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- Convenors:
-
Tom De Herdt
(University of Antwerp)
Kristof Titeca (University of Antwerp)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Economy and Development
- Location:
- 50 George Square, G.03
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 12 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
What determines the variety in power configurations around the same public service between different places or over time? What explains the different ways in which public services reacted to a particular attempt at reform, to a particular development initiative or to any other type of disruption?
Long Abstract:
In Africa, as elsewhere, public services are given shape both by the idea of improvement of people's wellbeing and by a set of daily routines and practices that connect a diversity of contradictory political, economic, bureaucratic and social interests that make up the everyday governance of a public service, almost always at quite a distance from its original purpose. A more detailed understanding of these interests and the internal contradictions they give rise to may be an important first step to explain the dynamics of change in governance and, possibly, to identify new possibilities for change.
In this panel, we would especially like to invite proposals that take a comparative perspective: what determines the variety in power configurations around the same public service between different places or over time? Or what explains the different ways in which public services reacted to a particular attempt at reform or to a particular development initiative or any other type of disruption? We are also interested in proposals that work on public services as vantage points from which one can take a look at the "lame Leviathian" (Callaghy) of the African state itself: how does the idea of the state and what it is supposed to do evolve over time, how unifying is it still, suspended between different visions, enactments and performances?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 12 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
African payroll systems have remained black boxes, even though their implications for public policy are far reaching; this paper draws on original data from the DRC to explore the composition and drivers of a widely differentiated system across and within institutions
Paper long abstract:
The issue of civil service pay in African administrations typically receives limited attention - aside passing recognition that generally low wages are complemented by a variety of supplements, bonuses, or allowances which usually dwarf the base salary, and that these supplements may conceal huge disparities between sectors or occupational categories. In many respects, the sensitive issue of remuneration has meant that payroll systems have remained black boxes, even though their implications for public policy (and service delivery) are far-reaching. This paper, drawing on original empirical data from DRC's central-level ministerial administrations, presents an overview of the human resource and remuneration configurations across a set of institutions. It begins by outlining the composition of civil servants' remunerations - differentiating between base salary, salary supplements (primes permanentes) and ad hoc task-based supplements (primes non-permanentes) - as well as presenting an overview of how this payroll structure came about. The paper details the substantial discrepancies that exist across institutions (for example, with the ministries of budget and finance well-endowed with salary supplements, in comparison to others) but also within those, across particular departments. This allows to present an overview of the everyday governance of a public service at the core of the state - the public wage system - while remaining attentive to the drivers and factors which that have underpinned this unequal resource distribution across services and over time.
Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to analyse the scope and impact of decentralization in the health sector in Mozambique. It takes into account the dynamics and practices of actors at different levels of services delivery as a way to deepen the understanding of state building process through services delivery.
Paper long abstract:
In the late 1980s, many sub-Saharan African countries embarked on important political and economic reforms. Most of these reforms can be seen as a response to state failure, which was visible at two levels: political regulation and services delivery. Indeed, the euphoria of African independences and the process of state building were soon confronted with the decline of state capacity in terms of effective political regulation and basic services delivery. It was therefore believed that these reforms would not only improve services delivery, but also make the state more effective and legitimate.
With regard to the health sector in Mozambique, different policies and strategies, that have been adopted by the sector over the last ten years, mention decentralization as a mean to improve services delivery, particularly primary health care services. However, while sectoral policies and strategies mention decentralization as an important element of reforms, it is also true that the practices observed in the sector's activities do not necessarily go in the same direction. Making use of a qualitative approach and based on a field work in five Mozambican districts, this paper seeks to analyze the scope and impact of decentralization in the health sector on primary health care. It takes into account the context, dynamics, logics and practices of actors at different levels of services delivery (central and local) as a way to deepen the understanding of state building process through services delivery.
Paper short abstract:
This article interrogates current global representations of the postcolonial 'African state' by examining the broader effects of mundane discursive and socio-material practices on the effective ideational and performative reproduction of statehood in urban Congo.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on a growing body of literature within African studies that concerns itself with the practices and discourses of the state in postcolonial Africa against prescriptive paradigms of state failure and fragility, this text offers a critical standpoint on conceptual assumptions that often see the African state in binary terms: either dead or salvageable, institutional or informal, as 'image' or as practice. Moving beyond obvious discrepancies between formal rules and informal practices, and instances of overt, spectacular violence, this article shifts the focus on 'poor' governance to studying the coexistence of subtle or invisible violence on the one hand, and, on the other, the widespread collaborative practices at work between 'street-level bureaucrats' and ordinary urbanites. On a daily basis, neighborhood chiefs, census takers, police officiers, students, hair dressers, the homeless, priests, clerks and other residents and state agents engage in verbal, embodied and dynamic struggles to manage, access, and control collective goods and services.
Based on ethnographic data collected in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi and Goma, this article argues therefore that the discursive and socio-material practices of surveillance and community mediation produce broader - yet ambivalent - effects of 'state distanciation' and 'state humanisation.' This ambivalence of statehood, it is further speculated, should not be seen as a challenge or an obstacle to the re-creation of the state's public mandate, but as inherently part of its ideational and performative content. Ambivalence here is both a field of new possibilities and the invisible ground for breeding the ordinary violence of state governmentality.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses how the education sector in self-declared Republic of Somaliland is governed. The main argument is that relative absence of state does not mean absence of governance, quite the contrary: a multiplicity of institutions and practices pile up.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses the fragmented educational landscape in Hargeisa, the capital of self-declared Republic of Somaliland in the Northern part of Somalia, where a multiplicity of institutions and practices have emerged. In doing so, the paper unfolds how governance takes place in relative absence of the state. While governance in Somaliland has been analyzed as processes of hybridity, this paper deploys 'sedimentation' (Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan, 2003) to unfold the 'piling up' of institutions and practices. Firstly, the paper shows how the Somaliland authority manifested itself in the education sector by recycling materials from the previous Somali regime. The development of the curriculum is a particularly good example of sedimentation in this regard. Secondly, it shows how different modes of governing the education sector emerged next to the state system creating a rather fragmented sector. By building on top of the Koranic school system, a variety of different private actors evolved into large education institutions. This illustrates that sedimentation does not only proceed in the process of building a state system but also in parallel to it, adding yet more layers to the pile. Thirdly, the last part of the paper concentrates on how school level agents selectively apply at times contradictory practices emanating from this complex multi-institutional education landscape in Hargeisa.
Paper short abstract:
This article argues for disaster response to be seen as public service provision and explores the intricacies of multi-actor governance of DRR in three different conflict settings; high-intensity conflict South Sudan, low-intensity conflict Ethiopia and post-conflict Sierra Leone.
Paper long abstract:
While disaster response is often not subsumed under the heading of public service but humanitarian aid, this article maintains that DRR and disaster response should increasingly be seen as a public service where the state has the responsibility to deliver protection against natural hazards. In the last decades, African governments have increasingly taken up this responsibility.
In a great number of cases, disasters happen under conditions of conflict. Every year, there are some 400 disasters triggered by natural hazards, mostly in lower and middle-income countries. A large number of these strike in countries affected by conflict; 30% of the worst disasters occurring 1995-2004 coincided with conflict. This complicates disaster response and throws up many questions of who is responsible and how the response is governed.
This article discusses three case-studies where disasters meet a different scenario of conflict-affected areas. The first case deals with the 2016 drought in South Sudan, where the effects were aggravated and the response was extremely affected by high-intensity conflict. The second concerns Ethiopia, where a 2016 low-intensity conflict and state of emergency politicized disaster response in many ways. Finally, the paper discusses the state-led response to the 2017 mudslide in post-conflict Sierra Leone.
For each of the cases, the paper explores how the events unfolding around the disaster were governed, as an interplay of international actors, with differentiated state and civil society actors, and how this articulated with - and perhaps influenced - ongoing debates and changes on governance.
Paper short abstract:
The history of the census project throws a light on the project's major tensions and how different players engaged with the project. It may also help us to understand the junctures at which things could have gone differently.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses the attempt to carry out a second population census in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The wider political, state-building and statistical capacity building environment attaches great practical and symbolic value to the census, at least discursively. The success of such a vast project hinges on the way in which the tensions between different partners can be managed. The history of the census project throws a light on the project's major tensions and how different players engaged with the project. It may also help us to understand the junctures at which things could have gone differently. Though the census project was still not accomplished 12 years after its official authorization, the census nonetheless remains on the agenda as key actors have found ways of legitimising new activities, producing coherence, reassembling solutions and tying in new supporters. The paper concludes with some suggestions for the management of fragile projects like the census.
Paper short abstract:
What is public about public goods? Who defines the 'public'? In this paper, I offer a critical debate on the idea of public goods in light of garbage collection in a city in eastern DR Congo, Bukavu. I find that public goods creates distinctions and questions everyday statehood.
Paper long abstract:
"Public good" is a source of creating distinctions between who is considered a citizen and who is not. In this paper, I argue that is essential to take a deeper immersion into perceptions of what people themselves see as "public goods" and what "public" constitutes for subjects in different positions and situations. I offer a study of the case of garbage collection in Bukavu, eastern DR Congo, from the viewpoint of the urban poor, middle class citizens and elites.