Pockets of effectiveness and the politics of state-building and development in Africa / / edited by Sam Hickey ; with a foreword by Merilee Grindle.

• Superior document: Oxford scholarship online
• TeilnehmendeR: Hickey, Samuel, 1972-
• Place / Publishing House: Oxford : : Oxford University Press,, 2023.
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Oxford scholarship online.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (317 pages)
• Notes: Also issued in print: 2023.; "This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)"--Title page verso.

Why do certain parts of the state in Africa work so effectively despite operating in difficult governance contexts? How do 'pockets of bureaucratic effectiveness' emerge and become sustained over time? And what does this tell us about the prospects for state-building and development in Africa? Repeated economic and social crises have demanded that development thinkers and policy actors have had to engage with the critical role that states play in delivering development. This book shows that politics is the driving factor that shapes how well state agencies perform their roles. It deploys a new conceptual framework - the power domains approach - to explore the shifting fortunes of key state agencies in five countries - Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia - over the past three decades.

Table of Contents

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- List of Abbreviations -- Notes on the Contributors -- I. INTRODUCTION -- 1. Pockets of Effectiveness and the Politics of State-building and Development in Africa -- 2. Reconceptualizing the Politics of Pockets of Effectiveness: A Power Domains Approach -- II. CASE STUDIES -- 3. Political Settlement Dynamics and the Emergence and Decline of Bureaucratic Pockets of Effectiveness in Ghana -- 4. 'Holding against the Tide': The Varying Fortunes of Bureaucratic Pockets of Effectiveness in Kenya -- 5. State Capacity-building in Zambia amidst Shifting Political Coalitions and Ideologies -- 6. The Politics of State Capacity in Post-genocide Rwanda: 'Pockets of Effectiveness' as State-building Prioritizations? -- 7. The Politics of PoEs in Uganda: Trapped between Neoliberal State-building and the Politics of Survival? -- III. PATTERNS AND WAYS FORWARD -- 8. Comparative Analysis: PoEs and the Politics of State-building and Development in Africa -- 9. Pockets of Effectiveness: Afterwords and New Beginnings -- 10. From Pockets of Effectiveness to Topographies of State Performance? -- Appendix: Pockets of Effectiveness: Expert Survey (v_1) -- Index.