African Bureaucracy & The Barriers to Democracy
By Mathew Kali Jallow
For democratic systems and institutions of democracy to flourish, it is necessary and
imperative to have an efficient and effective public bureaucracy. This research paper discusses at length the failures and opportunities of African bureaucracies, and what governments there need to do to achieve social and economic empowerment for their citizens. It is clear from all available research those effective public policies cannot be defined, articulated and implemented in the absence of bureaucratic systems that are transparent, competent and accountable. Efficient and competent public bureaucracies are a prerequisite for the effective administration of the rule of law, unbiased dispensation of justice, empowerment of the people, the equal treatment of all citizens, and affording of equal opportunities to all citizens without regard to their tribal, political or religious affiliation.
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
This is a study of the public bureaucracies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study is designed to be broad geographically, because empirical evidence in World Bank, United Nations, International Monetary Fund and other academic and development research suggest that bureaucracies in Sub-Saharan African countries operate and function in a similar manner. This similarity is in part a product of shared cultural values, which predate colonialism and transcend tribal, ethnic and the colonial legacy of artificial national boundaries. After gaining political independence, and within the framework of power consolidating by African leaders, the relationship between the states and their citizens became directly coercive and oppressive (Nasong’o, 2005). One of the areas of academic debate, therefore, is how the public bureaucracies in Sub-Saharan Africa have impeded, rather than promoted the introduction and institution of democracy and democratic values, with a view to institutionalize good governance and social and economic development.
Since the attainment of political independence over forty years ago, countries in Sub-Saharan African have experienced an overwhelming increase in the number of public bureaucrats (First, 1972). Newly freed African governments moved rapidly to replace the departing colonial administrators with native-born bureaucrats. For the most part, the newly installed administrators had only secondary level education and the majority had held junior and middle level administrative positions under the colonial administrations. Most, therefore, lacked the knowledge and the skills of the departing colonialists (Ayittey, 1998). The process of hiring the native-born bureaucrats to replace the departing colonial administrators became widely and suitably referred to as Africanization. The rapid growth of the bureaucracy throughout Africa gave rise to an influential new class who, like their colonial predecessors, aspired to a higher social and economic status. Therefore, they began to acquire a special corporate interest in their positions, and moved to consolidate their hold on power for the purpose of acquiring and accumulating capital and wealth. In time, this self-interest caused a chasm to develop between the governing and the governed, and in the process, redefined the Weberan theory of bureaucracy from one in which the public was the beneficiary of public goods and services, to one that benefited only a small privileged class. The result is that even today, in most Africa countries, the governments are perceived by the ruling elites as a vehicle to rob and terrorize the citizenry (Ayittey, 1998). African bureaucrats have been described as artificial and comprising and degreed and non-degreed bandits, who are out of touch with the people, operate through
deception and abuse of power, and are perennially locked in combat with them. The new administrative system that emerged out of post-independence African defined new governance rules that observed no rule of law, no accountability, and presided over chaotic governments. The tragedy in which government institutions became the virtual properties of the ruling class, precluded the institutionalization of good governance and ensured that bureaucracies ran predatory states, which subverted the agenda of social and economic development for the majority poor (Ayittey, 1998). A consequence of this system of governance is the emergence of corruption, embezzlement, capital flight, increased poverty, and tribalism, which continue to suck the continent deep into the vortex of internal conflicts, administrative failures, and increasing violent political implosions. The absence of accountability in government has exacerbated the problems of good governance, while the lack of skilled, knowledgeable and dedicated public administrators has ensured that open and endemic corruption is bankrupting African countries and creating a climate that continues to cause widespread social upheavals across the continent.
In an effort to put corruption in Africa in the proper perspective, Transparency International, in its 2005 survey, lamented the poor performance of African countries on the Corruption Progress Index (Transparency International Report, 2005). The survey implicated corruption as a primary cause of poverty in Africa and the major impediment to good governance, the establishment of democratic institutions, and social stability. The
Global Forum on Fighting Corruption, another good governance watchdog, declared that corruption threatened democracy, economic growth and the rule of law (Global Forum on Fighting Corruption Report, 2005). The major problem in Africa is that the governing elites lack the sense of country, focusing instead on their own self-interest as they loot the resources meant to bring change and economic development in their countries. This is what has brought about the widespread social and economic problems facing the African. The research attempts to understand the reasons for the continued failure to establish fully functioning democratic institutions and systems of governance with a view to promote good governance and social and economic development.
It should be noted that in the first decade of African independence, many democratic institutions were established, but the social disconnection that emerged between the governing and the governed led to the abandonment of these democratic experiments. As a result, discontent and civil unrest began to manifest in various forms until finally successive military coups swept the continent leading to the ousting of democratically elected governments. The ascendancy of the military regimes at first caused hopes to rise, but reality soon set it as the new rulers began to purge the ranks of the government and civil society of elements loyal to previous civilian regimes. The reality of military rule began to gradually unfold as the military regimes, threatened by their tenuous hold on power, began the systematic arrest, detention, torture and murder of opponents of the regimes. The democratic institutions, established, but in their infancy under previous civilian regimes, were completely abandoned or dismantled. Human rights protocols, to which African countries are signatories, were abrogated with impunity leading to the further erosion of civil society rights. With these abuses, came repression of the press, corruption and lack of accountability, which have become the hallmark of military rule.
This study will also attempt to address issues, which could facilitate a better understanding and acceptance of democratic processes and systems of governments for Africa and its people. The findings of the report aims to help reduce the prevailing culture of corruption and enable the establishment of democracy across Africa. Studies have established that the failure to institutionalize good governance in Africa is directly related to the lack of accountability, rampant corruption, and abuse of human rights, the politicization of the military and the civil service, and the repression of the independent media. It is my hope that the report will benefit African readers and other information consumers by helping identify the causes for the failure to establish good governance, while offering solutions for ways to establish democracy in Africa. Additionally, it is hoped that the report will help educate readers about the pervasiveness of bureaucratic corruption in Africa as the primary cause of the poor governance across the continent.
Sub-Saharan African countries have descended into lawless anarchies over the past five decades. At a time when the rest of the third world is experiencing dramatic changes in the way governments operate and manage their human and natural resources, Africa continues on a path that has only brought misery and social alienation among its population. Military rules, which began three decades ago, have seen the establishment dictatorships that prevent people from realizing their full potentials, as well as their hopes and aspirations.
Democracy is imperative in the quest for justice, equity and social and economic development, and it is hoped that researchers, students of Africa, the African’s political leadership and citizens, will acquire information that could be useful in advancing good governance and democracy for Africans. But, in order to understand how African governments have administered a half-century of poor governance, it is necessary to examine the way in which African bureaucracies have functioned in the past. The failure of Africa's government to stimulate social and economic development is directly related to the deviation from Max Weber's ideal-type bureaucracy, and its substitution in Africa with a system of organization that promotes self-serving individualism and diverts public resources for private purposes.
RESEARCH LITERATURE
Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy is a concept in sociology and political science that refers to the way the administrative execution and enforcement of legal rules is socially organized. The word derives from French, and the term came into popular use shortly before the French Revolution in 1789. The role of the bureaucracy in French society had been under scrutiny as far back as 1765, when a Frenchman, Frederick Melchior, who as Baron between 1701 to 1717, said that the French bureaucracy did not benefit the public interest, that indeed the public interest appears to have been established, so that offices might benefit. In the same vain, this study of African bureaucracy seeks to analyze how bureaucratic agencies function as government organizations in a democratic society.
In America, Woodrow Wilson pursued the inquiry into the functions of the bureaucracy as early as 1887. In 1900, Frank J. Goodnow proposed a politics- administration dichotomy, even though he realized that in practice, politics and administration were inseparable. Since then, bureaucracy has evolved as long list of scholars have added to the body of work, which was started by such researchers as Max Weber. Earlier in the evolution of the bureaucracy, Goodnow was concerned that the existing tradition interfered with government efficiency and limited its scope, and he proposed abandoning the power separation between the executive, the legislative and the judiciary and replacing it with two administrative tiers: politics and administration. He had a vision of freeing administration from politics and to afford the bureaucracies broad discretion, because he believed politics was full of bias, but that the bureaucracy itself was all about the pursuit of the truth.
Over the years, many researchers left their mark in the study of the bureaucracy; however, it was Max Weber’s research and study, which made the greatest impact in our understanding of public bureaucracies. This research will therefore focus on the work and responsibility of the bureaucracy in Africa from the perspective of Max Weber’s definition. Max Weber’s (1864-1920) whose work was not translated into English from German until in 1946 was not widely known in America prior to that. His formulation of the characteristics of an ideal-type bureaucracy in a systematic manner, and his theories and definitions, laid the foundation for all subsequent work on the subject. His interest in the nature and power of authority and his preoccupation with the trends of rationalization, led him to devote to the study and understanding of the operations of large-scale public enterprises in the political, administrative and economic spheres. He defined, therefore, bureaucracy as a formal, rationally organized social structure, involving clearly defined patterns of activity in which ideally, every series of actions are functionally related to the purposes of the organization. He further elaborated that in a bureaucratic organization, there were integrated series of offices, which were hierarchical, with obligations and privileges (Weber, 1946).
Though Weber agreed that bureaucracies are indispensable to the management of modern organizations, he was nonetheless mindful of their limitations. Specifically, he argued that the bureaucratization of the modern society has depersonalized and further caused alienation in society. Despite these reservations, these methods of bureaucratic organization have tremendously increased the effectiveness and efficiency of production in the workplace. Weber's study of organizations in their historical and contemporary content, led him to develop the six characteristics of what is referred to as the ideal-type bureaucracy. This bureaucratic coordination of the activities of large numbers of people in different setting has today become the primary and dominant feature of modern societies. From the technical point of view, bureaucracies are capable of attaining the highest degree of efficiency, and are in that sense the most rational known means of exercising authority over human beings.
Historically, bureaucracy has proven to be superior to any other form of organization in precision, in stability, in the stringency of its discipline, and in its reliability. Yet, despite the many positive attributes, there is a downside for which bureaucracies across the world have been criticized. Since recorded complaints against the bureaucracy began in the 18th century, the practice has been continued unabated to this day. Weber himself observed that in reality, no ideal type bureaucracy could ever exist, and that the bureaucracy in existence was less optimal and effective than the ideal model.
But, Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy is also inherently flawed, and these flaws are at the center of the criticism of bureaucracies. Among the known flaws inherent in bureaucracy identified by Weber, are the possibility of a chaotic hierarchy of authority, nepotism, corruption and political infighting, avoidance of responsibility, and rigidity and inertia. Study over the past half century has identified these as the major impediments to the development and the establishment of democratic governance on the continent.
At the end of the twentieth century, the American government was plagued with corruption and the problem of workplace performance, but prior to that, there were calls for new public management methods with emphasis on producing results. A new public management paradigm proposed for Africa is a direct response to the inadequacies of the public administrations, in particular, the bureaucracies. In The New Public Management Paradigm, Robert D. Behn, proposed that civil servants be empowered to make their own decisions and thus encouraged to be more responsive to the citizenry and to develop new and innovative approaches to solving problems. This new approach to administration assumes and re-enforces the idea that civil servants are intelligent, that they understand the problems faced by their agencies, and have useful ideas about how to solve problems. Because civil servants are on the front-line and are, therefore, closer to the problems, they are in a much better position to convert their good ideas into useful problem solving action. The advocates of the new public administration reject the notion that politics should be separated from administration or that the civil servants could be disassociated from policy issues (Behn, 1997). This stands in contrast to the politics-administration dichotomy; however, rather than search for the one best way, today’s management is looking for the best practices. Without a doubt, bureaucracies continue to transform themselves either through direct action of stakeholders, or by the invisible hand of science and technology. But, any effort or hope of ever conceptualizing the perfect theory for bureaucracies is bound to fail, because human nature defies any neat definition, and the actions of human beings are not always predictable. The preceding overview is meant to put bureaucracies in context as we look at the bureaucracies in Africa, their long history of failure and the challenge they face. But, the first is to look at bureaucracy and their source and exercise of their power.
Bureaucratic Power
The exercise of bureaucratic power is similar to the exercise of political power; however, bureaucratic power is not as open to public scrutiny as political power is. Nevertheless, there is an expectation for bureaucracies to be highly effective, efficient, loyal, innovative, and responsive to the needs of citizens. Bureaucracies also exercise a lot of discretion over the allocation of scarce societal resources and the potential for abuse of the trust entrusted to them is high. One of the predominating questions that have emerged out of the debate on bureaucracies is their responsiveness to public needs. This may often involve anticipating public problems and innovating solutions before the public demands have materialized. The competency of the bureaucracy revolves around the ability of bureaucrats to perform the best possible technically within the constraint put on the organization (Meier, 2000). Bureaucrats are expected to have the foresight and expertise to forecast problems before they fully materialize, and to develop effective means of solving them, but these expectations of competence and responsiveness do often conflict. These conflicts often cause perceptions of administrative abuse when the expectation is for the bureaucracy to maximize two inconsistent values (Meier, 2000). Much of what is mentioned as abuse of administrative power is often an attempt by the bureaucracy to maximize one public value that happens to conflict with another deeply held public value.
Like the American bureaucrats of a century ago, bureaucrats in Africa have often and consistently been criticized for their corruption, nepotism, incompetence, failure and dereliction of responsibility. By the end of 1980s, it became evident that most African countries were experiencing a severe governance crisis marked by six symptoms:
· A dominant authoritarian/patrimonial rule paradigm.
· Breakdown of the public realm, evidenced by petty and big-time grand
corruption.
· Boundaries that reflect the interest of former colonial rulers.
· The persistent tendency of state policy to be guided by urban consumers rather
than rural productive interests.
· Africa’s limited capacity to monitor and respond to international global economy.
· Africa’s diminished capacity to monitor its physical environment.
Yet even today, the Weber’s classical ideal-type bureaucracy that was long ago established by western colonial administrators still remains the dominant form of public administration in Africa, and efforts to conceptualize different forms of bureaucratic organizations have not met with any success. Notwithstanding this, African scholars have questioned whether the organizational, institutional and procedural forms of governance that characterize classical bureaucracy are adequate to address the cultural impediments so entrenched and so pervasive in African society.
Contemporary African social scientists have grappled with ways to adapt Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy to Africa’s needs in the face of the intolerable culture of patronage and tribal affiliation. These changes are aimed at tackling some of the worst forms of governance abuses and failures in Africa: the personalized nature of rule in which key political actors exercise unlimited power and are above the law, systemic clientelism, and misuse of state resources. (Olowu, 2002). But, some of the ideas proposed by Mukandala to tackle Africa’s governance crisis have generated considerable attention and debate, but the full implications of the strength and weaknesses inherent in his theories are still being debated. Mukandala is of the view that African bureaucracies ought to be subordinated to society's cultural and political institutions, and they ought to become instruments of governance, not governing instruments. The proposition is that the bureaucracy must be the machinery through which Africa’s governments will stay close to the people, and the people close to their government. Moreover, the parallel and converging powers of politics and administration are especially blurred in Africa, which has rendered bureaucracies extremely politicized and grossly ineffectual.
As we have seen before, both Wilson in 1887, and Goodnow in 1900, articulated the idea of politics and administration dichotomy. Wilson’s, The Study of Administration, 1887, holds that the field of administration was a field of business, which was or ought to be politically neutral. He warned that although politics sets the tasks of administration, it should not be subjected to manipulation by it. A good administrator should have a steady and healthy allegiance to the policy of the government he or she serves, but policy should not be burdened with political interference (Wilson, 1887).
Jonathan Moyo, a renowned scholar of African bureaucracy, subscribes to Max Weber's ideal-type bureaucracy as the superior form of organization. In Africa, as elsewhere, bureaucracy is the most rational and efficient social instrument of formally coordinating human action. The impersonality of bureaucracy should preclude the consideration of compassion, affection and traditionalist personality, but African bureaucracies have failed to live up to this ideal (Moyo, 1992). The crisis of the bureaucracy in Africa is attributed to the lack of or deficiency in the technical means of dealing with problems and needs. Moyo defines these deficiencies as the lack of craft-literacy, craft-competence and efficiency. Craft-literacy is described as the capacity to conceptualize a successful management process, while craft-competency on the other hand, refers to the ability to understand, apply and turn concepts and ideas into reality.
Africa needs efficient and effective bureaucracies to advance its development goal.
The idea of bureaucracies as instruments of change and development has historical precedence, as the history of all great civilizations begins with the formation of bureaucracies, which shapes man's first existence. The existence of bureaucracy usually showed a corresponding competence of skilled and learned men of experience who managed these bureaucracies. The successful functioning of African bureaucracies is thus impossible without craft-literacy and craft-competency (Moyo, 1992). The reference to craft-literacy and craft-competence is designed to underscore the significance of man as a morale being capable of individual responsibility through the exercise of his substantive rationality based on his personal identity, conscience and loyalty. His morality and rationality compel him to fulfill his accountability role to the community at large based not only on the values of efficiency and productivity, but also on universally recognized values of human rights. Without individual responsibility and accountability, bureaucracy can rather easily become a brutal instrument of social repression and destruction of human civilization (Moyo, 1992). The issue in Africa is not one of recognizing the bureaucracy as a sine qua non of economic development, but that a bureaucracy is impossible without the prerequisites of craft-literacy and craft-competence.
Efficiency and productivity are of major concern to African management, and
African bureaucrats have a great deal to learn from the classical conceptual foundation of
western management thought. Craft-literacy is a coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve these standards of excellence. Max Weber also defined bureaucratic administration as the means of fundamental domination through knowledge. Knowledge is a feature that makes the bureaucracy rational and assures it a position of extraordinary power. In this same vain, craft-literacy makes bureaucracies rational and gives them extra-ordinary power, and the systematic institutionalization of bureaucracies based on craft-literacy and craft-competency can serve as basis for solving Africa’s lack of unifying social character. But, Moyo also rationalizes that bureaucracy is based on the neutral values of efficiency and productivity, which are characters fundamental to any nation's development.
The universalism of bureaucracy considers that the values of efficiency and productivity are common to all societies regardless of their value premises, and no other form of social organization can instill the strong and lasting sense of common values of bureaucracy. In Africa, the issue is not the failure of African bureaucracies as such, but rather that formal organizations there lack the elements craft-literacy, efficiency and craft competence that are necessary for African bureaucracies to succeed. Bureaucracies in Africa are also burdened by the pervasive influence of primitive peasant culture. As a general rule, most staffs in African administrations normally come from the system of extended family, whose experience in the ideal of impersonal public service is brief, and lacks tradition and the sentiments of nationalism (Moyo, 1992). The consequence is that nepotism, favoritism and the sense of self, rooted in the culture of the various ethnic groups, have become the salient defining character of human behavior in African bureaucracies. These factors are also directly implicated in the failure of African bureaucracies, and have impacted the way public administrations have delivered public goods and services to their citizens.
Public Administration
Public administration systems in Sub-Saharan Africa have attracted considerable attention over the past two decades, due to the failure to deliver goods and services efficiently and fairly. The problems of persistent under-development in Africa is primarily blamed on poor management, and a 2005 World Bank study supports the contention that underlying the litany of Africa's development problems is a crisis of governance (World Bank Report, 2005). The main elements of good governance on which there is a wide and broad agreement is the existence of the rule of law, freedom of expression and association, electoral legitimacy, accountability and transparency and development oriented leadership. African’s retrogressive system of political patronage is essential in holding and maintaining power, and it has facilitated the usurpation by African leaders, of broad discretionary authority. Such an undemocratic environment, when compounded by primitive and often divisive ethnic based cultures, has tended to thwart the dynamic social and economic advancement for all citizens (Owolu, 2002). Since it is the responsibility of public administration is to deliver services that the private sector may not deliver, and which some community members cannot afford, services delivered must be seen to benefit all members of society equally.
The ability of a government to legitimately tax and govern people is premised on its capacity to deliver a range of services required by its population, which no other player will provide (Ademolakun, 1994). This refers specifically to public goods and constitutes goods and services that require no exclusion, because they are designed for public use and consumption. In Africa, as in the west, public goods are identifiable by their universal definition of being non-rivalries and non-excludable. In addition, public goods are recognized as those consumed simultaneously by many, and are difficult to exclude someone who does not pay. By their nature, public goods and services have little individual choice of kind and quantity, and payment for goods does not relate directly to demand and consumption. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the decision to allocate... (to be continued)All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this article or any other article or image, or portions thereof, in any form or context without the expressed permission of The Gambia Echo Newspaper.