Description
Book SynopsisDaily life in Africa is governed by the 'petty' corruption of public officials in services such as health, transport, or the judicial system. This remarkable study of everyday corruption in three African countries investigates the reasons for its extraordinary prevalence. The authors construct an illuminating analytical framework around the various forms of corruption, the corruptive strategies public officials resort to, and how these forms and strategies have become embedded in daily administrative practices. They investigate the roots of the system in the growing inability of weakened states in Africa to either reward their employees adequately or to deliver expected services. They conclude that corruption in Africa today is qualitatively different from other parts of the world in its pervasiveness, its legitimations, and its huge impact on the nature of the state.
Trade Review'Everyday Corruption and the State provides an icy critique of the factual shortcomings of a literature over-heated by metaphor, and a demonstration of the systematic, pervasive and institutionalized nature of corruption in three West African states. No-one concerned with developmental issues in Africa can ignore or be indifferent to this evidence of the ways public officials routinely deal with their citizens.' Richard Fardon, SOAS 'This scholarly, insightful book demonstrates in detail many characteristics of the worst kind of corruption.' Bryan Rostron, Tribune 'For anyone interested in working in, studying, or analyzing african states, this text will give significant insights into the difficulties in developing stable state infrastructures...A good addition to serious African and development collections.' R. M. Fulton, Choice
Table of Contents
- Part I: Approach, Method, Summary
- 1. Introduction: why should we study everyday corruption and how should we go about it?
- 2. Corruption in Africa and the social sciences: a review of the literature
- 3. Everyday corruption in West Africa
- 4. The popular semiology of corruption
- Part II: Sectoral Studies
- 5. Corruption in the legal system
- 6. We don't eat the documents: Corruption in transport, customs and the civil forces
- 7. Corruption and public procurements
- 8. Corruption in the health sector
- Part III: Cross-Disciplinary Topics
- 9. An independent republic: Everyday corruption in a Senegalese development co-operation programme
- 10. The war against corruption in Benin, Niger and Senegal: an historical approach
