Paper short abstract:

Creative implementation and adoption processes are assumed to reshape the model of the state in the respective cultural context.This research project attempts to examine the images and the perception of the state in its various manifestations on the basis of a case study in Cameroon.

Paper long abstract:

For the description of the African state, the academic discussions offer a multifarious repertoire of metaphors and terms such as ´peripheral state`, ´quasi state` or ´fictive state`. These considerations rule out the possibility of implementation processes of the imported state model and the formation of a specific cultural model. These categories are confronted with occasional recent considerations which question critically the adequacy of these terms and refer to an independent inherent development of African states in general. The approach of imagination in the construction of the state emphasizes the varieties of the state which cannot be described with the prevailing terminology. Within the reception of these elements, creative implementation and adoption processes are assumed to reshape the model of the state in the respective cultural context. Following this approach, the research project attempts to examine the images and the perception of the state in its various manifestations on the basis of a case study in Cameroon. In order to examine what is constructed about which image of the state in public speeches, the focus of the study will be the speech about the state given by actors in the public space of Cameroon (intellectuals and political class).

Paper short abstract:

Although constantly criticized, Beninese state courts have been increasingly referred to for the last few years. In order to investigate this paradox, I will focus on the "customers", their perception of public service and the use that they ultimately make of it.

Paper long abstract:

"Poor people are never right". In Benin, most citizens are rather skeptical towards their justice system. Judges are portrayed as corrupt and their clerks as too poorly paid to withstand the same "temptations". And yet Beninese state courts are constantly utilized: in 2010, 11,367 civil cases were introduced before the various first degree courts. This is why rather than concentrating on state bureaucrats and their practices, I chose to focus on the customers, their perception of public service and what use they ultimately make of it.

As a striking example, inheritance disputes are constantly brought up before the jurisdictions. I will therefore try and understand the processes of those families who decide to "refer to the state" in inheritance cases. I will first focus on what happens "before the law" and on family negotiations. What are the reasons justifying - or delaying - legal action? I will then overview people's experiences of Beninese public services, wondering about the access and cost of justice. I will focus on the end result, and on the customers' satisfaction towards this constantly criticized, yet also increasingly mobilized bureaucracy. Eventually, I will analyze people's discourses regarding Justice and the State, all of which using both participant observation in Court and interviews with family members.

In other words, I will focus on legal consciousness within Beninese families, on how the laws and the institutions supposed to be enforcing them are perceived, experienced and utilized.

Paper short abstract:

Public procurement is highly prone to corruption; review mechanisms contribute to an effective control of procurement activities. This paper will analyze the legal framework of review systems in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, their implementation and eligibility to curb corruption.

Paper long abstract:

Curbing corruption in public administration has become one of the major goals in development cooperation. Public procurement is highly affected by corrupt behavior due to its administrative complexity, financial volumes and close interaction between the public and the private sphere. Most partner countries have consequently reviewed and adapted their procurement systems according to the requirements of corruption control.

Administrative and judicial review processes are primarily meant to control the compliance of procurement procedures with legal frameworks. Their preventive effect lies in the contracting parties´ awareness that procedures can be monitored ex-post by (independent) authorities; therefore review processes can strengthen general public trust in a reliable and impartial public sector. Furthermore, the use of legal remedy by bidders can initiate in-depth investigations in case of suspicion of corruption. Compared to external monitoring bodies, bidders have an informational advantage on deviations from standard procurement processes due to their immediate involvement. Judicial review, in addition to the effects of the administrative review system, is crucial because it complies with the principles of checks and balances and creates an enduring process of establishing principles developed by judiciary.

The study will compare the public procurement review systems in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda with regard to their capacity to work as anti-corruption tool. A special focus will be laid on the issues of independence, accessibility and efficiency. To get further insights on the actual implementation, findings of expert interviews with review boards, oversight authorities, bidders and other stakeholders involved in recent review proceedings will be presented.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how state laws and policies are applied, contested, transformed and adapted in the everyday practices of bureaucracies in Botswana. It will examine the contradictions, continuities, and exceptions between practices, norms and juridical decisions in the Central Kalahari.

Paper long abstract:

The Republic of Botswana is often presented as a social and economic "miracle," a country that is an exception to generalizations about African countries. Held up as a model of democratic governance, excellent management, and sound financial planning, Botswana has had one of the highest economic growth rates in Africa. In the last twenty years, however, questions were raised nationally and internationally about the treatment of San and Bakgalagadi minorities in the Central Kalahari. There has been enormous publicity revolving around issues raised in two legal cases regarding access to land, water, resources and hunting rights of people in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve which saw High Court and Appeals Court decisions against the government.

In some ways, the Botswana courts have been a testing ground for policies involving recognition of rights for indigenous peoples and minorities and the ways in which they are dealt with legally and bureaucratically. This paper will look at the High Court verdicts, official rules and state ideas promising law implementation, progress, justice and equality and how these have played out on the ground. I examine the bureaucratic apparatus and government practices and how these are in dialectics with state law, government policies, local people and the international community in the case of the Central Kalahari. It will consider the substantial differences between laws on the books and their applications through the lives of the people who are the subject of rights and by those that either accept or deny such rights.

Paper short abstract:

South African land restitution was shifted from a judicial to an administrative process in the late 1990s in order to speed up service delivery. This paper investigates the inadvertent consequences of this shift in unleashing the bureaucracy from judicial review, unless enforced by opposing landowners.

Paper long abstract:

Recently, global trends towards more juridification and judicialisation have been noted. While this development has surely been present in South Africa as well, the ongoing land restitution process, by contrast, experienced a marked de-judicialisation in the late 1990s. In land restitution, in which rightful claimants are entitled to either "land restoration" or "equitable redress", the state simultaneously functions as the core reference point (as claims are lodged against the state), the champion of claimants through the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, and the judicial arbiter through the specialist Land Claims Court. Initially, each claim had to be referred to the Land Claims Court for ultimate settlement. Given the painfully slow progress that ensued, a ministerial review led to a shift from this judicial to an administrative approach: now ministerial bureaucrats have the power to settle claims by agreement, and only contested cases end up in court. While this undoubtedly led to more efficient service delivery, it simultaneously undermined accountability by unleashing the administrative bureaucracy from systematic judicial review: unless claims are contested in court, the Department of Land Affairs, it seems, can operate all too flexibly. Effectively, this also often means that the burden of enforcing judicial review is outsourced to those current landowners who oppose the validity of land claims. Since current owners only become party to cases when "land restoration" is sought, shifting instead to "equitable redress" thus allows the administrative state to implode court cases and hence to evade judicial review itself.

Paper short abstract:

Accountability is a prime justification for decentralising forest management in Burkina Faso but it is rarely examined in practice. The paper examines the contradictions that arises in everyday forest governance for local elected leaders in an 'aid regime' an under the conditions of legal pluralism.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the contradictions that arise in an attempt to analyse local relations of accountability in decentralised forest governance in North Burkina Faso. Accountability is presented in classic decentralization policy as an unproblematic outcome of democratic frameworks. Empirical studies however show that local elected leaders are rarely able or willing to respond to citizens' demands. While normative approaches often conclude that this is a manifestation of elite capture, others emphasise the multiplicity of overlapping logics and are more concerned with how relations between local leaders and citizens operate. The study takes this latter approach to analyse a conflict that arose in an attempt by a UK-based NGO to inscribe local rules for forest access into formal law. At the heart of the conflict is the struggle by forest users' representatives to legitimise control over forest land by contesting national forestry law that regiments the distribution of forest revenues. Their attempt is admonished by local elected leaders on the grounds that their demands mismatch the project's terms of references. The paper examines the contradictory strategies through which leaders attempt to recover public authority as a result. It concludes by questioning what local relations of accountability are possible in a liberal democracy where the law is unacceptable.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes the effects of the legal fragmentation on the local forest governance institutional. It criticizes the confrontation of different layers of interests and practice; being mobilized as separate legal domains within a single government.

Paper long abstract:

In Senegal, many types of law shape the decentralization of forest management, especially forests within the jurisdiction of rural local government, the Rural Communities (RCs). The National Domain Law of 1964 considers these forests to be part of the "zones de terroir" (an entity of the national domain under government management), the 1996 Decentralization Code while still recognizing forests as part of the state domain, transfers their management to the rural deliberative bodies of RCs. The Forestry Code of 1998, which draws on the work of the National Forest Service (NFS) recognize the signature of the President rural Council rather than the deliberation of the deliberative Rural Council as imposed by 1996 Decentralization Code. It also introduces the Forest Management Plan as conditionality for transferring the management power from the State to rural local government. This coexistence of laws and regulations lead to a legal fragmentation that favors multiple legal interpretations and institutional choices in decentralized forest management. In fact, each legal order favors the development of specific institutions where forest interventions exist and are led by the NFS.

The paper analyzes the effects of the legal fragmentation on the local forest governance institutional. It criticizes the confrontation of different layers of interests and practice; being mobilized as separate legal domains within a single government.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will focus on how gendarmes in Niger enforce the law. What do they applied it to? Against and for whom do they enforce it? I will thus reflect on what the rule of law means to gendarmes, what it means to enforce it, what it means not to do so, and what it means to enforce the law softly.

Paper long abstract:

Police work is often described as oscillating between law enforcement and peace keeping, work by the book or inspired by practical norms, depending on the police officers' discretionary use of the law. Already Egon Bittner (1974: 23), one of the first and still most relevant social science police scholars, argued that police officers actually do enforce criminal law 'with the frequency located somewhere between virtually never and very rarely.' But what happens when they do?

Gendarmes in Niger work in areas where they are often the only representatives of the state, and most often the only law enforcers. I will focus on how they actually do enforce it. When gendarmes enforce the law, the three most relevant questions for them are: First, what will the law be applied to? They perceive and define an 'act' that must then be classified with reference to the penal code. Second, against whom will the law be enforced? The person who has infringed the law is taken into consideration, that is, for example, whether or not he did so knowingly, and whether or not he nonetheless respects the law. Third, for whom will the law be enforced? Or, as gendarmes would put it, who needs help to recover his rights - perhaps the state?

These questions will lead to reflections on what law and the rule of law means to the gendarmes, what it means to enforce it, what it means not to do so, and what it means to enforce the law softly.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the daily functioning of the emergency service of the Hospital of Niamey (Niger). It describes how patients and health practitioners deal with social, official and practical norms.

Paper long abstract:

Corruption in health services is one of the many ways by which actors break the official rules that are meant to frame the daily management of health services in Africa and elsewhere. This paper looks at the daily functioning of the emergency service of the Hospital of Niamey (Niger). In acute conditions, the life of the patient does not only depend on the quality and efficiency of the services provided by the medical staff but it depends as well on the qualifications of the persons accompanying the patient and more especially on the capacity of the patient's attendant to read the pragmatic norms that rule the service. The chronic lack of materials and equipment combined with uncertainties on salaries result in systemic petty corruption. By looking at the discourses deployed by health actors to justify their practices or denounced those of the others, the author explains how medical staff deal with official norms, social norms and practical norms between illegality and illegitimacy. Although the hospital of Niamey is officially a non-profit institution owned by the state, the daily appropriation of the hospital by the staff turns it into a profit-oriented service that produces and furthers social inequalities.

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