SOCIAL CAPITAL, PUBLIC PROVISIONING AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

Solidarity, Trust and Tolerance

In this work, solidarity, trust and tolerance are viewed from the widely held perspective that Africans, overall, generally work together for the good of communities through large (or ‘extended’) family systems as well as through clan-based loyalties. Indeed, Hyden (1983, 1994) conceptualizes this phenomenon as the ‘economy of affection.’ According to this paper, urbanites and rural dwellers in many parts of Africa are tied together through networks of kinship and tribal obligations that often undercut indigenous capital growth as well as class formation required for industrial take-off. Hyden argues that the high premium placed on personal relationships continually ties down these societies to peasant modes of production. While the researchers do not necessarily agree with Hyden’s conclusion regarding the relationship between a peasant mode of production and the high premium placed on personal relationships, the paper adopts the characterization of social relations as pertinent to the understanding of solidarity, trust and tolerance as employed here.

Ideally, power, conflict and class have no place in social capital (Schuurman, 2002). For Schuurman (2002), the social capital debate places civic society on a high pedestal where it is reduced to the image of a large company. The main function of social capital in this case would be to facilitate the exchange of information via social networks to lower individual transaction costs and hence produce an aggregate surplus value at societal level. This is especially important in settings where there is little trust in formal institutions that are supposed to safeguard property rights and honour contracts. Malhotra’s (2003) definition of social capital is especially apt for this section. He defines social capital thus:

Thus, the relationship between community solidarity and transaction costs becomes quite evident. Communities that are close-knit due to the abundance of social capital would tend to develop low transaction costs as most expenses that would be incurred as exchange costs are mediated by the existence of reciprocal trusts. As Riggs (1964) observes, the whole social and economic structure of a polity, ranging from the nature of marriage vows to the emergence of associations and reorganizations of bureaucracy are always transformed by the introduction of contract procedures and exchange safeguards.

The depredation of social capital in the public sphere in Sub-Saharan Africa began soon after the colonisers officially left (see, for example, Odinga, 1967). According to Ake (1981), the nationalist bourgeois who took over the reigns of power at the dawn of political independence in many African countries soon realized that they were in office but not in command of the economy. There followed frenzied loot and plunder of public coffers. Post-independence leaders took advantage of opportunities offered by political power to secure economic bases for their political careers (see, for example, Ake, 1980, 1996). To achieve this, the economic role of the state was extended as widely as possible. One parastatal (a company or agency owned or controlled wholly or partly by the government) after another was created in the process. With the parastatals, came cronyism, nepotism, and other manifestations of corruption. The response from the people has been that of alienation from the state and other formal institutions. If the elite were corrupt, the ordinary people resorted to contraband trade and other informal trading activities that evaded the ravenous appetite of the appropriative state. The result was a civil society that is only now beginning to learn to network and trust especially where public institutions are concerned [6].

Tribalism [7] is another major bane to the effective accumulation of social capital. To analyse better the impact of tribalism on social capital, it will be necessary to split it into its two forms as manifested in Africa. Sklar (1960) distinguishes between ‘pantribalism’ and community partisanship. ‘Pantribalism’ is tribalism as practised in urban areas amongst modernized urban dwellers. Community partisanship is the affirmation of traditional values in the rural areas. The elite in urban areas feel they need to bring together disparate groups especially for political purposes. This necessitates the formulation or reconstruction of tribal identities that bring together larger groups. For instance, in South Africa one would now talk of Nguni speakers rather than Zulus or Xhosas; in Kenya, the term Kalenjin would bring together the entire highland Nilotes, rather than referring to them as Pokots, Nandis, and so on. According to Sklar (1960), tribalism is deleterious to national well-being since tribal movements thrive on ethnic group conformism and loyalties that pulverize horizontal loyalties crucial to young nations. Moreover, where tribal loyalties entail implicit attachments to traditional values and institutions, these may at times be irreconcilable with the requirements of modern social progress. The terrible burden that traditional norms at times put on women is one such example.

On the surface, one may be deluded by the thick expanse of associational densities found in African polities as indicative of the abundance of social capital. However, these associations are choked by the constraints that either of the two forms of tribalism discussed above entails. Therefore, it is imperative that aspects of bonding and bridging are emphasized to capture the potential benefits of social capital for the entire society. With careful nurturing, social capital can help leverage in linking to public institutions, effectively bridging across to other disadvantaged groups and bonding in terms of developing community level support and mutual care at local level.

Associations: Social Structures of Cooperation

In this paper, the authors are concerned with associations as they come into existence both at the workplace and amongst communities. While local organizations often spring up spontaneously in response to some common need such as security, work parties or community development assistance; workplace associations are always called into being by specific interest groups that could be labour, professional or welfare-based. The key contention in this inquiry is that, often, welfare associations predominantly based on clan or ethnic origins tend to dominate over the other kinds of associations as social structures of cooperation.

Distinctive social structures and practices are the embodiment of civic communities’ mores and values (Putnam, 1993). Civil associations contribute to the effectiveness and stability of governments in many ways. As Alexis de Tocqueville points out (cf.Mansfield and Winthrop, 2002, p. 7), it is necessary for the efficient functioning of democracy to have institutions that serve to:

Associational networks facilitate free flows of information about technological developments, character references, educational and training opportunities, job prospects, and about credit worthiness of prospective entrepreneurs amongst other things. In Africa, the most vibrant, relevant, and visible forms of the vast array of associations have traditionally been the church, student organizations and the labour unions. Of late, NGOs have been on the ascendancy as well as a growing number of professional associations. These associations are important because in many cases, given their horizontalism, they overcome the legacies of vertical hierarchies and individualistic mechanisms inherent in everyday political discourse (Putnam, 1993).

At the height of single party dictatorship in Sub-Saharan Africa, many intellectuals were forced to seek refuge abroad either to escape imprisonment or for dear life. The regimes adopted mainly two methods of dealing with possible rivals for state power: co-option or exit. Those who could not be convinced to join the ruling elite or eliminated often sought and found refuge abroad. This brain drain left civil society bereft of effective organizational capacity. Indeed, for a long time, the only expanding professional groups in many African countries have been the civil service and the army (Schraeder, 2000; Ake, 1996). These have severe restrictions as to the manner in which they can mobilize themselves into associations without contravening their employment terms.

In general, repressive regimes rarely engender conditions for the development of appropriate stocks of social capital. Social capital cannot develop in an environment pervaded by ego-centric networks of personal rule. The governance structure in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be heavily tilted in favour of an individual leader rather than legally based institutions. This personality cult is organized ordinarily around a series of concentric circles of patron-client relationships in which the leader personally selects senior government appointees, who in turn choose the cohorts to head the line departments, and so on. This arrangement fosters a personality cult that crumbles with the demise of the leader to the detriment of the entire society.

The rot in social capital has not been restricted to the ruling class. The general populace have equally strayed from developing effective networks of mutual social advantage. The vice has percolated to the general populace who overwhelm the captains of state with spurious urgent demands for social and financial services. Self-interest if properly understood, as Alexis de Tocqueville informs, would militate against such demands (Mansfield and Winthrop, 2000[1835]). As variously argued, the state as constituted in Africa engenders the institutionalisation of ethnic entitlements, rights and privileges that foster differentiated and unequal status of citizenship (Hyden, 1994; Mamdani, 1996; Schraeder, 2000). Citizenship has thus been de-individualized and manifests itself more as a group phenomenon.

The apparent dearth of sufficient stocks of social capital to foster development in the continent has to be reversed. There is need to find traces of common themes that readily unite people. As the review reveals, it is not so much that Africa lacks stocks of social capital. Rather, the present stocks of social capital that abound in the continent are not of the ‘right’ kind. There is need for associational norms that transcend the bonds of kinship, clans, and ethnic communities. Even more preferable, the bonds should be such as to facilitate a mass-driven continental political union.

Further, these bonds must be long lasting and not simply tactical manoeuvres employed on the face of a perceived common enemy. Such tactical moves are normally relegated to the background as soon as the enemy disappears. The concept of social capital, if tied to the concerns of transaction costs, presents great potential for accelerated development on the continent. Its greatest appeal lies in the fact that it does not require substantial funds for its implementation. What is required is a paradigm shift so that the debate is elevated to encompass all aspects of development drives. The next section will look at constraints to social capital accumulation.

Constraints to Social Capital Accumulation

There are constraints to the formation and accumulation of social capital. A number of scholars, notably Mancur Olson (1971[1965]; 1982) and North (1989, 1990 and 1995), have contributed immensely to the understanding of the logic behind collective activities. They have identified factors that might mitigate the problems of economic opportunism and shirking in collective action. Of particular interest are the criteria given for successful collective action.

These scholars argue that collective action is more feasible for smaller groups. It is also desirable that the group be as homogenous as possible in origin. The longer the group has been in existence or members have interacted with one another also adds to group coherence and stability. However, social and physical proximity among group members is desirable. This can be mediated by improved communication. The objectives of group members, as well as the distribution of power or wealth among group members, need to be differentiated in a complementary manner. Lastly, the group needs to be alert to possible losses arising from inaction.

A glance at the criteria listed above immediately informs, for instance, why ujamaa was such a dismal failure in Tanzania. Upon gaining independence from Britain in 1964, the Tanzanian leader, Mwalimu Dr. Julius Nyerere, adopted a raft of social and economic development policies under the rubric of Ujamaa. The details of ujamaa were published as a development blueprint in the Arusha Declaration of 1967 (see Nyerere, 1977). In the Arusha Declaration, Nyerere pointed out the need for an African model of development on the basis of African socialism. Ujamaa comes from the Swahili word for ‘extended family’ or ‘family hood’ and is premised on the notion of ubuntu that posits that a person becomes a person through the community. For Nyerere, an African ‘extended family’ meant that every individual is in the service of the community. Thus, a community characterized ujamaa if co-operation and collective advancement were taken as the rationale of every individual’s existence. In this system, personal acquisitiveness was prohibited in the belief that this would facilitate the distribution of wealth through society horizontally rather than vertically. Informed by this blueprint, Tanzania embarked on a decade of extensive ‘villagerisation’ in order to entrench ujamaa onto to the national psyche.

In spite of the failures of ujamaa (see Barkan, 1994), self-help movements that predate the contemporary independence era are still alive and growing ever more popular in many parts of Africa. In Tanzania, insubordination pervaded the civil service ranks at the height of the socialist rhetoric when everyone was simply a comrade. While the practice might have had some virtue as a manifestation of political equality, it certainly wreaked havoc in the civil service and among corporate workers. For this reason, this paper concentrates on the interaction between the social capital that exists amongst the community of users, that is, acts of cooperation and reciprocity that are not called into existence by the state, while conceding that some social capital might exist amongst service providers who have been brought together under a government organization. Thus, for instance, the paper is interested to determine whether the high premium placed on inter-personal relationships is necessarily antithetical to the efficient functioning of a modern state institution.

Nevertheless, ujamaa is the exception rather than the rule. The prevalence of community partisanship in African countries is a great challenge indeed for a vigorous analysis of the concept of social capital. The onus on African leaders at all levels is to find ways of bridging these bonds so that they transcend the narrow ethnic boundaries that define them at present. What is heartening is that, were one to start from scratch in an attempt to create institutions that foster social capital, such as in a post-conflict situation, there is a lot that can be implemented relatively easily. Therefore, this inquiry disregards the school of thought that argues against state efforts to create social capital by condemning such initiatives as harmful to civil society (Schuurman, 2002). On the contrary, as studies in Ireland have shown (Ireland, NESF, 2003), state involvement is needed to provide links and bridges across bonds that the civil community may have created.

The real barriers to the effective accumulation of appreciable stocks of social capital remain the four guises of constraints to collective action that game theorists have developed over the years (Putnam, 1993). The first guise is the public good characteristics that pervade social capital. Public goods are often provided by the state. This becomes problematic in societies where the state is not seen as legitimate and hence everyone scrambles to get as much as possible from the state by investing as little as possible into the common pool. In the next guise, commonly referred to as the tragedy of the commons, no herder is able to limit grazing by other herders’ flock. The ones who lose are those who limit their own grazing, yet uncontrolled grazing destroys the common meadow on which the livelihood of all herders depends. An example of this aspect is be the persistent bribe giving as well as bribe taking in public provisioning. Particular officials who do not take bribes may be seen as naïve just as those citizens who do not pay bribes while seeking government services may continually lose out to those who pay bribes.

The third guise presents itself in the dismal logic of collective action. Here, every agent would benefit if all struck simultaneously. In Sub-Saharan Africa, this scenario may best be explained by the quest for democratic reforms. Those activists who were the first to talk openly against the high-handedness of the government and the ruling party often lost property or even life (see Badejo, 2006). Thus, even though it benefited everyone once democratic gains were made, it took a great deal of conviction for anyone to speak out openly against injustices of the system. However, whoever strikes first risks betrayal by facing the consequences alone, so everyone waits, waiting to benefit from some other agent’s haste. The last guise is the prisoner’s dilemma, beloved by many social scientists.

In the prisoner’s dilemma, game theorists assume that a pair of accomplices is held incommunicado in separate cells and each is informed that if s/he alone implicates the other accomplice, then s/he will be freed unconditionally. However, this accomplice is warned that should s/he remain silent while the other confesses, s/he will be punished especially severely. If both accomplices remain silent, both would be freed with light punishment. Since both accomplices are unable to coordinate their stories, each is better off telling on the other, no matter what the other does. The only reason why a prisoner’s dilemma kind of outcome is not evident in every day life is the presence of trust in society. Not only is it necessary to trust others before acting cooperatively, it is equally necessary to believe that others trust you.

All the four guises require an orderly social environment for one to attempt to solve the lack of cooperation. As Alexis de Tocqueville notes, people resent more the use of power that they consider illegitimate than the use of power per se or the habit of obedience (Mansfield and Winthrop, 2002). Nevertheless, the existence of a strong and popular government, as an honest enforcer of norms to overcome the constraints of collective action, is only part of the solution (North, 1990; Fukuyama, 1995). No contract can cover every conceivable contingency, given the fact that coercion has its limits. Therefore, there is a strong need for voluntary informal networks of trust and associational mores of reciprocities and obligations to supplant these guises.

Social Capital and Good Governance

Before we move to look at contemporary scholarship on the good governance paradigm we need to briefly highlight the link between social capital and good governance. It is clear that governance crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa with such symptoms as failure of rule of law, autocracy, unilateralism, etc. is unlikely to evolve into good governance by merely following the internationally agreed principles of good governance. For the organic development of society, we need to look gaps in governance, which we think would be bridged with social capital.

The politics of service delivery is such that citizens are increasingly demanding not only responsiveness but also collaboration. The concept of social capital offers good governance an opportunity to make progress towards higher levels of cooperation and collaboration with various social players such as the private sector, the third sector, and citizens. This is because, as Vigoda-Gadot (2004) citing examples from the experiences of the Israeli government demonstrates, a collaborative approach in the delivery of public services is in the end a socially desirable trend with meaningful benefits that reach far beyond the important idea of responsiveness.

Thus, the idea of collaborative administration fits very well with the assumptions of participatory democracy. It has been shown, for instance, that high-quality popular participation can affect participants’ beliefs in desirable ways (see Halvorsen, 2003). Halvorsen (2003) shows that there is a high correlation between exposure to quality participation and participant beliefs about the trustworthiness and responsiveness of a public agency. The same also holds true for the value of including different viewpoints in public meetings (in other words, consensus building).

In the next section we focus particularly on literature on good governance. We review eight aspects of good governance, namely: participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus building, equity and inclusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency and accountability. In this review we show the relevance of social capital to good governance.

Rationale for the Good Governance Paradigm

In this paper, the authors articulate internationally-accepted norms of good governance of Inter-Governmental Organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank. Using the models of good governance that these organizations advocate, emerging literature on public administration and theory is selected and woven around these themes in order to locate both practice and theory gaps, that is, where the concept of social capital may or may not be inserted.

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP, 2005, p. 1) define governance as “the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented).” This paper also adopts ESCAP’s definition of good governance which captures the eight themes delved into hereunder. According to ESCAP (2005 p. 1), good governance:

 
In the following sections, we will look at these characteristics one by one to determine how they relate to the concept of social capital available on the ground so to speak.

Participation

Popular participation as a mechanism for promoting good governance has been on the rise in Sub-Saharan Africa since the early 1980s when it was mostly dubbed the ‘bottom-up’ approach. In Kenya, for instance, the envisaged District Focus captured the bottom-up approach for Rural Development where the district was envisaged to be the focal point of all development activities (See, Sessional Paper Number 10 of 1986, the ‘District Focus for Rural Development’ Strategy; Leonard, 1991). The overall objective was to have development focused at a regional level under the auspices of different District Development Committees (DDCs). Driven as a part of good governance, it was seen as vital to efforts to improve the welfare of poor people in countries where elites had hitherto benefited disproportionately from policies conceived at the top without reference to ordinary citizens at the bottom. For the rest of Africa, this was evident, for instance, in the bias of most development initiatives in favour of urban centres (Golloba-Mutebi, 2004). Donor pressure also helped at this stage to reverse the trend of top-centeredness.

It would of course be premature to assume that all countries will or should automatically accede to these internationally-accepted norms of good governance. Non-compliance does not always mean mischief on the part of governors. Some of these elements may be difficult to implement either because of diverse cultures or at times due to economic reasons. This is what has led other scholars, notably Merilee Grindle (2004) to suggest the notion of ‘good enough governance.’ She argues thus:

 
Nevertheless, this paper assumes that international standards will, indeed, live up to their potential to strengthen accountability and governance, starting from the premise that securing agreement on universal standards is itself a significant accomplishment if this could be achieved. The challenge today is how to ensure that international standards are applied effectively in practice. An attempt in this direction at a continental level has been the formation of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), as an arm of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). To adhere to these international norms, willing governments require political will, technical capacity, and resources to undertake these new approaches.

In Sub-Saharan Africa today, the fight against corruption especially in high public offices, is gaining momentum. This is one area where both the donor communities as well as civil society actors are in complete agreement. Such confluence of interests at times makes it possible for the leaders to involve the larger citizenry in policymaking. The involvement of citizens in policy-making allows governments to tap new sources of ideas, information and resources when making decisions albeit at a higher cost in the short run.

The demands of effective participation require governments to invest adequate time and resources in building robust legal, policy and institutional frameworks. For effective engagement, Caddy (2001) argues that government needs to articulate its objectives in seeking the views of the public from the start. This must be done without raising unrealistic expectations. It is now a commonly accepted axiom that transparency, public consultation and participation are more important than ever to improve policy and reinforce democracy and stability.

It is self-evident that new and more complex models of organization are emerging in both the public and voluntary sectors just as much as new problems arise. The new models range from community-based organizations to full-blown public-private partnerships. They all strive for the active participation of their members and/or users and the governance of their activities. White (2001) argues that the patterns of governance emerging in these new models present a different set of problems for the management sciences. This means that policy, strategy and accountability are now being developed within a complex network of different organizations drawn from the public and voluntary sectors, aiming to govern or regulate ‘the public sphere’. She posits that governance has supplanted management as an issue for the management sciences in these new approaches, and hence the need for a paradigm shift. She advocates for the deployment of management science (read as rational policy) in order to make clear the difference between good governance and effective management.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries have often pushed for the trio of popular participation, good governance, and democracy as part of the dialogue of cooperation between developed and developing countries. It is possible for Sub-Saharan Africa to learn from these experiences. As Love (1991) shows in the case of Latin America, the vicious cycle of underdevelopment, high population growth, poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, and environmental degradation, can be broken by a three-pronged approach. This approach encompasses sustainable economic growth, environmental sustainability and slowing population growth, and a broadened participation of all the people in the productive processes and a more equitable sharing of the benefits. We now look at aspects of the rule of law.

Rule of Law

There is no gainsaying the fact that public opinion is a critical restraint on political decision-making and public administrative action. For Habermas, a public is a bearer of public opinion as democratic publicity. (Habermas, 1989) A Habermasian public can be considered more communicatively refined than a public constituted, for example, by voter-citizens in a popular democracy, or consumers of certain material goods, political party cadres, clients of the nation state’s deliverable services, or beneficiaries of social welfare grants from the nation-state and civil society’s economic associations (NGOs). Such a public is constituted by talking people who engage with state leaders, authorities, and knowledgeable and powerful organs of society, about the needs, interests, and aspirations of the talking people. The talking is oriented towards action, to make something substantial happen. Á la Habermas, [8] this action-oriented talk can be designated as ‘talk-action,’ because it involves talking people articulating their needs, interests, and aspirations in society. Talk-action is publicly-mediated because it is, quintessentially, realisable only in public communication practice. [9] Nevertheless, talk-centricity as a mode, or expression, of deliberative democracy does not necessarily guarantee participatory parity. It does not curb subtle exclusions of collective decision-making, for example, elitism, sexism, tribalism, or socio-economic class-oriented disparities, in deliberative arenas of the public sphere.

Public opinion operates both as a contributor to and as a check on political decision-making and public administrative action because, broadly, many regulators, rule makers, and law enforcers are making decisions or advocating policies that directly affect the balance between liberty and security. As Kanin (2003, p. 1) observes in the case of the Balkans, “In this area — and others at the margins of the global economy — these problems are central aspects of existence, not temporary aberrations destined to disappear once ‘good governance” and “rule of law sets in.” Li (2000, p. 1) characterizes the concept most pertinently when he observes:

Put differently, one can illustrate using the examples of ‘rule by law’ such as was witnessed in Nazi Germany or in South Africa during the apartheid years as opposed to the ‘rule of law’ which is among the key pillars of good governance. Kanin (2003) argues convincingly that economic marginality and fragmentation tend to create a tradition of ‘Big Men.’ These big men or local notables acquire the authority and legitimacy to restrict access to resources and power.

The Cotonou Partnership Agreement between the African Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) group of developing countries and the European Union (EU) of 2000 is a fine illustration of such an initiative [10]. By this agreement, the EU is committed to refocusing its development policy and reforming its aid administration with the intention to move to reciprocal regional free trade agreements. The agreement places strong emphasis on good governance, the rule of law and human rights. The covenant also creates space for an enhanced role for non-state actors, the private sector, and the adoption of a rolling programme of aid provision.

Similarly, at the heart of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is the desire to implement rule of law, good governance, and economic reform. Unfortunately, the continental body needs external financing in order to achieve these lofty ideals. Indeed, nearly all regional bodies to which Sub-Saharan Africa belongs such as the East African Community (EAC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) subscribe to these principles. Furthermore, there are growing efforts by international NGOs to promote civil society, good governance and the rule of law as well. Yet not much seems to have been achieved in the pursuit of good governance on the ground. This is what has forced some observers to look more closely at the organic development of the whole society (social capital) or what Ake (1996) calls the power of the people. We now turn to the need for transparency in public governance.

Transparency

Technological changes have revolutionized nearly all governmental processes. The general citizenry wants good governance. People are only comfortable once they know that government programs are well managed. These conditions of necessity require greater openness and transparency; otherwise, it would be impossible to hold politicians, the government, and public service officials accountable for outcomes of their decisions. Internet-based technologies are already bringing important changes in the nature of governance, leading to the phenomenon of e-government-that is, Internet or web-based and –enabled communication exchange that is constituted by people that access the Internet and then deliberate, for example, debate, on particular shared concerns or aspects of issues at stake in society. Inasmuch as it is not in physical form and need not involve physical interaction, such communication exchange is virtual. The publics that are constituted via the cyberspace are necessarily virtual. Thus, e-government involves “text publics” [11] in contrast to the conventional physical publics of the political assembly, arena, or rally. Some theorists have maintained that the adoption of networked information systems such as the Internet, leading to the possibility of e-government, is accompanied by inevitable shifts toward democratic government (see, Castells, 2000). Yet the experiences of China and many other developing countries would force us to concede that technologies are secondary factors as instruments of change in levels of democracy or types of governance.

There is need for a pro-active set of policy innovations that offer an avenue for comparing modern conceptualizations of data privacy with the legal principles created in seminal privacy decisions related to informational privacy laws. Great Britain’s new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is one such example (Roberts, 2005). The act is intended to empower citizens by granting a right to government documents. However, as Roberts (2005) points out, the law will be implemented in an environment accustomed to centralized structures for communications and has potential for disruption and bureaucratic transgression that need be ring-fenced prior to implementation. The author cites Canada’s Access to Information Act as a near-perfect piece of legislation that weaves around those political pit-falls quite successfully. The on-going public service reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa would do much better to learn from these debates.

Away from the community of users and the policy formulators, public managers need to be trained on how best to collect, disseminate, and evaluate information for decision-making. Haque (2005) develops brief but exciting theoretical underpinnings of information gathering and decision-making that would be of great use to any modern public manager; more so in developing country setting. He argues that more information gathering and subsequent use of sophisticated information gathering tools serves as an important myth promoting greater legitimacy and confidence in the government's ability to provide security to the citizens.

Haque (2005) suggests appropriately that the rational choice approach to security is limited in its ability to evaluate values that are embedded into the decision-making processes. However, being cognizant of the non-rational rulings placed on technology-based policy initiatives, Haque (2005) points out that public managers can be guided towards responsible values to avoid the dark path of control, surveillance, and the loss of freedom.

Some theorists are now positing that because of NPM’s zealous commitment to results, there is a danger that we may lose on the values (see, for example, Piotrowsky and Rosenbloom, 2002). This tension, between democratic-constitutional values such as representation, participation, transparency, and individual rights and efficiency gains from the adoption of private business practices, calls into sharp relief the issues of social capital. Apart from decentralization, the other three components of NPM are at least at one remove from both the concepts of good governance and social capital. Nevertheless, the three components have the potential to improve governance through more efficient service delivery.

One must also be alert to the dangers of ‘technocratic’ governance given that public managers, with minimal involvement of the people, can still achieve this ideal level of efficiency and effectiveness.

Responsiveness

Creating institutions that foster the production of objective and balanced policy analysis is a challenging task for all types of regimes let alone poorly resourced ones such as Sub-Saharan Africa’s. The tension between the demands of neutral competence on the one hand and a responsive bureaucracy on the other often rises to the boil in the exercise of executive authority. The challenge for public service reformers is to design institutions that enjoy neutral competence and are, at the same time, responsive to the demands of citizens. Although these demands may appear contradictory at first sight, they are indeed reconcilable.

Institutional scholars have been able to demonstrate the presence of resources for structuring arrangements to promote the production of objective and balanced policy analysis. For instance, Weimer (2005) argues that organizations can be formed with intentions to achieve neutral competence and be insulated from political interference by erecting some forms of independence from executive manipulation. This, he reckons can be done by promoting exchanges based on professional norms as well as by leveraging participation in international organizations to counteract domestic biases. In this arrangement, transparency is then deployed strategically to facilitate balancing of views or to shame severe abuses.

Indeed, the starting point of any responsive program of action or management should always be the budget. An institution’s budget represents a statement of its priorities and plans. A proper deployment of the budget should ensure sustainable development with a proper social bias. Social issues such as gender, human rights, and political equality can be addressed through the budget. For example, gender-responsive budgets have been deployed effectively amongst some of the rich nations of the North successfully to promote gender-equitable resource allocation and revenue generation (see, for example, Rubin and Bartle, 2005).

Consensus Building

The potential for discourse between citizens and front-line administrators, those who directly deal with citizens, has not been properly explored in Sub-Saharan Africa’s public discourse. It is this space, that of discourse between service users and public service providers, which is targeted for consensus building by the dictates of good governance. Too often, the fine print as well as ‘standing orders’ are used to muzzle creativity or any areas where negotiations and a little thinking outside the box could help improve the delivery of public services. The challenge for would-be reformers in the public service is to engender the ability and willingness of administrators to act on citizen feedback.

One of the dictates of good governance is that bureaucracies become much more responsive to citizens as clients. It is difficult to fault this standpoint. Yet, in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, state penetration is still minimal. The only evidence of state presence is often the presence of government appointed chiefs and other instruments for maintaining law and order with no supporting mechanisms for effective citizen engagement with the state. Yet it should not be lost on observers that even in the best of circumstances, say, where the state percolates through every sphere of citizens lives, modern societies still confront a growth in citizens’ inactivity (Vigoda, 2002).

Many service providers as well as the community of service users all over the world still tend to favour the easy chair of the customer over the sweat and turmoil of participatory involvement. Vigoda (2002) argues that the way forward is toward enhanced collaboration and partnership among governance and public administration agencies, citizens, and other social players such as the media, academia, and the private and third sectors. Regarding Sub-Saharan Africa, it would be useful to ponder, whether there is any coherent form of public opinion that bureaucrats and politicians need to listen to or respond. Nevertheless, this is now the arena where there is need for enhanced collaboration and partnership among governance and public administration agencies, citizens, and other social players, for example, the media, academia, and the private and third sectors in civic education to realize the benefits of living in a modern state.

Whereas Sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed a sporadic and impermanent rise of vigilante groups (see, for example, Kagwanja, 2003), the proper way to begin mass concretization of civic virtue is probably through neighbourhood councils in urban areas as well as community councils in rural areas. Such a move would be carried out with the intention of increasing citizen participation in governance and make government agencies more responsive to local needs. Another promising resource for mobilizing involvement among groups that are underrepresented traditionally in the governance process is faith organizations. In conjunction with welfare societies, religious missions may be effective vehicles to focus on issues of social justice as opposed to local community action. This will require a targeted strategy of outreach and organizing deliberately directed toward these institutions.

Given the Sub-Saharan African governments limited resource base, it is necessary for policy makers to turn increasingly to private and non-profit sectors for the resources to provide social services. Interesting examples have been cited of similar countries adopting new non-profit organizations as part of, say, health sector reform. Brinkerhoff (2002) cites Family Group Practice Associations (FGPAs) of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as effective intermediaries between public service health agencies and newly created family group practices (FGPs), which are providing improved levels of primary health care. The concept of social capital is relevant here as it would be embedded in the formation of FGPAs who are then better able to mediate between health agencies and the community of users.

Brinkerhoff (2002) shows that the FGPAs have helped to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of health service delivery, and have contributed to making the top-heavy and cumbersome health systems in both countries more flexible and responsive even though their policy advocacy role is still relatively incipient. Institutions such as the FGPAs provide a potential avenue for increasing external input into policy decisions and bringing issues that would otherwise have been outside the purview of public policy back into focus.

Due to illiteracy, technological difficulties and a host of other factors, popular participation in governmental processes has slowed the take off in a number of African countries. This lack of participation in some way robs the state of its legitimacy in the eyes of the people and hence the existence of social capital that at times undermines public provisioning. However, evidence from some African countries that have embarked on the path to modernization and democratization provides some hope. Charlick (2001) demonstrates that although local government reforms have been limited in Africa, research in Mali and Guinea has shown that under particular circumstances, the result is often a more responsive public service. He dismisses the fear often expressed by some civil society actors that the focus on local government may be narrowing the opportunities of non-governmental associations to influence development policies as unconfirmed.

Equity and Inclusiveness

Before embarking on the broader debate of social inclusion/exclusion and social justice, it is necessary to provide a political economy of social policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Without such an undertaking, it would be difficult to impose the dictates of the debate, especially as embodied by the writings of Iris Marion Young (2000; 1997; 1990). What is required is an examination in terms of three interrelated processes: the rise in a population surplus to capital; the rejuvenation of a reserve army of labour power; and the decline of the commodity form of labour power.

Public administration is incrementally moving on a reform track that leads from responsiveness to collaboration. As has been cited above, scholars such as Vigoda-Gadot (2004) have attempted convincingly to enrich the discussion on the current state of new managerialism in public administration and to explain why and how it makes progress towards higher levels of cooperation and collaboration with various social players such as the private sector, the third sector, and citizens. The authors argue that we need to adopt this trend and adapt it for the Sub-Saharan African scene in order to realize a socially desirable outcome with meaningful benefits that reach far beyond the important idea of responsiveness. To borrow further from Vigoda-Gadot (2004), the idea of collaborative administration thus challenges responsive public administration with intent to further enrich it socially. This is because the collaborative model - whether bureaucracy-driven, citizen-driven, or private-sector-driven - is realistic and beneficial even if it cannot be applied fully.

The challenge in the Sub-Saharan African context is to secure buy-in from the practitioners themselves. Necessarily, public servants must embrace public service reform goals for any meaningful successes to be realized. To this end, an examination of local management practices is necessary in order to determine the potential contribution of aligning staff priorities with policy objectives. As Riccucci and others (2004) demonstrate, there is need to interrogate agency structure and several aspects of public management from a micro perspective that prior research has linked to agency performance. [12] It is now commonly accepted that management practices and the structuring of agency responsibilities matter and hence reformers have to create conditions under which staff have clear signals about what is expected of them in addition to providing them with the resources and incentives to realign their priorities.

Achieving inclusiveness, even in regions with low literacy levels and generally poor resources might not be very hard if the necessary political will is mobilized. There are numerous examples of satisfactory attempts of this nature from different parts of the world. Duckett (2003) cites a two-stage process as employed in China in order to incorporate citizens’ influence on social policy. She shows how, in the initial stage, bureaucratic interests within the central Chinese government influenced the adoption of a new national social health insurance framework. Later on, she argues, the framework was modified following local implementation experiences that allowed other bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic interests to be expressed. This examination shows that social policy processes can be particularly protracted and incremental; yet this can help achieve inclusiveness and effectiveness.

The concept of social capital is also pertinent to the development of a strong civil society given that civil society offers a potential source of organized drive to achieve a more inclusive governance paradigm. This approach is not new in developed countries where associations are increasingly participating in matters concerning social policies. According to Warren (2002), the fight against the problems of social exclusion and the development of a social agency field offer many opportunities for partnerships between civil society and public actors. Globally, there is a widening of space for civil society groups to participate in the development and implementation of policies with or sometimes instead of government administrations.

At the same time, Warren (2002) argues that many strong associative networks intervene directly as experts supporting the ministerial cabinets that coordinate policy formulation in a number of countries. She especially cites the case of France where many aspects of social reforms are, in large part, founded on analyses and ideas provided by associative actors. Given the concerns of capacity limitations, there would be little reason against adopting such an approach in Sub-Saharan Africa.

However, we are deeply concerned that civil society’s direct intervention in policy formulation will in the long run have a deleterious effect on popular political participation; in much the same way as vibrant media drowns the voice of the people by urporting to speak for the public. Generally, the exclusion of ‘the people’ is formally justifiable in the sense that their participation as voter-citizens in periodic elections of state and political leaders passes for their inclusion in societal, collective decision-making, including in what is, in vogue, [13] referred to as science communication. The elected representatives can and do speak for ‘the people’. Oftentimes, the exclusion of ‘the people’ is subtle in that certain civil society associations, the social activists, set themselves up as vox populi. They speak for ‘the people’. Poor people tend to be excluded from public deliberation. The ‘voice of the people’ is not necessarily, let alone literally, the voice of ‘the people’ because they tend to be spoken for, for example, by legislators, state leaders, intellectuals, as well as social activists. Thus, the exclusion of the socio-demographic and poor majorities from public deliberation can be attributed partly to the journalistic practice of newsgathering in which the voices of elite-officials are the most preferred and are hence the most sought-after news sources, and partly to the exclusionary potential of the public spheres in the region. The media are a proxy to ‘the people’.

Effectiveness and Efficiency

For purposes of determining effectiveness and efficiency from the perspective of service users, it is important to examine the actual and desired use of performance measures for management and external reporting purposes, as well as perceived impediments to their effective use. Both internal and external verification of measures of efficiency and effectiveness should be broadly acceptable to all stakeholders.

Further preliminary issues should be the identification of potential and actual impediments to the development and meaningful use of performance measures, since presently; performance measurement appears to have been accepted as a useful and necessary managerial tool. These endeavours are attempts to ensure that outcomes provide guidance to public-sector administrators and professionals for planning and decision-making purposes and to the citizenry in general as reliable performance reporting standards.

There is no gainsaying the fact that African civil service systems play important roles in the management of socio-economic development and change. In order to deliver on these mandates, public systems must be effective, efficient, transparent, and results-oriented. Failure in any one of these requirements contributes to a deficit of good governance, as it were.

Nze and Nkamnebe (2003) believe, as indeed many other public affairs stakeholders in the continent do, that for public bureaucracies in Africa to perform and enhance good governance, old ineffective structures and processes used in the administration of public business, must yield place to more results-oriented management philosophies, processes, and practices. This is necessary in order to internalize effectiveness and accountability for the common good in public service organizations.

The above recommended practices will then make it easy for public affairs stakeholders to initiate measures akin to ‘Value for Money’ (VFM) auditing. Indeed, in developed countries, VFM has been part of the control environment in public administrations for over 30 years now (Morin, 2001). As mentioned earlier, this is necessary because larger and larger numbers of academics and administrative reformers are of the opinion that good governance practices could help bring about a higher degree of efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness in the governing process. However, this is not to say that good governance is a fix-all solution to all challenges facing African public administration. As Lam (1997) points out in the case of Hong Kong, there are a number of drawbacks inherent in the discourse. Questions of accountability, legitimacy, lack of a coherent strategy, neglect of dominant social values, decreasing morale, and adaptation of the civil service are not all dealt with unequivocally by the new paradigm.

Accountability

Political corruption poses a serious threat to the stability of developing democracies by, amongst other things, eroding the links between citizens and governments, deepening the poverty problem and further widening the gap between the rich and the poor (See, for instance, Fukuyama, 2004; Stiglitz, 2002). As mentioned earlier, the greatest danger that corruption poses to African countries is that rampant corruption runs the risk of poisoning public sentiment toward democratic politics. It also makes the general populace suspicious of the entire public policy system.

Current trends in public management generally demand ‘lean and efficient’ state. This has often meant on the one side, a growing tendency to outsource a number of functions and services traditionally associated with the government (Hood, 1992). These new arrangements are not necessarily free from corrupt government officials on the look out for ways and means of ripping off the state. The new arrangements require ever more stringent contract accountability forms. The reformed public service need to develop higher levels of accountability effectiveness, especially in terms of specifying social service contracts and selecting appropriate accountability strategies. However, Romzek and Johnston (2005) point out that accountability is often undermined by the use of risk shifting, reliance on a system of multiple competing providers, and the adoption of new information technologies.

Even though accountability is a core concept of public administration, it is a very difficult concept to define operationally. Yet, as Koppell (2005) argues, disagreement about its meaning is masked by consensus on its importance and desirability. Koppell (2005) actually develops a five-part typology of accountability conceptions. In his model, transparency, liability, controllability, responsibility, and responsiveness are defined as distinct dimensions of accountability, thereby providing a conceptual handle of the concept. The exciting thing about the proposed definition, labelled multiple accountabilities disorder, is the fact that conflicting expectations borne of disparate conceptions of accountability undermine organizational effectiveness. This is so often the case in the Sub-Saharan African scene where partly due to widespread instances of poverty, the citizenry generally overwhelm the state with myriads of demands.

One possible solution to these problems would be the effective deployment of the concepts of organization field and accountability environment to government programs. O’Connell (2005) argues that the formula for accountability inspired by agency theory is frequently impossible to apply because program accountability can be an emergent property arising from the actions of the major actors in a program’s field. Theory is restricted to defining performance standards, measuring performance, and applying sanctions based on measured performance.

On the other hand, the utility of conceptualizing accountability as an emergent property of the program’s field lies in the fact that costs normally go down once actors clearly define their roles, for example, as brokers, providers and clients. This conceptualization is quite useful for designing programs that are more accountable. Given this approach, it then becomes less challenging to determine the relationship between administrative service performance and citizen satisfaction in the application of market models to public service delivery.

Nevertheless, it must be pointed out here that despite the general support for the governments’ use of service delivery targets, many people have serious reservations about their operation in practice. One often encounters allegations of cheating, perverse consequences and distortions in pursuit of targets, along with unfair pressure on professionals. As Briscoe (2004) points out, the supposed increase in accountability and transparency, which target setting engenders in theory is often compromised by insufficient heed being given to the risks of over-interpretation in the presence of large, often inadequately reported uncertainty. To address these shortcomings, a number of measures should be put in place including ensuring greater local autonomy to construct more meaningful and relevant targets. This is to ensure they are as few as possible and focus on key outcomes, widening the targets’ consultation process to involve professionals and service users, and reforming the way in which targets are set to move away from the simplistic haphazard approach.

To entrench accountability in the management practice and ethos of the Sub-Saharan African civil service, it would be useful to theorize administrative work as a practice within the environment of NPM. Wagenaar (2004) categorizes administrative practice into four theoretical strands, namely, contextuality, acting, knowing, and interacting. The scholar contends that the visible aspects of administrative work, that is, decisions, reports, negotiations, standard operating procedures, structures, legal rules, lines of authority, and so on, are effectuations, enactments of the hidden, taken-for-granted routines.

The almost unthinking actions, tacit knowledge, fleeting interactions, practical judgments, self-evident understandings and background knowledge, shared meanings, and personal feelings (in sum social capital), are the bedrock that constitute the core of administrative work. Taken wholesomely, these four strands make up a unified account of practical judgment in an administrative environment that is characterized by complexity, indeterminacy, and the necessity to act on the situation at hand.

The challenge of entrenching accountability in governmental processes ultimately rests in creating effective Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems. As Gordillo and Anderson (2004) demonstrate, effective M&E for public policy is not only related to the supply of information and the delivery of new knowledge to policy makers, but more importantly to their demand for lessons learnt about the effects of earlier policies. The onus therefore falls on governments to construct institutional arrangements (both organizational and cultural) that support the transformation of policy lessons into policy actions.

Gordillo and Anderson (2004) show that the likelihood of this transformation is related closely to the capacity of institutions to deliver mechanisms for downward accountability and processes for organizational learning. This is a daunting challenge indeed given the severe power and information asymmetries that characterize the institutional context of many developing countries’ national governments.