IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/devpol/v25y2007i5p599-614.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Logic of African Neopatrimonialism: What Role for Donors?

Author

Listed:
  • Diana Cammack

Abstract

Today a number of sub-Saharan African countries display the outward signs of modern, democratic states. International aid agencies often treat them as though power and decision-making reside within government institutions and that they function as designed. When they do not they are labelled dysfunctional though their action is actually quite logical when viewed through a 'neopatrimonial lens'. This article outlines a number of neopatrimonial practices observed in Africa in the past two decades and attempts to explain the 'logic' that underpins them. It provides several recommendations about the way donors should assist states where deeply rooted anti-democratic and non-developmental behaviour dominates. Copyright 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Diana Cammack, 2007. "The Logic of African Neopatrimonialism: What Role for Donors?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 25(5), pages 599-614, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:devpol:v:25:y:2007:i:5:p:599-614
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Leonardo Romeo, 2018. "Decentralizing for Development: The Developmental Potential of Local Autonomy and the Limits of Politics Driven Decentralization Reforms," Working Papers id:12486, eSocialSciences.
    2. Kimani, Danson & Ullah, Subhan & Kodwani, Devendra & Akhtar, Pervaiz, 2021. "Analysing corporate governance and accountability practices from an African neo-patrimonialism perspective: Insights from Kenya," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Hopper, Trevor & Lassou, Philippe & Soobaroyen, Teerooven, 2017. "Globalisation, accounting and developing countries," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 125-148.
    4. Noell Machinjike & Wellington G. Bonga, 2021. "Fiscal Discipline and Budget Processes: Evidence from Zimbabwe," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 5(2), pages 607-616, February.
    5. Lassou, Philippe J.C. & Hopper, Trevor & Tsamenyi, Mathew & Murinde, Victor, 2019. "Varieties of neo-colonialism: Government accounting reforms in Anglophone and Francophone Africa – Benin and Ghana compared," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    6. Badru Bukenya & William Muhumuza, 2017. "The politics of core public sector reform in Uganda: Behind the facade," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-085-17, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    7. Matthew Lockwood, 2013. "What Can Climate-Adaptation Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa Learn from Research on Governance and Politics?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 31(6), pages 647-676, November.
    8. Addo, Atta A., 2016. "Explaining 'irrationalities' of IT-enabled change in a developing country bureaucracy: the case of Ghana's Tradenet," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 69471, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Bakre, Owolabi M. & Lauwo, Sarah, 2016. "Privatisation and accountability in a “crony capitalist” Nigerian state," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 45-58.
    10. Lassou, Philippe Jacques Codjo & Hopper, Trevor, 2016. "Government accounting reform in an ex-French African colony: The political economy of neocolonialism," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 39-57.
    11. Lassou, Philippe J.C. & Hopper, Trevor & Ntim, Collins, 2021. "How the colonial legacy frames state audit institutions in Benin that fail to curb corruption," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:devpol:v:25:y:2007:i:5:p:599-614. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/odioruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.