The Delivery State in Africa. Interface Bureaucrats, Professional Cultures and the Bureaucratic Mode of Governance

THE DELIVERY STATE IN AFRICA. INTERFACE BUREAUCRATS, PROFESSIONAL CULTURES AND THE BUREAUCRATIC MODE OF GOVERNANCE Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan1 In this chapter, we attempt to draw various comparative and theoretical conclusions from the empirical studies on state apparatuses and the public service professions in West Africa which are presented in this volume, but also from research which has been conducted in other contexts over the last ten years or so.2 To this end, we shall elaborate certain conceptualizations. Some of these concern the nature of the object itself: the Delivery state, the Local state, and Interface bureaucracies are all central to the topic of research in question. Other conceptualizations relate to the practices of state actors: they include the professional cultures and the practical norms on which these practices are largely based. Finally, to address issues of a more insti- tutional and structural nature, we shall be looking at the bureaucratic mode of governance and at configurations of delivery, especially pallia- tive delivery, in which this particular mode of governance is implicated alongside other modes of governance. The Delivery State, Interface Bureaucracies and the Local State The Delivery of Public or Collective Goods and Services By ‘delivery state’, we mean the function of the delivery of public or collective goods and services as performed by the state. The expression ‘public 1 Researcher at LASDEL, Niamey, Niger. 2 In particular by LASDEL scholars. LASDEL (Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherche sur les Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local), a social science research institute located in Niger and Benin, carries out research on the delivery of public or collective goods and services. For research results, see the series Etudes et Travaux du LASDEL, www.lasdel.net. Some of the analysis presented here was developed within the States at Work programme funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/277.php). It also has benefited from our involvement in the African Power and Politics programme, funded by the DFID and Irish Aid (www.institutions-africa.org/). On occasion, we have also drawn on previously published material (Olivier de Sardan 2001, 2003, 2009a, 2009b, 2010a, 2010b, 2011a, 2011a, 2011b). © Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004264960_017 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC Jean-Pierre4.0 license. Olivier de Sardan - 9789004264960 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 03:01:24PM via free access 400 jean-pierre olivier de sardan or collective goods and services’ is deliberately wider than ‘public goods’ as used by economists and which corresponds to very specific criteria: it is applied to goods that have a double property, i.e. they are ‘non-excludable’ and ‘non-rivalrous’. This definition is too deductive and restrictive, it paves the way for normative uses, and we do not subscribe to it. Instead, we opt for a wider and empirical use of the concept. For us, public or collective goods and services are first and foremost goods and services that are perceived by the vast majority of users as a social necessity, and, either directly or indirectly, as coming under the state’s duties towards these users. In other words, by general consensus, they are linked to the public interest, and are therefore matters of public concern, and thus public debate: for instance, access to drinking water, education and health, the fight against crime, an equitable legal system or an effective transport system are seen, in the African countries where we have conducted our research, as ‘entitlements’ or aspirations that are shared, whether they are articulated or not, by all users/citizens. It is, therefore, a concept: a concept which refers to emic, tied to specific historical and spatial contexts, and potentially including goods and services at an international, national or local level. Such a definition allows for the consideration of contingent factors that cause a good or service to be counted sometimes as public and sometimes not. The concept of a public good will therefore vary from place to place and over time. In other words, what constitutes a public good is an object of political struggle and public debate, depending on specific state trajectories which are different in, say, France from those in the United States, and different for, say, the 19th century to today (see Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan, introduction to this volume). It must be emphasized, however, that the conditions under which these goods are delivered are very largely local, even though they may involve non-local, national or international actors (the state, private companies, international organizations, development agencies etc.). It is, after all, at the local level that people drink, are protected from thieves, go to school and are medically cared for. The delivery of some public or collective goods and services is a specific state function, which is performed regardless of the regime and the kind of power it wields. The state can never be reduced to either its purely repressive functions (which have already been roundly con- demned by a whole body of literature inspired by Michel Foucault and James Scott) or the type of regime in charge (democratic/dictatorial/ patrimonial/populist, etc.). The state is also a complex organizational Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan - 9789004264960 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 03:01:24PM via free access the delivery state in africa 401 machine, whose actors/officials/bureaucrats provide clients/citizens with a variety of goods and services. Both representative democracies and military dictatorships construct, maintain and operate—with greater or lesser degrees of efficiency—collective infrastructures, water and elec- tricity supplies, schools and dispensaries. Both communist regimes and oil emirates deliver—with varying degrees of success—day-to-day security, aid when a disaster strikes, settling of justice, or economic regula- tions. The delivery state, therefore, is in no way synonymous with the welfare state: the latter is a special version of the delivery state, and is characterized by a greater range and volume of the goods and services delivered by the state. The neo-liberal state, too, is, in its own way, a delivery state because at least it delivers regulation (which is a vital component of public or collective goods and services) and also because it delivers a basic level of particular services (for instance, in the areas of security, law and education). Admittedly, the state is never the sole deliverer of public or collective goods and services. Other actors and institutions may assume this role, sometimes in tandem with the state, sometimes in opposition to it, sometimes in its absence, and sometimes simultaneously and independently. Even under regimes in which the state uses force to exercise its monopoly of delivering certain public goods, as was the case in the former Soviet Union, various informal or clandestine procedures present a de facto challenge to this monopoly (Ledeneva 1998). The current prevalence of neo-liberal ideology has obviously meant a scaling down of the goods and services delivered by the state and made it easier for more non-state organizations to assume a delivery role (private operators in particular). In Africa, the importance of a community-based ideology within development organizations is, paradoxically, another factor contributing to this trend. Nevertheless, the delivery of goods and services by the state is still common in all parts of Africa, whatever imperfect or fractional, and the state is regarded everywhere as ultimately responsible for this delivery, in one form or another: i.e. as the main operator, a joint actor, regulator or guarantor. Inasmuch as the delivery of goods and services is at the heart of what administrations routinely do on an everyday basis and of their relations with citizens/clients, to concern oneself with the delivery state is obviously to concern oneself with the state as a ‘concrete entity’ (“Etat au concret”: cf. Padiolau 1982) or with “the governance of daily life” (Blundo and Le Meur 2009). It is also an opportunity to approach the state via some of its ‘practices’ rather than through the abstracting lens of discursive Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan - 9789004264960 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 03:01:24PM via free access 402 jean-pierre olivier de sardan or symbolic representations, an approach taken by some anthropologists of the state.3 That being said, it is quite obviously the case that practices relating to delivery are also the object of representations, and that they too give rise to certain ‘images of the state’, certain ‘conceptions of the state’ and certain expectations of the state.4 Even in contexts in which the state is inca- pable of delivering by itself and in the proper manner the least onerous of services, it is still there in the background, an ever-present but shadowy figure, and its ineptitude is deplored (cf. Titeca and De Herdt 2011). This kaleidoscope of popular expectations regarding the delivery state has been largely underestimated from a theoretical point of view, although the empirical results of much recent research give some indica- tion of how they show up in real situations. When the delivery function is taken in account theoretically, it is mainly in terms of legitimization process (cf. Hibou 2011). Of course, analyzing the delivery state does not at all mean reducing it to this single function: there is no question of forget- ting its despotic aspects, of circumventing the legitimization/domination processes that express themselves in it or of ignoring the methods used by political or economic elites in monopolizing power. But our perspec- tive includes a further, often neglected dimension of the state, one that could be described as a semi-autonomous field, to borrow an often quoted phrase of Sally Falk Moore’s (1973).

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