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African states, bureaucratic culture and computer fixes
Author(s) -
Berman Bruce J.,
Tettey Wisdom J.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
public administration and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.574
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1099-162X
pISSN - 0271-2075
DOI - 10.1002/pad.166
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , colonialism , context (archaeology) , argument (complex analysis) , state (computer science) , institution , authoritarianism , political economy , successor cardinal , political science , public administration , sociology , law , computer science , politics , history , mathematical analysis , biochemistry , chemistry , mathematics , archaeology , algorithm , democracy
Our central argument in this article is that the introduction of computers in African states fails to produce the intended results. This is precisely because the trajectory of development of bureaucratic institutions in Africa has resulted in internal and external contexts that differ fundamentally from those of the Western states within which computing and information technology has been developed. This article explores the context in which computers were developed in Western industrialized societies to understand the circumstances that the technologies were designed to respond to and the bureaucratic culture that helped produce desired results. We then proceed to analyse the truncated nature of institution building in the colonial state, and how it structured the peculiar setting of the post‐colonial African state and dynamics surrounding the integration of the new information and communication technologies. We argue that the colonial state bequeathed to its post‐colonial successor three crucial characteristics that are of central importance to understanding why the introduction of computers does not produce anticipated improvements in public administration. These are the very limited technical capabilities of the bureaucracy; authoritarian decision‐making processes under the control of generalist administrators; and the predominance of patron–client relationships. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons. Ltd.