James Mahoney Erin Metz Northwestern University
Often accounts of governance or developmental failures in Africa are blamed on poor state capacity or corruption. Theory and empirical evidence over the last 200 years have observed that bureaucracy is the most effective means of increasing state capacity, improving collectivist orientation, and decreasing corruption. Developmental state research, concerned with the socioeconomic development of less developed countries, has found bureaucracy an absolutely essential element for growth. Yet for all the popular fascination with the lack of governance ability in African states, very little is known about the origins of bureaucracy in new states. The origins of mass bureaucracy remain unclear because previous scholarship has been unable to analytically distinguish conditions that lead to bureaucracy itself from conditions that lead to conformity within an already bureaucratic system. This dissertation research studies the cultural and institutional foundations of bureaucratic rationality within largely non-bureaucratic states, using the case of Ghana. The co-PI argues that to understand the development of bureaucracy in African states, the state must be viewed as a non-unitary actor comprised of many niches. Within a non-unitary framework, particular institutional niches can foster bureaucratic subcultures "origin sites that can spread to other agencies. Based on preliminary findings, it is hypothesized that bureaucracy within these niches is a borrowed innovation, transferred primarily through the circulation of professionals. Logics of international migration and labor interact to structure which sectors are more likely to receive bureaucratically experienced return migrants. Such actors are uniquely positioned to adapt bureaucratic practices to the local social environment. A variety of organizational variables" including autonomy, coordination, scale, authority and position of the group in a production chain" interact to foster a subculture of bureaucracy among a few dedicated actors who then create and institutionalize bureaucratic norms and practices. Some variables have time dependent effects, for example, highly autonomous departments help foster a nascent subculture of bureaucracy, but impede its spread. Relying on a heterogeneous sample of informants for case selection, the investigator will collect documentary, interview, and observational data from twelve departments, including control groups.
This study advances technical understanding by 1) developing novel theoretical claims for effectiveness at the group level and 2) testing the validity of established claims at the group level. This illuminates the processes by which state-level conditions are created through the actions of constitutive state agencies. This work complements the tradition of historical research of developmental states by examining meso-level conditions that can provide more generalizable mechanisms. A means of bureaucratic change not dependent on the executive is necessary for understanding change in states whose leadership is empowered through tenuous compromises. Reports of this study will be distributed to participating ministries within the Ghanaian state. The findings of this dissertation will help refine aid distribution of international donors by providing more precise information on institutional niches of bureaucratic effectiveness.
