Bureaucracy and democratic governance in Africa: an agenda for reform

Abstract

Democracy is constrained in post-colonial African states by factors such as poverty, low levels of education, deep ethnic and religious divisions, weak civil society structures etc. (Hyden & Bratton 1992, Ake 1995, Rasheed 1995). The extent to which modern public bureaucracies help to tackle or aggravate these problems remains a moot point. Yet, the fact that most of the modern African states began as colonial bureaucracies was expected to assist the task of nation-building in countries which were themselves a legacy of the colonial enterprise. Modern public bureaucracies were considered crucial for formulating and implementing programmes aimed at radically transforming economic and social conditions in African countries within a short period of time. Host observers at the time thought that improved socio-economic conditions were the necessary preconditions for the attainment of democratic governance.