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The Role of the State
The relationship between formulation of design in the World Bank and Outcome can be constructed as follows: Design – Conditional ties – Implementation – Outcome.
Regardless of the extent to which reform is domestically owned, the design of reform packages is largely the result of external influence (Kjaer 2001:16). The design is transmitted through conditional ties from the World Bank, IMF and donor financed aid programs. The form of transmittance has gone from general to specific conditions (World Bank 1994).
The role of the African state is, however, not just one of simple implementation. Three broad domestic responses to the conditional ties imposed by external actors may be identified: “Resistance, acceptance, or, lying between the two, the formal acceptance of adjustment programs coupled with attempts to subvert them by failing to implement their least desirable provisions” (Clapham, 1996:176). The second option was adopted by a number of African countries. Rawlings in Ghana and Museveni in Uganda adopted the third position. The World Bank economist David Easterly has recently (Easterly 2001) pointed out that donors failed to realize that conditional loans were a minor factor in politicians' incentives. Governments in many poor countries were torn by conflict over redistribution of the existing pie between regions, political factions and ethnic groups
In contrast to the normative conception of “good governance” a number of scholars have subjected the African state to analysis in order to clarify how it really works. When explaining why Africa’s weak states persist, Robert Jackson (Jackson, 1990) focuses entirely on international factors. He argues that along with decolonization, a new sovereignty game emerged in which states did not have to possess positive sovereignty (it was enough to posses juridical sovereignty) in order to survive. Thus independence gave incumbent elites a strong incentive to maintain their privileges by preserving the status quo. The work of Jackson and Rosberg (1982) is based on the assumption that politics in Africa is weakly institutionalised, which, they argue, renders the behaviour of individual rulers essential to understanding African politics. After independence, the public realm shrank and a world of private power emerged. In this world leaders are not restrained by rules, and power is not checked by institutions but by other powerful individuals. Using an institutional approach, the neo-patrimonial state is described by Bratton and van de Walle (1997) by three informal institutions: presidentialism (the systematic concentration of political power in the hands of one individual), clientelism (which denotes a system of personal favours and patronage in return for loyalty and support between patrons and clients), and the use of state resources for political legitimation. Thus, neo-patrimonialism may constrain any leadership’s efforts at reform.
Evans points out (Evans 1997), that it is not sufficient, that the state has “embedded autonomy” in order to obtain developmental capacity. Autonomy must be grounded in a coherent and cohesive politico-administrative capacity of the state, and this autonomy must be given intelligence, directions and implementation by being embedded in progressive societal forces (i.e. interested in promoting positive-sum development). Sørensen (1993, 30) went further by criticizing the implicit link made by other proponents of the developmental state between authoritarianism and good governance, and advocated genuine democracy as beneficial for promoting developmental state capacity. Based on an analysis of the politics of administrative reform in Tanzania and Uganda, Kjaer (2001) delineates the possibilities for reform to a New Broom thesis (a new leader may more easily initiate reform than an old one) and Critical Conjuncture thesis (a critical conjuncture provides opportunities for administrative reform).
This view of the state delineates a set of structures and institutions embedded in the African state-society. The specifics of Neo-Patrimonial practices in the area under investigation differ amongst countries and institutions. The actual practices - e.g. using the public operator as a domain for extended family employment, siphoning operator surplus off through sub delivery contracts, political-administrative use of communication without pay etc - are difficult to document, but the cumulative effects are clearly a lower performance than if the company had been managed on strict commercial conditions in a market context.