Bureaucratic Practices Research Articles

Fighting corruption in Nigeria: excessive rhetoric and indeterminate bureaucratic practices in the implementation of SERVICOM

ABSTRACT This paper explores the SERVICOM reform, which was instituted in 2004 to fight the corruption and inefficiency considered to plague the Nigerian Civil Service. Using the method of ‘following the policy’, the paper demonstrates the meaning of SERVICOM for its various stakeholders: United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) officers, Nigerian bureaucrats, SERVICOM officers and citizens. The paper also shows how SERVICOM is made in the indeterminate bodily movements and social interactions of street-level bureaucrats rather than in the policy models crafted by experts. Not only has SERVICOM been incoherently implemented, it has also has been characterised by excessive rhetoric, which has constructed the idea of a good-willed technocratic state, eliciting ambivalence and catharsis in public discourse. Further, DFID officers have construed the reform as a success. This research provides an ethnographic perspective on how transnational ‘good governance’ initiatives in Africa are translated on the ground.

The boundary between “Judaism” and “Aryanism”: Anti-Semitic logic, litigation, and bureaucratic practices relating to the classification of “half-Jews” in Occupied France (1940-1944)

Under the Occupation, the French Jewish Statute made no provisions for an intermediary status for individuals of mixed heritage (who the administration called “half-Jews”), to the contrary of Nazi legislation in Germany. Consequently, there were no first- or second-degree mixed-heritage people in France; one was either Jewish or not. But the criteria for defining whether or not “half-Jews” were of “the Jewish race” varied between German and French texts, case law, and the practices of specialized bureaucrats. The boundary between “Jewish” and “non-Jewish” was tenuous, often arbitrary, and shaped by religious affiliation, a divorce, a marriage, or other fact of life. Being classified on the “good” or “bad” side of the “barricade” (according to the formulation of George Montandon, the ethno-racial expert of the Paris Prefecture of Police and the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs [CGQJ]) was very often a matter of life or death. The administration (mainly the “Jewish Service” of the Prefecture of Police and the CGQJ) and the courts had to rule on thousands of “ambiguous cases.” The CGQJ delivered over 11,000 “Certificates of Non-Belonging to the Jewish Race” after painstaking investigations. This article considers the categories that agents of the State used to sort out these borderline cases, and tries to understand the root causes of this dogged quest to determine the legal and political boundary between “Jew” and “non-Jew.”

The Administrative Anatomy of Failure: The League of Nations Disarmament Section, 1919–1925

This article investigates the creation and workings of the Disarmament Section of the League of Nations Secretariat. It shows that the Disarmament Section was an outlier of the Secretariat: supressed by the Great Powers, it had less autonomy than other parts of the administration, which from an early stage limited its bureaucratic practice to the production of information. This bureaucratic production created unreliable factual foundations for negotiations and unrealistic public expectations. Thus, the article argues that the troubled birth and administrative strangling of the Disarmament Section of the Secretariat should play a significant role in our understanding of the broader collapse of general disarmament. By making this argument, the article breaks new ground by introducing failure as an analytical category to understand the role and practices of international public administrations.

When security elites deal with politicians: rethinking practices from the perspective of security-politics relationships

ABSTRACT This article examines how security-politics relationships play out in the routines of security elites when confronted with political decisions pertaining to European security cooperation. To do so, the article reflects upon British debates about police and judicial cooperation in a post-Brexit Europe along with debates on the 2014 opt-out from Justice and Home Affairs. How security elites respond to political decisions is investigated from a sociological lens that mobilises lessons from Norbert Elias. The article thus shows how security elites play out distinct roles and conduct distinct types of work when embedded chains of interdependence with professionals of politics that define what legitimate security cooperation is; a neglected aspect in bureaucratic politics and practice turn literature, and Critical Security Studies. It also exposes how security elites fight for EU-led cooperation because of attributes seemingly drawn from lived experiences in EU cooperation and triggered by the constraints of the relationships in which they are situated. The article thus complements existing debates on practices and security professionals by building knowledge on security elites and their routines from the angle of security-politics relationships.

The Myanmar <em>Shwe</em>: Empowering Law Students, Teachers, and the Community Through Clinical Education and the Rule of Law

Myanmar's attorneys, judges, law officers, and law teachers are slowly emerging from the isolated world they inhabited during decades of military authoritarianism. Almost a decade ago, the country triumphantly burst into an era of "disciplined" democracy under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, de facto head of state. Yet, the legal education system continues to be marked by hierarchical and bureaucratic practices, infrastructural and pedagogical neglect, and low confidence in the formal justice sector. The authors—two American law professors and practitioners and two students—discuss the direction of legal education in Southeast Asia and how clinical legal education (CLE) methodologies can be used to empower law students, teachers, and their communities, with an emphasis on the rule of law and access to justice. They draw on their experience in developing and piloting Community Teaching and Externship Preparation law school curricula in 2017–19 under the auspices of non-governmental organization BABSEACLE (formerly Bridges Across Borders South East Asia Clinical Legal Education Initiative). They highlight two teaching modules: Community Needs Assessments and peer-to-peer "CLE English" classes at university law departments in remote regions of the country and the outskirts of Yangon. Along with receptiveness for new approaches to teaching, learning, and mentoring by international experts, the authors faced centralized decision-making and planning, no culture of faculty collegiality or autonomy, risk aversion, reluctance to "stand out" amongst peers, frequent teacher transfers, inadequate research skills, rote learning, undue reliance on "distance education," and limited English proficiency. Lastly, the authors comment on the future potential of this educational initiative and the "Development Industry." Warning against a "Project World" mentality, unwelcome imposition of liberal ideals of individualism, and neocolonial tendencies, they highlight the importance of consultation with educational institutions, awareness of the role of local intermediaries and informal justice sector, and the need for genuine coordination and partnership amongst donor agencies and NGOs.

Yaroslavl Regional Elite Bureaucratic Practices in Working with Citizens’ Letters in the USSR of the 1960s

This article examines processes that took place in regional centers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Issues of interaction between the regional party apparatus and ordinary citizens became particularly acute by the end of the Khrushchev era. This study is connected with the analysis of the problem of bureaucratic practices of the Yaroslavl regional elite in working with citizens’ letters in the USSR in the 1960s. We perform an analysis of a diverse source base: official regulatory documents, archival materials, sources of personal origin, including memoirs and interviews through a prism oral history. The context of the study is presented by the analysis of official documents revealing problems of the regional elite of the late socialist era: registry, forgery in state reporting, careerism. Consideration of various complaints took a serious place in the work of the regional bureaucracy. Critical letters in the absence of sociological institutions allowed the authorities to present the real moods and demands of the population. Complaints allowed us to identify the negative aspects of reality and respond to them. The materials contained in the letters were checked, and not always the facts they contained were confirmed. The regional nomenclature sought to protect its interests and not to give a reason for the center to perceive critical letters in its address as objective.

The Three Faces of the Indian State

For more than seven decades, India’s Constitution has provided a framework for liberal democracy to flourish in one of the world’s most diverse societies. Legal changes and shifts in bureaucratic practices, however, have undermined central tenets of the prevailing order. In today’s India, the assent of the people is both necessary and sufficient to justify all forms of state action. This article outlines three manifestations of India’s new constitutionalism—the “ethnic state,” the “absolute state,” and the “opaque state.” These distinct, yet overlapping faces of the Indian state have undermined the rule of law, equal citizenship, checks and balances, and democratic accountability.

Big Data Dreams and Reality in Shenzhen: An Investigation of Smart City Implementation in China

Chinese cities are increasingly using digital technologies to address urban problems and govern society. However, little is known about how this digital turn has been implemented. This study explores the introduction of digital governance in Shenzhen, one of China’s most praised smart cities. We show that, at the local level, the successful implementation of digital systems faces numerous hurdles in long-standing data management and bureaucratic practices that are at least as challenging as the technical problems. Furthermore, the study finds that the digital systems in Shenzhen entail a creeping centralisation of data that potentially turns lower administrative government units into mere users of the city-level smart platforms rather than being in control of their own data resources. Smart city development and big data ambitions thereby imply shifting stakeholder relations at the local level and also pull non-governmental stakeholders, such as IT companies and research institutions, closer to new data flows and smart governance systems. The findings add to the discussion of big data–driven smart systems and their implications for governance processes in an authoritarian context.

Bureaucracy as a factor in the functioning of the regional elite: challenges of civic and political representation

The article considers the dependence of political representation at the regional level on the specific configuration of the national political and legal field. The full value and normativeness of public representation are substantiated, as well as the contradictions of the interests of regional political elites and bureaucratic power practices are outlined.The purpose of this article is to clarify the importance of bureaucracy as a factor in the functioning of the regional elite against the background of the challenges of socio-political representation.Research methods. A descriptive method was used to describe the implementation of autonomous government by citizens and to resolve their issues based on the activities of local governments; the method of comparison is used to reflect the composition of regional political elites of European countries and the specifics of the mechanisms of representation at the parliamentary local and regional levels; a method of generalization to demonstrate challenges for elites in the sense of an adequate understanding of their importance and role in political processes at the national and international levels.Results. The assessment of the distribution of powers and the tendencies of influencing the situation in regional communities and territorial units are characteristic only for the countries that are going through a period of democratic transformations and for sustainable democracies. It has been proven that if the bureaucracy is the main actor in the implementation of technical management decisions, the elites can only be coordinators in setting priorities and differences on certain aspects of decision-making at the macro level. Emphasis is placed on the implementation of democratic reform programs, which provide for the representation of the people at all levels of administrative-territorial division. The properties of the elites elected by the citizens, which act only as a temporary component of the general system of decision-making and their implementation, are revealed. It is not possible to represent all, without exception, local communities at the regional level, due to the diversity of their economic and socio-infrastructural potential. An interpretation of the essence of the mechanisms of real democratic political leadership is proposed, which would ensure the support of the population of regional elites as factors of real representation of communities.

The Bureaucratic Sense of the Forthcoming in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul

In this article, I try to answer how the study of bureaucracy may contribute to the history of knowledge. In the broadest terms, the story goes like this: The Ottoman treasury had a difficult time collecting taxes in the seventeenth century. The administrators needed to have a sense of who to tax and how much to tax. To produce the necessary knowledge quickly, they had to rely on a small bureaucracy. And they had to do this without the help of a robust educational system. All of these issues implicated the relationship between knowledge and time. This article provides a preliminary investigation of bureaucratic numeracy with special emphasis on seventeenth-century Ottoman almanacs, or ruznames. I hope to give the reader an integrated understanding of what we usually treat separately as skills, bureaucratic practices, and, ultimately, the wireframe of statehood. I use the expression “sense of the forthcoming” instead of “knowledge of the future,” prognosis, or planning because first, “the forthcoming” was not simply about the natural passage of time but also about prognoses and expectations. Second, “sense” is more appropriate than knowledge because the forthcoming here also means an epistemic fore-closure. It suggests that knowledge may merely be “good enough,” especially at times of epistemic urgency, as was the case in seventeenth-century Istanbul. Some types of bureaucratic knowledge are fore-closed in that certainty or accuracy is simply not pursued beyond a certain point. This article is part of a special issue entitled “Histories of Bureaucratic Knowledge,” edited by Sebastian Felten and Christine von Oertzen.

Fotografie e istituzioni museali: il sistema della doppia copia e l’accumulo dei fondi. Le Regie Gallerie di Firenze, 1860-1906


 
 
 Beginning in the late 1850s, photographic companies reproducing artworks kept in the Royal Galleries of Florence were required to submit copies of their work to the Ministry of Public Education and the museum’s director. This paper shows that while photographers obeyed the rule, their photographs were stored away and left mostly unused for over two decades before the process of creating a proper collection began in the 1880s. Countering traditional histories of how photographic collections were constituted, this paper analyzes bureaucratic practices of documentation and questions the status of photographs in 19th century museums.
 
 

Affective bureaucratic relations: File practices in a European deportation unit and criminal court

Indifference has long been acknowledged as a crucial affect to the continuation of bureaucratic practices. Recently, the production of more diverse and layered affective modes in bureaucratic institutions is increasingly highlighted. However, how affects differ within and between sites saturated with ‘paper work’ remains an understudied terrain. In this paper we focus on the relations that are formed in daily file-work within two state institutions: a Deportation Unit and a Criminal Court. We draw on ethnographic fieldwork in order to show that a) affects are locally produced in the relations that are mobilized in file-work b) these affects are unevenly produced within and between different bureaucratic practices. By comparing two different bureaucratic settings yet related in the subjugation they demand of the bureaucratic referent of their practices, we aim to put forward how differences in bureaucratic practice come with their own specific affective modes, showing that bureaucratic practices are saturated in, and thrive on, diverse affects of varying intensity. Bureaucratic action is a deeply affective practice, within which the relationship between caseworker, casefile, and the file’s referent is carefully calibrated. With this intervention we position ourselves within scholarship that complicates perceived dichotomies between rationality, still often associated with bureaucracy, and affect. Developing sensitivities towards such variety of bureaucratic affect offers nuanced perspectives on file-work and what kind of sovereign power the relations that are made through file-work subsequently allow to be reproduced.

International Cooperation, Homosexuality and AIDS in Mozambique

Abstract The current paper is an ethnographic study of an international cooperation project between an international organisation for the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the organisation LAMBDA, the largest LGBT NGO in Mozambique. The objectives of this paper are, firstly, to demonstrate how due to the international flow of financial resources attached to certain concepts and agendas, these projects end up somehow institutionalising a homosexuality project in Mozambique, in addition to reviving potentially neo-colonial practices. It also seeks to demonstrate how external bureaucratic practices can clash with local cultural practices, in what has been called ‘NGOisation.’

Criminalization through Complicity: (Not) Reporting Crime in Mexico City

AbstractIn contemporary Mexico, the ideal of citizen responsibility and cooperation with authorities in crime prevention coexists with a widespread mistrust and disillusionment with the state. In this context, 90 percent of crimes go unreported to the police, a statistic that is a concern not only for law enforcement authorities but also for citizens who frequently comment that reporting is an ideal, even if few do so. Moving beyond a discussion of why people do or do not report crime, this article analyzes metapragmatic talk about (non)reporting in Mexico City's largest food market, La Central de Abasto. It shows such talk to be socially productive in the constitution of unequal publics. Merchants, workers, and authorities draw on and reproduce a language ideology in which the difficult‐to‐execute bureaucratic practice of reporting crime indexes proper citizenship even as forms of speech coded as silence or rumor index complicity with criminality. An attention to the metapragmatics of the crime report can thus expand understandings of contemporary processes of criminalization and its relationship to the constitution of unequal publics.

Corruption and the Public Service Ethos in Mid-Victorian Administration: The Case of Leonard Horner and the Factory Office

Abstract While the problem of political corruption in mid-nineteenth century Britain has been much studied, the experience of corrupt behaviour in public bodies, both new and long established, is comparatively neglected. This article takes the example of one of the first inspectorates set up after the Great Reform Act, the Factory Office, to examine the extent of corrupt practices in the British civic state and the means whereby it was addressed. It examines the changing processes of appointment, discipline and promotion, the issues of remuneration and venality, and the relationships between inspectors, workers, factory owners, the government and the wider civil service, and the press and public opinion. The article argues that the changing attitudes of the inspectors, especially those of Leonard Horner, were indicative of a developing ‘public service ethos’ in both bureaucratic and cultural settings and that the work of such unsung administrators was one of the agencies through which corrupt behaviour in the civic structures of Victorian Britain was, with public support, challenged. The article concludes that the endogenous reform of bureaucratic practice achieved by the factory inspectorate may even be of equal significance as that which resulted from the celebrated Northcote–Trevelyan Report of 1854.

Between a rock and a hard place: State-led territorial stigmatization, informal care practices and the interstitiality of local community workers in Denmark

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to explore the relation between territorial stigmatization and community work in Denmark. In the paper, we firstly explore territorial stigmatization, relating it to the Danish context. We show how territorial stigmatization in Denmark happens via a complex amalgamation of bureaucratic practices which identify particular areas as problematic ‘ghettos’, and how this leads to top–down interventions upon many local residential areas, including local community work. Following this, we draw on participant observations in practices of local community work, and interviews with local community workers, to explore how they practically negotiate these particular political constructions of their work. We argue that local community workers come to take on interstitial roles—that is, they come to be in-between the state and authorities and the local communities themselves. This complex double role is what we call an interstitial position, meant to signify how Danish local community workers are both part of territorial stigmatization and simultaneously trying to escape from and undo this very role.

Andrew Marvell in Russia

This article examines interactions between diplomatic representation, state bureaucracy, and rhetoric in early modern diplomacy. It analyzes manuscripts in the hand of the poet Andrew Marvell, which he wrote as secretary to the Earl of Carlisle’s 1663–64 embassy to Moscow. The manuscripts show how a battle over diplomatic ceremony and honor unfolded into disputes over the forms and decorum used in a lively exchange of diplomatic letters and written complaints. These texts were edited, translated, and published for English and international audiences by another embassy secretary, Guy Miège. The article traces the afterlife of the embassy letters in print, arguing that Marvell and Miège became central agents in shaping how the embassy was perceived at home and further afield. The wider context of public diplomacy drew from the secretaries’ considerable skill in framing diplomatic letters for consumption by different audiences. Early modern ambassadors performed rituals of sovereignty, symbolizing status and rank, but the complex art of diplomatic image-making was also directed by lower-ranking embassy personnel. Examining the relationship between bureaucratic practices and the performative nature of diplomacy, this article shows how secretaries exerted significant influence on the reception of early modern diplomatic relations.

Interpreters of International Economic Law: Corporations and Bureaucrats in Contest over Chile's Nutrition Label

This article analyzes the everyday interpretive practices of corporations and bureaucrats that shape the meaning and force of international economic law. To understand how common practices such as public consultation submissions, corporate threat letters, and external legal assistance influence regulators' understanding of their “legally available” policy space, we study the contested introduction of a pioneering nutrition labeling regulation in Chile. The transnational food industry powerfully challenged the regulation's legality under World Trade Organization law. But Chilean health bureaucrats, in coordination with segments of the country's legally highly competent economic bureaucracy, effectively defended the legality of their proposed regulatory measure. Drawing on data from freedom-of-information requests and in-depth interviews, the article argues that the outcomes of such interpretive contests are substantially shaped by participants' knowledge of the entitlements created by international economic law and thus by the international legal expertise they have access to. This often but not always puts transnational corporations at an advantage over national regulators in the strategic interpretation of international economic law.

Refugees and the audit culture of international higher education in the United States

AbstractRefugees overcome high barriers to survive, resettle in the United States, and thrive in their new communities. On account of the protracted nature of modern conflicts, refugees are now often displaced for a decade or more, while living in refugee camps or in urban settings, prior to being resettled to a country of ultimate destination. Some refugees obtain education during their displacement, including college and graduate education and professional credentialing. Upon resettlement to the United States, many refugees lack or cannot obtain the needed “official copies” of their credentialing documents (transcripts, diplomas, syllabi, etc.), and for many of these highly skilled and professionally qualified individuals, their continued education or professional work is thwarted by the vetting process designed to review international students. This article argues that the bureaucratic culture and practices—or “audit culture”—of the internationalization of higher education in the United States is a major and unnecessary barrier to the access and success of higher education for refugees, to the integration of refugees into the professional workforce, and to the flourishing of the refugee community as a whole. The article (1) introduces the contexts of refugee displacement, resettlement, and education in the United States; (2) develops a semiotic framework to analyze the bureaucratic practices involved in vetting refugees’ credentials, (3) documents the audit culture of the internationalization of higher education which is the context in which the education credentials of refugees are evaluated; (4) illustrates with a set of brief life‐histories of refuges in Wisconsin how this audit culture operates as a barrier to their higher education and professional success; and (5) argues that refugees (and others with refugee background) are deserving of special consideration by postsecondary institutions in the United States.

Superimposition: How Indian city bureaucracies are responding to climate change

City governments are facing complex challenges due to climate change, but those in the global South often have limited capacities and governance arrangements to develop and execute a response. Cities must also manage other existing priorities such as housing, water and waste management, which have established bureaucratic practices and incentives. How are such cities with limited climate governance capacity and with existing non-climate priorities developing a climate response? From interviews and participant observation in two Indian cities that are pioneering climate action, we find that actors are ‘superimposing’ climate objectives onto existing bureaucratic practices. Building on analysis of ongoing projects in the two cities, we theorize superimposition as an approach taken by bureaucracies that have the intention of responding to climate change but have limited control over their planning practices and mandates, high levels of institutional inertia to change existing practices, and multiple other objectives related to development that dominate agendas. As superimposition does not involve the modification of existing bureaucratic practices or incentives, the types of climate actions which emerge from this approach reflect the features, scope and limitations of existing political arrangements. We highlight five such features of how Indian city bureaucracies respond to climate change: (1) the primacy of central and state ‘schemes’, (2) the prioritization of ‘development’ as an objective, and the imperative to implement (3) ‘quick win’, (4) ‘visible’ and (5) ‘bankable’ projects. Superimposition has led to creative and politically tenable climate projects that meet both climate objectives and those of existing schemes on housing, water and waste. But these projects are also limited by existing governance arrangements with tradeoffs for long-term planning, urban justice and public ownership of infrastructure.