, 2003).
The generalised exchange of favours
However, this contempt stops where the recommendations start. Besides, any person
directly or indirectly recommended is on the contrary rather well served, often at the expense
of waiting anonymous users. For a PAC ("relative, friend or acquaintance": in French "parent,
ami ou connaissance"), the civil servant improves politeness, and will ease the access to the
required service, readily leaving his place to guide his host. The ‘recommendations networks’
are multiple: members of the extended family, neighbours, people originating in the same
region, colleagues, former schoolmates, leisure mates or party comrades, etc. The favour
rendered will not necessarily be equally returned by the "debtor", but by other services
rendered by other acquaintances: this is why we can talk of a "generalised exchange", to
parody the formula of Lévi-Strauss on kinship.
You have to know somebody, or know somebody who knows somebody in order to
survive in an administrative territory. Faced with an administrative problem that needs to be
solved, one does not try to know about the procedure to be followed, but whom to see, who
could pull the strings for you.
"Favours for colleagues or their children are normal. They do not, for example, have to
respect any precedence or I can even give them drugs if I have some. The agent can even leave his
working place to go with his friend’s child to another better-equipped health centre. However, one
7
cannot generalise for people whom one hardly knows. One cannot do favours for everyone one
knows. Thus one should not exaggerate" (EM, person in charge for a CSI, Niamey).
"When they come in consultation, the "passes" (recommended people) of some of us do
not even stop to pay the bill. They go directly to see the hospital staff. If I was deciding to oppose
the "passes" system, we would not get along any more" (BI, tax collector in a hospital, Niamey)31.
Systemic corruption
Another solution for the user who does not know anybody but who has money, is the
recourse to corruption, now systemic, omnipresent and quite visible. However, corruption also
unites people in continuous business relationships, or structures itself according to organised
and even reciprocal networks (the police officer must give "his share" to the sergeant, who
gives his to the police chief, etc). This systemic corruption thus has multiple forms:
commissions for illicit services, gratifications, string-pulling, undue remuneration of public
services, tributes, sideline, - misappropriation... It can be punctual, dyadic, regular. It leads to
a kind of "informal privatisation" of the State, insofar as the government official does not do
his work, or any work, unless he gets a direct remuneration from the user or the colleague32.
Popular semiology conveys very well the multiple dimensions of corruption and its daily
omnipresence: "The goat grazes where it is tied": "the one who pounds (?????) always keeps a
mouthful for himself"; one has to give "the money for the ingredients of the sauce", "to put a stone
on a file, so that it does not fly away", "to lubricate the mouth"; "it needs two hands to be able to
wash one another"; "one should not come with empty hands"; "the ropes of those drawing from the
same well always mix up"... 33
The « culture of impunity »
The absence of real sanctioning of serious professional misconducts (such as diversion
or corruption) is attested to everywhere. The worst that can generally happen is the reassignment, i.e. the changing of working place. Many heads of department told us they were
unable to sanction an incompetent, negligent or venal subordinate, insofar as any sanction
immediately raises a flood of protestations and interventions in favour of the sanctioned
agent, in the name indeed of solidarity or pity, but also according to power struggles based on
patronage or clienteles, whether or not bound to political parties. If one adds to this the fact
that indelicacies of the offenders are well known to the others, and that vertically or
horizontally "everybody has a hold over everybody else"34, one understands why such "a
culture of impunity" prevails nowadays.
A midwife caught several times swindling the parturients or the people accompanying
them at the maternity hospital of Niamey was finally "punished" and had to leave the service: her
head of department had to threaten to resign in order to have her leave the service. She violently
set on him and promised to return soon. Three months later, she was reassigned to the maternity
hospital!
31
Quotations from Souley, 2000 (cf. also Souley, 2003).
On those questions cf. Blundo & Olivier de Sardan, 2001, a.
33 For a detailed analysis of this popular semiology, in particular in Wolof and in Zarma, cf. Blundo & Olivier de
Sardan, 2001 b.
34 Cf. Jaffré, 2003.
32
8
Agents of health services in Niamey report (cf Souley, in Moumouni & Souley, 2003):
"One never sanctions, this is why it does not work"; "there are untouchable people"; "there is an
incredible carelessness on such a level, some indelicate agents are protected by the persons in
charge"; "the whole system does not permit any sanction!"; "there are so many relations’ cliques,
that sanctions cannot be taken"...
The lack of motivation among the civil servants
It is nowadays difficult to meet a happy or even just motivated civil servant, in the
countries where we investigated. Besides, the term "motivation" has lost its usual meaning,
and indicates nothing more than subsidies that the civil servant requires as his dues. The
‘taste’ of work well done and the satisfaction of the achieved task are expressed among our
interviewees only in the form of a nostalgia for a lost paradise, or a dream of an impossible
utopia.
If the effectively derisory wages are at the heart of this dissatisfaction, and remain as
the primary cause invoked (in these times of globalisation when the goods and standards of
living do not have borders anymore), they are not however the only factors of the spleen, even
of the dislike of the government officials. Each feature mentioned above plays its role here.
The unknown professional competences, the permanent political or clientelist interventions,
the absence of any efficient human resources management, are all, for example, part of the
collective discouragement. Moreover, the fact of having to supplement one’s revenue with
these small corruption methods does not contribute to the "self esteem" necessary for any
professional motivation.
We have met at the Inspection Department of Primary Education of Tahoua in Niger,
many teachers assigned to ridiculous administrative tasks, vegetating for years in empty offices: a
technician in town planning became a librarian but with no books, a teacher dedicated only to the
management of the thin register of the "sent" mail (a few letters per day), whereas a colleague does
the same thing by her side for the "received" mail, a teacher-storekeeper, managing all year round
the few piles of school materials, and this quotation posted quite visibly in an inspection office:
"Life is a slice of shit of which one has to swallow a piece each day". At the same time, the
country cruelly suffers from a lack of teachers in the field, and recruits "education volunteers",
with -low level education, without competence or motivation, who are paid 20.000 FCFA per
month, whilst often missing, and even "racketeering" the pupils...
Unproductivness
Demotivation, privilegism, each-one-for-oneself-ism, corruption - all these obviously
lead to a very great unproductivity of the State services. The observations confirm it: what
could be called "social absenteeism" (christenings, marriages, burials) consumes a great part
of the working time, the "micro-absenteeisms" (delays, personal things to do and early
departures) consume another part of it; ultimately, in terms of the remaining time actually
spent in the work place, a considerable part is devoted to non-professional activities: receiving
friends, chatting or ‘slacking’ with colleagues, or taking small naps. The professional tasks
are indeed accomplished during the time left, but often with bad grace, and slowly or too fast.
9
The heads of departments or the high executives are, on the contrary, sometimes
overburdened, with everything being focused on them, even subordinate tasks, without them
being able or wanting to delegate to the unproductive mass of their subordinates, and unable
to form a team.
Finally archaic or absurd procedures make everyone waste their time.
In Abidjan, as in Niamey or Conakry, the consultations in the medical centres where we
investigated never started before 9 a.m. (some women had sometimes waited since 6 a.m.), and in
general finish before midday (the women who came later or in the afternoon, were generally sent
away). The staff of these medical centres are, however, supposed to work 8 hours a day, and do
not do any ward duties...
In Tahoua (cf. the above mentioned case), the Director of Primary Education of the
district is overburdened, and must moreover answer two or three times a day to the summoning of
the Prefect, while the offices under his direction are full of idle personnel. The only telephone is in
his office, where the subordinates who are called or who call somebody, walk through one after
the other.
In Cotonou as in Niamey, one has to queue to pay the energy bills at the end of the month,
waiting three or four hours in the full sun, through the lack of a rational organisation of the
payments.
A double language
The shift between a formal and a real organisation chart, like the generalisation of
illicit practices, the "informal privatisation of the State", or discrete partisan patronage, results
in a kind of structural schizophrenia, or institutional personality split among the government
officials. There is on the one hand an official language for outside and for the national
political rites: that of a Sovereign state, founded on the basis of a legal model and a Western
bureaucratic ideal-type. On the other hand, there is a daily language, that of "arrangements"
(ajara in Hausa), in fact that of tricks and favours, intrigues and negotiations. There are public
norms on one side, those of the constitutional and legal apparatus, of the proclaimed modern
citizenship, of the administrative and countable procedures. On the other side, there are the
practical norms, established uses, informal codes and local professional cultures.35
With regard to the donors, the international institutions, but also in official and public
circumstances, one uses an organised semantic universe, that of the standardised and
euphemised language of the universal modern State, or that of development, omnipresent in
Africa. This universe is thus made of two intricate stereotyped languages, where phrases such
as "democracy", "transparency", "civil society", "free elections", "sustainable development",
"human rights", "women’s promotion", "participation of the populations", "freedom of the
press", "feeling of responsibility", "fights against poverty", and many others coexist
harmoniously.
In the daily interactions, there is a quite different semantic universe in use, that of
everyday expressions, of derision, familiarity, complicity, and competition... Moreover, the
35
Cf. Olivier de Sardan, 2001, for an analysis of the practical norms and the local professionnal cultures, in the
field of health.
10
first semantic universe is French; it is the one enjoyed by the northern institutions36. The
second one is especially in the national languages (or sometimes in this rather particular local
French), and this is the one the local actors enjoy speaking. These two semantic universes
coexist peacefully, but remain relatively clearly separate: situations and interlocuters belong
to each one.
For example, the workshops, seminars and other training courses largely dispensed by the
projects and the donors, which value the expression of official norms, have been for a long time
"taken over" and "diverted" by the existing practical norms, as additional resources to gain
(perdiem, missions, corruption), or as possible means to be recruited by the projects and to leave
the public service. On the other hand, their effect on the professional practices of the agents once
they are back in their working place is extremely weak, if not non- existent: the practical norms go
on again, after a break among the official norms of the training course...
Analysis. An historical perspective
One could not, of course, present such a diagnosis and make such an observation
without facing up to the terrible question:"why?"
Let us recall that in the field of social sciences, we are much more at ease with the
description of what exists, than with its explanation; with the "how" rather than with the
"why". As a matter of fact, social phenomena bring into play an extremely complex set of
variables, within contexts where an assertion as “all things being equal” can never be uttered strictly speaking37. Isolating a variable and measuring its impact seems impossible in our
fields, even if some quantitative or positivist scientists keep on nourishing the illusion of it.
Among the multiple explanatory hypotheses which should simultaneously be taken
into account, one can in any case mention, amongst others, the heritage of the Cold War at the
beginning of independences, with the vassalage premiums obligingly granted then to the new
African regimes; the resignation of the post-colonial elites; the inefficiency of the reforms
coming from the top and/or from outside and promoted through conditionnalities and
subsidies; the perverse effects of the development projects and the donors’ strategies; the
damage caused by the structural adjustment; the infernal mechanics of the current "informal
internal privatisation" of the States; the ties established between business and political parties
everywhere, etc.
I would simply like to mention a group of these factors among others, those which
refer to colonial heritage, and to the construction methods of the modern administration in
Africa, and thus to the relationships between private and public spheres38.
The pre-colonial heritage should not be completely forgotten, of course. It has been,
however, put forward too often, according to us. Let us recall that before colonisation, Africa
knew extremely different forms of governance: from multiple lineage societies39 to savannah
or coastal States, from war-like confederations to intricate vassalages or micro-chieftancies,
36 In a context of development, the command of this double language is an important resource, as the importance
of development brokers reveals it (cf. Bierschenk, Chauveau & Olivier de Sardan, 2000).
37 Cf. Passeron, xxx.
38 A first version of the following analysis, leading on to the particuliar case of health, was published in Olivier
de Sardan, 2003.
39 “Tribes without rulers”: cf. Middleton & Tait (eds), 1958.
11
from tributary regimes to commercial networks or to economies based on slavery (which
certainly and above all benefited the Europeans , but were also directed to the Arabian
countries), etc. So, one cannot, in any case, speak of a "traditional African culture of
governance", even if it is true that the long tradition of "written governance", normal in
Europe of the Ancien Régime40 (in other words a pre-modern bureaucracy entirely founded
over centuries on the handling of registers, legal texts and files), was missing in pre-colonial
Africa (the use of Arabic writing remained relatively localised and episodic). In other words,
above all, it is the absence of a true pre-modern bureaucratic culture, which differentiated
Africa from Europe in the 19th century. However, modern bureaucracy even in Europe,
although it has incontestably profited from this old written tradition, built itself in many
respects by breaking away from the pre-modern bureaucracy of the Ancien Régime, on the
basis of the construction of a distinction between public and private spheres, absent in the premodern forms of governance.
Consequently, our hypothesis is that bureaucracy in Africa is not a radically different
one which would refer back to any "traditional culture". It is rather a specific branch of the
modern bureaucracy (postulating a rupture between public and private sectors, generating a
"production of indifference”) implemented in Africa through a particular historical
production, namely by the colonisation, then accentuated during the post-colonial time.
African bureaucracies were in fact born from a double rupture: a colonial rupture, as
regards the forms of pre-colonial power, and a bureaucratic rupture, by creating a
« public/private » opposition and written procedures.
Thus, on to the "social construction of indifference" typical of any modern
bureaucracy, was superimposed a "colonial and post-colonial construction of contempt and
privilege".41
Interface bureaucracy and the « membrane »
We will examine successively a structural axis (rupture implemented by the modern
bureaucratic norms) and a representational axis (popular marks attached to the interface
bureaucracy).
Bureaucratic rupture
Modern bureaucracy, which is one of the main pillars of the contemporary State as it
developed in particular during the 19th century in Europe, was built by a rupture with the
former management modes of the public affairs, i.e. with the State of the Ancien Régime,
characterised by systems of personal allegiance between aristocratic and political dignitaries
and their customers (assistants, attendants and right-hand men) in which pre-modern
bureaucracy was embedded42. Venality of the responsibilities, generalised exchange of
"services" and devotion to a patron gradually lost ground (little by little, because the process
was long) to the benefit of impersonal procedures, recruitment based on qualifications, and
State service43. The famous legal-bureaucratic rationality theorised by Max Weber is not so
much a matter of technical or scientific rationality (which would replace an “irrational” by an
40
Cf. Anderson, xxx.
Indeed, contempt and privileges also exist within the northern bureaucracies: however, as we have seen it
earlier, the proportioning varies…
42 There are other types of bureaucracies, of course, relating to other historical forms, like the different imperial
bureaucracies, i.e. Roman, Chinese, Ottoman, etc. Modern democracy, however, is radically different from them
as well.
43 Cf. Dreyfus, 2000.
41
12
“enlightened” management: this is a frequent misinterpretation) than of a procedural
rationality supposedly ensuring an equal and standardised treatment of the "cases" (the files)
whatever people are concerned. This procedural rationality is based on a strong (and new)
rupture between the private and the public spheres44. The universe of modern bureaucracy,
that of the public sphere and its administrative forms, has from now on its own impersonal
and egalitarian laws, opposed in a way to those which govern the "normal" external world,
that of the daily, personalised, emotional and socialised relations.
This bureaucratic world was generally perceived under its institutional dimension, as
an "apparatus"45 or an "organisation"46, with its internal logics, its power games, and its
systemic attributes. Yet one can also be interested in the relationships that it maintains with its
environment, and more particularly with its users. Let’s call what Lipsky described as a
"street level bureaucracy"47 an "interface bureaucracy". Whole bureaucratic sectors do not
have any interface with their users; one can also perfectly consider the functioning of the
bureaucracy without focusing on the analysis of the relationships between public agents and
users. Here, however, we are going to focus on these relationships.
In this respect, and to take up the title of Herzfeld’s book48, if modern bureaucracy is a
huge machine "producing indifference", in the general meaning of the term (files are treated
indifferently), interface bureaucracy imports this indifference at the heart of the
bureaucrat/citizen relationship, and to some extent, transforms the structural indifference into
a behavioural indifference. The bureaucrat behind the counter only faces standard cases, he is
not supposed to have feelings or compassion; he applies the rules, directives and procedures.
However, the bureaucrat’s ordinary behaviour, in his everyday life and outside of his
workspace, far from the norms which define the latter, is not in any way different from that of
any other citizens: he likes some people, hates other people, and wavers between propriety
and coarseness according to his feelings of antipathy or sympathy in his relationships with
others. In the world of bureaucracy, respecting the procedures and treating all cases
indifferently is the norm; in the other world, that of ordinary social life, networks, affinities,
bonds of proximity, permanent differences in the way people are treated, are, on the contrary,
the rule.
The nature of this bureaucratic model is indeed an ideal-type, and only helps
measuring, in a way, the ever existing gap between rule and reality. Admittedly, a radical and
permanent separation between public and private behaviours is impossible. This "cut" is
always relative, and there are always "passages", "interferences", "overlappings". In order to
simultaneously express the need for this cut, and at the same time its relativity, let us use one
of Goffman’s metaphors (1961): between private and public behaviours, there would be a
"semi-permeable membrane" which, according to the actors or contexts, allows more or less
passage of some "private" into the "public".
I think that this metaphor can be profitably mobilised in trying to compare African and
European interface bureaucracies. On the basis in both cases of an existing semi-permeable
membrane between private and public, which is the very condition of an existing modern
44 Cf. Sennett, 1979, on the construction of the individual and of the private spheres, which is, of course,
symmetrical to the construction of the public sphere, and hence of the distinction between both.
45 The term “State apparatus”, from Althusser (1970), could be used here, if not reduced to its “repressive”
connotations alone.
46 Analysing bureaucraties is also one of the founding themes of the sociology of organisations (Crozier, 1963).
47 Lipsky, 1980.
48 “The social production of indifference. Exploring the symbolic roots of Western bureaucracy” (Herzfeld,
1992).
13
bureaucracy, the "membrane" filters differently in Africa and in Europe, and does not filter
the same things... This is obvious in the register of perceptions and social representations, if
we compare the respective stereotypes of European and ??
Classical European and African bureaucracies: common stereotypes
There is an old tradition of denunciation of the bureaucracy in Europe, through formal
writings (press, literature...) as well as in the "small oral tradition" (jokes, talks, "over the
counter banter"). Courteline, the French playwright symbolises it well. The bureaucrat is
described as an insensitive, limited, finicky person, implementing obscure or unsuitable
regulations, without any mood and sense of initiative. The bureaucratic world is "kafkaesque".
In Africa, the formal writings just like the "small oral tradition" put in place an
insensitive, inefficient, rapacious, greedy, despotic, absent, untruthful, lazy bureaucracy49.
Around a shared term (the "insensitivity of the bureaucrat"), divergent foci come
together: on the side of the European bureaucraticperceptions, the user would rather be
regarded as a victim of the mechanical application of the procedures; on the side of the
African bureaucratic perceptions, the user would rather be confronted with insecurity and
arbitrariness. On both sides, there is a common factor which is indifference - and thus a
certain form of "dehumanisation" - but this indifference declines tendentiously according to
different lines of slope: a dominant logic of mechanical procedural productivity of "equality"
type on one side (Europe), and a dominant logic of unproductiveness and arbitrariness on the
other side (Africa). In one case, the user is reduced to a simple number, in the other one, he is
"badly" treated, humiliated, racketeered.
Here is the "impermeable" dimension of the membrane: in one case or another, it
usually does not leave any space for a "personalisation" of the relationships, at least for the
"anonymous" user, and produces a deep "indifference" typical of the public sphere, towards
this anonymous user. Because this indifference presents rather specific characteristics in
Africa, we now have to report about it. Before that, however, one can symmetrically question
thepermeability of the membrane. It can be assessed that in Europe, it has been weak for a
long time (traditional model) but that an "improved" model has recently been added to it
(which it partially replaces), which "humanises" the behaviours of interface bureaucracy. In
other words, the membrane now lets some behaviours coming from the private sphere
through, which tend to regard the user as a customer and not as a number any more. However,
inspiration does not come so much from the individual, relational or domestic private sphere,
as from the private world of business. The public service, so much discredited, humanises
itself, shaping now little by little on the commercial enterprise.50 In addition, this process is
driven "from the top" (top-down); it is a management approach of the formal type, controlled
by a managerial staff, which in fact tends to progressively modify the standard of the public
sphere itself. In Africa, the permeability of the membrane is rather different. The permeability
is not only stronger in certain fields, but it is also an informal matter, corresponding
sometimes to a strong interference of the individual private world (over-personalisation),
sometimes to an informal internal privatisation of the public service (corruption).51
49
I refer to Achebe’s novel “Le démagogue”, or to Sembène Ousmane’s movie “Le mandat”... among others.
The metamorphosis is indeed far from being complete (should it reach an end at all) and solid sectors of the
classical interface bureaucracy remain: the “humanised” interface bureaucracy is far from winning the game…
51 In the broad sense of the term; corruption is more generally inseparable from a whole of “internal
dysfunctionings” of the public services (Blundo & Olivier de Sardan, 2001).
50
14
Specificities of African bureaucracies: a diachronic perspective
Referring to the "traditional (pre-colonial) cultures" to explain the very particular
situation of the African State, in general, or of the African administration in particular52, does
not seem very relevant to us53: the modern bureaucracy builds up everywhere in rupture with
the former administration modes, and it was even more the case in Africa than in Europe.54
Bureaucracy as a colonial creation
As a matter of fact it is a very particular bureaucracy which was imported from start to
finish in Africa by the colonial regime55 and very different in many respects from the
dominating model in France. The gap between the administrators and the administered,
consubstantial with the construction of any bureaucracy, has indeed widened a much deeper
and radical gap between the Europeans and the "locals" there. The very exceptional and
derogatory regime (in comparison with the very standards of the French administration) of the
indigénat, which granted exorbitant power to the commandants de cercle, and deprived the
administered of elementary rights, certainly produced a "modern" bureaucracy indeed, but in
a "colonial" version somewhat monstrous, mixing a whole group of features of the imported
modern bureaucratic model (organisation charts, official procedures, writings, reports, etc.)
and another group of features, "invented" by the colonial situation and often contradictory to
the former ones (hence this schizophrenia whose marks are still to be found nowadays).56 I
will underline only the three main features: despotism, "privilegism", and the role of
intermediaries. According to us, they still explain some of the behaviours of contemporary
African bureaucracies.
1. Colonial despotism is well documented57 - unlike its effects on the construction
of colonial bureaucracy, and yet, the latter are obvious and important. The
extent of the gap between bureaucrats and "local" users58, the provisions of the
52
One often mistakes the State and its administrations, what hides in fact a lack of interest for the administration
(central though to any empirical study of the State) and a fascination for the State, more noble but also vague and
polysemic.
53 This inadmissible “culturalist” argument underlies in fact the work by Chabal & Dalloz (1999), which is not,
besides, empirically supported.
54 Indeed, this rupture at the origin of the bureaucracy does not mean however the pure and simple vanishing of
earlier managing modes of the public affairs: most of the time, we have “piling up” forms of successive powers
as well as of their apparutuses (cf. Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 1998, as regards post-colonial Benin).
Modern democracy, yet, intends to oppose these earlier forms, according to its own norms (to break with them),
even if, in reality, it has nevertheless to co-exist with them.
55 Acknowledging this obvious “importation” of bureaucracy by the colonisation does not mean here that we
adhere to Badie’s thesis (1992) on the “imported State” and to its basic extranéity, denying any hybridisation
processes and appropriation of the occidental State by the developing societies; these processes seem on the
contrary fundamental to us (we agree on this point with Bayard, 1989; 1996), but they have been unsufficiently
documented in their practical forms.
56 If the indigénat regime has been suppressed since 1945, thanks to the action of African political activists, the
behaviours of European and African (so-called “evoluated”) bureaucrats have not changed as if by magic.
57 Cf. Mamdani, 1996, who speaks of a “decentralized despotism”. As far as I am concerned, I had analysed the
colonial despotism by insisting on one of its aspects; the despotic exploitation as a system of levying and
extorting (in products, work and cash: taxes, forced labour, compulsory deliveries, etc.) serving the colonial
State, by the means of political constraint and violence (Olivier de Sardan, 1984: 159-172).
58 The term of “user” itself appears as a significantly strong anachronism, as it implies that the administered
autochthon would be the “beneficiary” of a “service” completed to his benefit by an European civil cervant...
According to Brunschwig (1983: 24-25), most of the European administrative agents, not often competent, seem
15
code of indigénat as well as dominant colonial practices (racism and
paternalism in variable proportions) have introduced a great deal of
arbitrariness and even of violence into the procedural rationality of the
metropolitan modern bureaucracy, officially imported "ready to use" into the
colonies59. Consequences in the long-term are important, insofar as beyond the
contempt often demonstrated by many European civil servants towards their
administered ”subjects”, generations of auxiliaries and African "clerks" learned
from the colonizers, how to build a barrier between themselves and the local
populations, to multiply the signs affirming their privileged status, to build their
superiority through asserting the inferiority of the others, to "badly treat" their
"populations", to use arbitrariness... 60
With independence, these small African civil servants will not only accede to responsibilities
in continuity with the former colonial bureaucratic machinery (simply taking the place of the
former European masters of the country), but moreover they will allow or sometimes even
support the reproduction among their subordinates of this rather particular "administrative
culture" inherited from colonisation (apart from some various exceptions). Within the colonial
bureaucracy, the bureaucratic indifference thus took on a strong despotic aspect which it has
since undoubtedly never lost. In other words: while in Europe, modern bureaucracy
developed more or less in parallel with the emergence of citizenship and democracy
throughout the 19th century, in Africa since its beginnings (until today), it has, on the
contrary, gone hand in hand with inequality, violence and contempt, in the absence of real
civic or citizen egalitarian tradition, and also since the independences. A collateral
characteristic must be underlined: whereas in Europe bureaucracy was built in a relative
autonomy with regard to executive power, in Africa, since the colonial period and still today,
it has been non-dissociable from power arbitrariness.
2. "Privilegism" (which partially covers despotism) directly refers to innumerable
"advantages that go with a position" specific to colonial bureaucracy: beyond the
wages doubled through allowances, everything was due to the administrators:
accommodation, domesticity, means of transport, gifts and presents in kind from
the populations, free services, mistresses... The gap was all the more important
compared to the civil servants in France, because the colonial executives were in
general definitely less educated. The ‘position’ in the colonial administration alone
gave access to these privileges, independently of competence or merit.
3. As for the intermediaries, they were essential to the functioning of the colonial
bureaucracy, insofar as this one was characterised both by a permanent underadministration, and a maximal shift between norms and local practices and
between norms and official rules. Because of a lack of human resources and of
their incompetence in local codes and practices, the colonial bureaucrats not only
to have been motivated by an “appetite for power” and the “search of material interest”. Such famous or less
famous exceptions do not contradict this tendency.
59 The contrast between the metropolitan and the colonial administrations has been already underlined, of
course, moreover in order to enhance the latter: Delavignette thus opposes “an impersonal, irresponsible
administration, lacking control” (1939: 24) which is to be found in France, and the territorial administration of
the colonies, endowed with “an internal principle proper to it: the personal authority of the administrator and in
last analysis, the personality in the art of commanding” (1939: 27) that he thinks will be the administration type
of the future, i.e. “révolutionary and authoritative” (id: 27)…
60 The defense of their privileges by the auxiliary “indigenous” staff, faced with the populations, has often been
noticed (cf. Delavignette, 1939: 59).
16
tolerated, but also systematically used various types of local sub-contracting, once
again far from the metropolitan rules, employing many auxiliaries, additional
administrative staff, chiefs, brokers and other henchmen or right-hand men. The
"pluralism of norms" mentioned above undoubtedly finds there its origin, if not
single, at least principle, as well as the "schizophrenic" structure of the
administration, between procedural (especially rhetoric, scriptural or superficial)
formalism, and multiple oral arrangements negotiated by willing and omnipresent
intermediaries.61 This importance of negotiation and intermediation, which results
in multiple "arrangements", is undoubtedly at the origin of the first forms of the
small daily corruption, which appeared from the colonial period, certainly
benefiting the chiefs and their auxiliaries62, as well as the clerks and their
additional staff, but also some French civil servants holding posts in the colonies.
"The incompetence, the frequent dishonesty and impunity of the staff and the wasting of
the material astonished the inspectors" (who came from France to evaluate the colonial
administration; Brunschwig, 1983: 24)
One can also think that the system of "administrative chieftancy" (the colonial
administration using "traditional" - in fact often "neo-traditional" - chiefs in order to control
the rural world), based on the need for intermediaries and the derogatory status of the
colonies, has introduced a neo-patrimonial political system at the heart of the public
administration (the chief does not have his own budget, his personal funds and those of his
position are mixed together).
Colonial legacies and post-colonial innovations
It is difficult to separate the colonial legacy (taken up just as it was by the new elites,
who emerged from the "indigenous" layer of the colonial bureaucracies and who arrived in
power at the time of independences) and the variations or innovations which took place from
1960 up to now. It is the case with many forms of clientelism (according to business, political
parties, factionnalism or neighbourhood), which have indeed thrived since independences, but
which were largely already encouraged by the "colonial situation"…
It is known that the "passage of service" between the former colonisers and the new
regimes of single party was done "carefully", without any rupture63. One of its characteristics
was to allow the ultra-accelerated promotion of the former colonised "clerks", reaching in one
day all the highest "colonial" positions in the new State, and as already underlined, had thus
the "right" to practise "despotism" and "privilegism" in their turn.
61 The necessity often underlined for the colonial administration to “compose” in fact with the habits and the
local customs (so as to thus innovate in relation to the ridigidity of the metropolitan model, cf. Delavignette,
1939, 123) was made possible by these intermediaries, which results in the production of an original and
unstable form of bureaucracy.
62 Brunschwig quotes, among others, a circular of the acting Governor of Guinea, who denounced the “presents”
received by the colonial civil cervants, and their “abuse of authority in order to purchase at very low prices”
(1983: 23-24). The character of the interpreter described by Hampaté Ba in “L’étrange destin de Wangrin”
symbolises well some of the auxiliaries of the colonial administration.
63 This was often reported (cf. for example Tidjani Alou 2001: 93). The only ruptures happened (in Guinea, for
ex., or to a lesser degree and later in Benin) through the importation of an even more despotic bureaucratic
model, that of the so-called “communist” countries. It is revealing that in the first two years of independence and
during the cold war, even the most pro-occidental regimes had borrowed a certain political technology (single
parties, mass political rituals…) from the eastern countries.
17
The expression, for example, of a scorning or arrogant superiority towards the user, as
the disproportionate extension of the formal and informal advantages accompanying a
position, except for the wages64, were completely adopted again by the national civil servants
(even less trained than their predecessors) at the time of independence. Were these features
not the sign of a real "handing on" process? Could anyone conceive a sovereign national
public office, which would not deserve the same respect, and thus the same advantages, as the
ones enjoyed by the masters of yesterday? So the gap between "privileges" and competences
was even more being reinforced. The privileges due to colonial bureaucracy, far from
diminishing, were even extended to the whole hierarchical chain. Such a mechanism of
"outclassing re-conversion"65 (taking only little into account the competence and professional
experience) indeed played from the top to the bottom of bureaucracy (around the 1960s, when
a teacher became minister, a typist beginner became executive secretary, or an orderly became
police officer, etc). Afterwards, in the first 30 years of independence, entries into public office
were certainly made on the basis of more adapted qualifications, but still with quasi systematic "outclassing", compared to the usual careers in European bureaucracies (a brand
new A-level graduate with 3 years’ university experience has direct access to positions
reserved in Europe for A level graduates + 5 years of university + 10 years’ professional
experience).
In the administrative services, an "overheating" and completely atypical social elevator
was thus set up: it did not operate "with official wages" (those remaining extremely
"underdeveloped" in comparison with those of European counterparts),66 but "with privileges"
(largely higher than those of European counterparts); it was largely "disconnected" from the
average professional experience required in Europe, as well as from the slow typical
progression of the traditional bureaucracy; and it gave to the occupant of a position only the
« tools » of power or marks of the function, without any functional environment. This system
has functioned up to the 1990s, creating "very quickly promoted" bureaucrats, privileged and
frustrated at the same time, who often lacked the competences or the experience which should
have been associated with the positions they occupied. So, this system fed the arrogance of
the important "power bureaucrats" vis-a-vis their subordinates, as well as the contempt of the
small "interface bureaucrats" vis-a-vis the users.
Lastly, the role of the intermediaries did nothing but grow up to this day, to become
one of the structural characteristics of the African administrations.
"All the studied services have been functioning thanks to the support of an informal nonadministrative staff, without any well defined status, sometimes "volunteering" for about 20 years
(...). According to our analysis, these additional staff have a triple role. On the one hand, they
apparently play a functional role, by facilitating the administrative steps to the users, or even the
tasks of the staff: they contribute to accelerating the procedures (to the detriment however of the
users who did not have recourse to their services); they can protect their client, avoiding sanctions
or multiplying the latter’s chances of winning the case or asserting his rights, they also make
possible the personalisation of the administrative steps, while reassuring the citizen faced with an
administration he thinks all-powerful. On the other hand, they reproduce the "local professional
64 As the salaries remained “local” and were not aligned to previous colonial salaries and their subsidies, the
discrepancy between the low official wages and the extent of the advantages and priviledges associated to a
position grew up.
65 According to M. Tidjani Alou’s term (1992).
66 Except in the public or semi-public societies.
18
culture", with its practices, its tricks, its "smartness"... and its fiddles (they always remain where
they are, whereas the civil servants themselves are subjected to unceasing transfers) and constitute
the "memory" of the service. Finally they accentuate the "informalisation" of the public service,
making the frontiers even more confusing between administration and small commercial business,
between public and private services, and between informalisation around and within the State. If
they are not the systematic vectors of corruption, they can nevertheless contribute to euphemising
illicit practices, and make them common place." (Blundo & Olivier de Sardan, 2001).
Other features of the "real" functioning of the African administration have
undoubtedly been more recently introduced, at least regarding the scale on which they
operate. It is the case of the absence of sanctions and of the "each one-for-oneself-ism". The
un-productivity and chronic absenteeism of the staff, generalisation of the corruption and the
"informal privatisation" of the 1980s-1990s can also be added to the number of post-colonial
innovations. In this respect, the financial crisis of the States from the 1980s and the structural
adjustment policies, breaking brutally with the inconsiderate credits and the economic and
political accommodating attitudes during the cold war time, have obviously a heavy share of
responsibility…
So once independence came, African bureaucracies did not move away from the
atypical colonial alternative in order to come closer to the European model (as the
modernisation theories predicted); on the contrary, the difference between African and
European bureaucracies increased in a certain way. This is particularly true for the interface
bureaucracies67. At the time when improving policies of the service quality were set up little by
little within the European bureaucracies, from the 1980s and especially the 1990s (these
policies are, however, far from being everyday features...), African interface bureaucracies
have remained captive of a colonial model that the post-colonial innovations contributed to
worsen rather than to improve (in any case as regards the relationship with the users).
Clientelism, privilegism, and "each-one-for-oneself-ism" converged, for example, within a
more and more degraded administrative environment, towards an increasingly general
contempt for the anonymous user, often associated with a "racket" at the expense of the latter,
the most current corruption and informal privatisation form in the interface bureaucracy 68.
In such a context, the "over-personalisation" thus seems rather a compensatory
mechanism, which is the only one guaranteeing that a real service is rendered to the user, as
long as it is recommended. The "permeability of the membrane" would thus permit a
derogatory zone of personalised functioning, through an episodic importation into the
interface bureaucracy (field of the scorning public) of "human" relations coming from outside
(field of the cordial private), which suddenly makes it possible for a machine usually
inhuman, predatory and dysfunctional to sporadically become human, benevolent and
67
An analysis of the upper strata of the African bureaucracy would, of course, be different and would bring
other phenomena to the fore (cf. Tidjani Alou, 2001: 17-19; 1996: 72 for Niger).
68 In order that this bureaucratic culture common to all African administations should reproduce everyday, a
favourable environment has indeed been necessary, i.e. a general crisis of the State in Africa or even its decay in
this case (Olivier de Sardan 2000), of which the main causes are well known: quasi-bankruptcy of the States and
multiple delays in paying wages in many countries, different perverse effects of the structural adjustment
policies, fictitious nature of the budgets, irresponsibility of the political elites and of their “politic of the belly”,
generalised electoral corruption…
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functional for a while and for somebody. This membrane would function then like a valve... it
is however, a vicious circle that is implemented and extends. The little engaging fate of the
anonymous users makes it all the more necessary to mobilise networks of favours, that
increase even more the disfunctioning of an unproductive and de-motivated interface
bureaucracy.
Conclusion. Dissatisfactions and reforms
Original and paradoxical forms of State and general dissatisfaction
Let’s point out that there are many other factors, which intervened than those that have
been analysed just above, but the result is clear in any case. A rather particular modern
bureaucracy was implemented in the post-colonial African States, which refers as well to very
particular forms of governance, very convergent from one country to another. Those are
neither simple "deviations" compared to a European "model", which should be respected or
imposed, nor are even less prolongations of a so-called pre-colonial political culture. These
are original forms, concerned with the modernity of the African countries and their recent
histories69.
Yet, it is not because the African State is original that it brings satisfaction. All our
data show, on the contrary, a deep dissatisfaction from the government officials as well as
from the users as regards the actual governance system. Noting a certain "deliquescence" of
the contemporary African State is not necessarily an ethnocentric Western prejudice; it is on
the contrary the general feeling emerging from our investigations among the civil servants
themselves as well as among the users.
At the same time, some of the State’s activities more or less "work in spite of
everything". Beyond the diagnosis suggested above, which seems indisputable, small islands
of functionality remain or are sometimes created here or there, and not only because of the
"perfusion" of supporting projects or sectorial aids (although it is often because of such
reasons). In the same way, some of the routine practices ensure "in spite of all" and to some
extent a minimal service, even if not really satisfactory. These particular states are thus not
"disaggregated", or ghosts-states, and we are far from the quasi-anomy observable in other
places, where civil wars prevail or used to prevail. The public service "survives", albeit only
69
I am refering here to a set of stimulating reflections, criticising the visions of the State in Africa as a simple,
more or less monstrous deformation of the western state (Hibou, xxx ; Geschiere, xxx). Their limit, however is to
talk about the State in general, in a register of “characterising the etatic entity”, and not to lean on empirical data,
relating to the daily functioning of the administrative services.
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in cobbled up and shaking forms; this should not be forgotten. These States are thus
paradoxical and ambivalent, between on the one hand, an "increasing informal privatisation"
and a quality of the provided services considered appalling by all, and on the other side, an
undeniable capacity to reproduce somehow and to manage in their way a minimal level of
public activities.
Moreover, we have met "admirable exceptions" everywhere: qualified, fair or affable
civil servants, and government officials anxious to improve the provided services. Indeed,
these "reformers" are only a small minority today; most of the time isolated, they have
sometimes become embittered, but they do exist.
It is the whole of this context that should be taken into account, in order to tackle the
question of the reforms, now urgent according to the general opinion of the citizens of these
different countries.
The question of reforming
One can be rather sceptical on whether the current leading elites can produce such
reforms "from the top", and even more so on the effect of external injunctions, which come to
nothing but often increase the already strong competences of the political class in the matter
of "double language" (that for the financial donors, and that of the true policy and governance,
between ourselves, far from the arrogances and the Western naivety). Our diagnosis calls
more for the invention of new governance forms "from the bottom" (at the level of the
primary services of the State) or "from the middle" (at the level of the reforming executives);
according to us, this implies starting from the practical norms, from the local professional
cultures and from the real behaviours, rather than from the official norms and from the formal
organisation charts.
This is why the "training" put forward as a solution is often an illusion: not only do the
government officials often undertake this training for mainly financial reasons (the "per-diem or
daily allowance culture"), moreover they do nothing but add new layers of official norms to those
already existing and not respected. Once the digression of the training seminar is over, the civil
servants go back to their working places and to their former work practices, around practical
norms, and to their local professional culture.
A reforming boost internal to the State, or in any case to some of its services, is thus
necessary or urgent; it could be based on these above mentioned "admirable exceptions", in
other words on non-typical local civil servants, with strong ethics, who conscientiously do
their work "in spite of everything", with no cupidity, listening to users, most of the time
discretely. Ignored or feared by their bureaucratic hierarchy, isolated, often discouraged,
sometimes bitter, these are the ones who should be recognised, helped, put in networks, by
supporting them on the very "front line", so that they can influence and finally become
positive models for their colleagues.
It seems obvious, though, that in parallel, some "national external pressures" on the
side of the civil society are necessary, with the construction of new citizen cultures, the
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emergence of real civic movements or of users’ associations, their refusal of contempt and
racketeering, their mobilisation, and the pressure they exert on the authorities or the media.
This is indeed easier said than done, and one can rightly think that this a pious wish,
which has to do with the opinion of the citizen rather than with a researcher’s
acknowledgement. Nevertheless, the researcher can also react as a citizen sometimes, if he
does not mistake one role for the other. One of these relationship modes between citizen and
researcher can be inspired by Gramsci, who wished to combine the optimism of the will (I
would say: that of the citizen) and the pessimism of the reason (I would say: that of the
researcher).
One can also say it differently. Against afro-pessimism (which blocks any action), and
afro-optimism (which nourishes illusions), we defend an afro-realism fostered by solid
investigations, and with hope in locally emerging reforms, but acknowledging all the
difficulties of it.
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