Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T05:20:56.178Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Politicised Bureaucrats: Conflicting Loyalties, Professionalism and the Law in the Making of Public Services

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2022

Sophie Andreetta  and
Annalena Kolloch
Sophie Andreetta*
Affiliation:
FNRS Research Fellow, University of Liège, Belgium
Annalena Kolloch
Affiliation:
Postdoc, DFG-funded, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Over recent years, public servants from across the world, from French nurses and Belgian social workers to Beninese judges, have been protesting their governments. These protests, some even overt, have erupted in response to specific policies imposed on them or needing to be enforced by them. This Special Issue, however, delves into diverse processes, strategies, actions and practices adopted by civil servants in delivering or administering a public service, be that health care, education, welfare and the like, by extension, seeking to redefine the state or the experience of the state (as a body of institutions, services, public policies, etc.) at the micro-level. Often daily practices of public servants when administering public services directly or indirectly challenge and undermine such legal and policy directives of the government that defy their own idea(l)s of stateness. These findings are drawn from recent works on the making of stateness, which explore the day-to-day work of public servants, especially their interaction with users and their exercise of discretion in implementing public policies. The studies focus on how public servants critically engage with the state and interrogate its policies, mainly to instil (or prevent) political change. A critical engagement with the conflicting loyalties of individual bureaucrats will expand our current understanding of street-level bureaucracies. That also entails observing and analysing their ambivalent responses to new governmental injunctions on a day-to-day basis and their attempts to reinterpret and redefine professionalism as they navigate their conflicting loyalties.

Keywords

public/administrative lawanthropologybureaucraciesstatenessrule of law
Type
Special Issue Introduction
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 18 , Special Issue 3: Politicised Bureaucrats: Conflicting Loyalties, Professionalism and the Law in the Making of Public Services , September 2022 , pp. 279 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anders, G (2009) Like chameleons: civil servants and corruption in Malawi. In Blundo, G and Le Meur, P-Y (eds), The Governance of Daily Life in Africa. Ethnographic Explorations of Public and Collective Services. Leiden: Brill, pp. 119–141.Google Scholar
Andreetta, S (2019) Writing for different audiences: social workers, irregular migrants and fragmented statehood in Belgian welfare bureaucracies, Journal of Legal Anthropology 3, 91–110.Google Scholar
Bear, L and Mathur, N (2015) Remaking the public good: a new anthropology of bureaucracy. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 33, 18–34Google Scholar
Beek, J (2016) Producing Stateness: Police Work in Ghana. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Behrends, A (2002) Drahtseilakte: Frauen aus Nordghana zwischen Bildung, Beruf und gesellschaftlichen Konventionen. Frankfurt a.M.: Brandes & Apsel.Google Scholar
Behrends, A and Lentz, C (2012) Education, careers, and home ties: the ethnography of an emerging middle class from northern Ghana. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 137. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, pp. 139–164.Google Scholar
Behrends, A and Pauli, J (2012) Zwischen Charisma und Korruption: Kontinuitäten und Brüche in der Auseinandersetzung mit Eliten in Afrika. In Bierschenk, T and Spies, E (eds), 50 Jahre Unabhängigkeit in Afrika: Kontinuitäten, Brüche, Perspektiven. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, pp. 301–320.Google Scholar
Bierschenk, T (2014) Sedimentation, fragmentation and normative double binds in (West) African public services. In Bierschenk, T and Olivier de Sardan, J-P (eds), States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies. Leiden: Brill, pp. 221–247.Google Scholar
Bierschenk, T and Olivier de Sardan, J-P (1998) Les pouvoirs au village. Le Bénin rural entre démocratisation et décentralisation. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Bierschenk, T and Olivier de Sardan, J-P (eds) (2014) States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Bierschenk, T and Olivier de Sardan, J-P (2019) How to study bureaucracies ethnographically. Critique of Anthropology 39, 243–257.Google Scholar
Bierschenk, T and Olivier de Sardan, J-P (2021) The anthropology of bureaucracy and public administration. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blundo, G and Le Meur, P-Y (eds) (2009) The Governance of Daily Life in Africa: Ethnographic Explorations of Public and Collective Services. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Blundo, G and Olivier de Sardan, J-P (2007) La corruption quotidienne en Afrique de l‘Ouest. In Blundo, G and Olivier de Sardan, J-P (eds), État et corruption en Afrique: Une anthropologie comparative des relations entre fonctionnaires et usagers (Bénin, Niger, Senegal). Paris: Karthala, pp. 79–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P (1985) Sozialer Raum und ‘Klassen’: Leçon sur la leçon. Zwei Vorlesungen. Schwibs, B (trans.). Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Budniok, J (2014) The politics of integrity: becoming and being a judge in Ghana. PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz.Google Scholar
Das, V and Poole, D (eds) (2004) Anthropology in the Margins of the State. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
De Herdt, T and Olivier de Sardan, J-P (2015) Introduction: The game of the rules. In De Herdt, T and Olivier de Sardan, J-P (eds), Real Governance and Practical Norms in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Game of the Rules. London: Routledge, pp. 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dubois, V (2010) The Bureaucrat and the Poor: Encounters in French Welfare Offices. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Eule, TG, Loher, D and Wyss, D (2018) Contested control at the margins of the state. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 16, 2717–2729.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, T (2010) Professional Discretion in Welfare Services: Beyond Street-level Bureaucracy. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gerken, HK (2013) Exit, voice, and disloyalty. Duke Law Journal 62, 1349–1386.Google Scholar
Gupta, A (1995) Blurred boundaries: the discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state. American Ethnologist 22, 375–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, TB and Stepputat, F (2001) States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State. London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hilbert, RA (1987) Bureaucracy as belief, rationalization as repair: Max Weber in a post-functionalist age. Sociological Theory 5, 70–86.Google Scholar
Hirschman, AO (1970) Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hoag, C and Hull, M (2017) A review of the anthropological literature on the civil service. Policy Research Working Paper 8081. World Bank: Development Research Group.Google Scholar
Holm, Vohnsen N (2017) The Absurdity of Bureaucracy: How Implementation Works. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Kolloch, A (2021) Faire la magistrature au Bénin: Karrierewege, Selbstbilder und die Aushandlung von Unabhängigkeit der beninischen Richter- und Staatsanwaltschaft (1894–2016). Mainz: Gutenberg Open Science. Available at: http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-5429 (accessed 3 February 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolloch, A (2022) Faire la magistrature au Bénin: Careers, Self-images and Independence of the Beninese Judiciary (1894–2016). Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung, Vol. 46. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.Google Scholar
Koster, M (2012) Mediating and getting ‘burnt’ in the gap: politics and brokerage in a recife slum, Brazil. Critique of Anthropology 32, 479–497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamont, M (2000) The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lascoumes, P and Le, Galles P (2004) Gouverner par les Instruments. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.Google Scholar
Laszczkowski, M and Reeves, M (eds) (2018) Affective States: Entanglements, Suspensions, Suspicions. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Lautmann, R (1972) Justiz – die stille Gewalt: Teilnehmende Beobachtung und entscheidungssoziologische Analyse. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Athenäum.Google Scholar
Lavigne, Delville P (2018) Les réformes de politiques publiques en Afrique de l'Ouest, entre polity, politics et extraversion: Eau potable et foncier en milieu rural (Benin, Burkina Faso). Gouvernement et action publique 7, 53–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lentz, C (2014) I take an aath to the state, not the government: career trajectories and professional ethics of Ghanaian public servants. In Bierschenk, T and Olivier de Sardan, J-P (eds), States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies. Leiden: Brill, pp. 175–204.Google Scholar
Lipsky, M (1980) Street-level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Lund, C (ed.) (2007) Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Maynard-Moody, SW and Musheno, MC (2003) Cops, Teachers, Counselors: Stories from the Front Lines of Public Service. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Migdal, J and Schlichte, K (2005) Rethinking the state. In Schlichte, K (ed.), The Dynamics of States: The Formation and Crises of State Domination. Burlington: Ashgate, pp. 1–40.Google Scholar
Mosse, D and Lewis, D (eds) (2006) Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies. Bloomfield: Kumarian Press.Google Scholar
Pressman, JL and Wildavsky, AB (1973) Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schaffer, B and Lamb, G (1974) Exit, voice and access. Social Science Information 13, 73–90.Google Scholar
Scott, JC (1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sharma, A and Gupta, A (eds) (2006) The Anthropology of the State: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Spire, A (2008) Accueillir ou reconduire: enquête sur les guichets de l'immigration. Paris: Raisons d'agir.Google Scholar
Taussig, M (1997) The Magic of the State. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thelen, T, Vetters, L and von Benda-Beckmann, K (2018) Introduction: Stategraphy: relational modes, boundary work, and embeddedness. In Thelen, T et al. (eds), Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Understanding of the State. New York: Berghahn, pp. 1–19.Google Scholar
Verheul, S (2013) ‘Rebels’ and ‘good boys’: patronage, intimidation and resistance in Zimbabwe's attorney general's office after 2000. Journal of Southern African Studies 39, 765–782.Google Scholar
Weber, M (1922/1956) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, 4th edn. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.Google Scholar