In the Shadow of Good Governance

Gerhard Anders (Ph.D. 2005) is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Social & Cultural Anthropology, University of Zurich. His research focuses on the anthropology of emergent regimes of global order in the fields of criminal justice and development. He has published on legal anthropology, international criminal justice, good governance and corruption including the co-edited volume (with M. Nuijten) Corruption and the Secret of Law (Ashgate, 2009).

The anthropology of the postcolonial state takes a major step forward with Gerhard Anders' outstanding study. His ethnographic insights into the planning, implementation and manipulation of the civil service reform in Malawi give food for thought well beyond the specific case he writes about. No other study of the 1990s good governance agenda in Africa has accomplished Anders' nuanced account of the lived experience among civil servants caught up in the throes of change. This is a landmark study that challenges facile generalizations about corruption and the dysfunctional state in Africa.Harri Englund, University of Cambridge

• ContentsAcknowledgements viiGlossary and abbreviations ixMap of Malawi x1 INTRODUCTION: UNPACKING GOOD GOVERNANCE 1Civil servants as implementers and “target population” 1The “dysfunctional” African state 3Good governance as technology 5Field sites 8Studying up, follow the policy 9Basic information about the civil service 11Outline 142 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 15Banda’s rule and the “New Malawi” 16The results of two decades of structural adjustment 19The civil service – from localisation to good governance 243 CONSTRUCTING COUNTRY OWNERSHIP 28Introduction 28The emergence of a concept 30Conditionality and country ownership 34The normativity of numbers 40The discovery of the “C word” 42Conclusions 474 THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS 49Deconstructing policy implementation 49Retrenchment of employees made redundant 51The introduction of new housing allowances 55Increasing fragmentation of the civil service 60Conclusions 685 ERODING SALARIES AND DOING BUSINESS 70The African entrepreneurial spirit 70The meaning of having a job in the civil service 73“How to make ends meet” 83Winners and losers of economic liberalisation 89Conclusions 97vi6 “DISTANCE SAVES ME” 99Introduction 99Kubwerera kumudzi 101Education and social stratification 110The importance of associations 111The nature of kinship duties 115Conclusions 1207 THE DEMOCRATISATION OF APPROPRIATION 122Introduction 122“Bad politics” 124The office mores – a parallel social and moral order 130A “primoridial public sphere”or a patchwork of moralities? 135Conclusions 1398 CONCLUSIONS: THE STATE IN SOCIETY 141The paradoxical policies of the World Bank and the IMF 142A note on theorising the postcolonial state 148References 151Index 163