The following essay has three parts. The first is a story about fluctuations in the balance of the relationship between impersonal and personal principles of social organization. This draws heavily on Max Weber’s interpretation of western history...
The growing body of research on the relationship between the state and democracy has remained inconclusive both in terms of causal direction and sign. One key factor contributing to this inconclusiveness is the lack of precision in the...
Recent writing on industrial policy stresses the need for coordination between the public and private sectors. This paper examines the performance of one such coordination mechanism, Presidential Investors’ Advisory Councils, in Ethiopia, Senegal...
This paper presents a brief history of social services provision in Nigeria with special reference to education. It argues that the problems of implementation of social policies are due to state monopolies; the negative effects of structural...
This study aims to provide a neo-institutional explanation of why South Korea increasingly intends to share its developmental experience with the rest of the world. South Korea’s knowledge sharing projects are the leading example of expansionary and...
Part of Journal Special Issue Fiscal Policy, State Building and Economic Development
Max Weber believed that bureaucracy could be understood by analysing its ideal-typical characteristics, and that these characteristics would become more pervasive as the modern age advanced. Weber’s horizontal account of bureaucracy can be criticised...
This paper explores the effect of party system institutionalization on the reliance of tax systems on the personal income tax. As a first step, the paper re-examines the relationship between party system institutionalization and taxation patterns...
Following close to two decades of political distress and economic decline, Uganda embarked, in the mid 1980s, on far-reaching reforms under Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement. Decentralization was emphasized, with the new leaders...
This paper shows how an elite cadre of public sector officials played a key role in the success of administrative reforms in Brazil’s state tax administration bureaus in the 1990s. The success of the reforms strengthened public sector bureaucracies...
Supporting state capacity is a priority for the international community, yet the record of internationally supported statebuilding to date has been mixed at best. A key question for continuing research concerns the factors influencing more versus...
Part of Book The Role of Elites in Economic Development
Part of Book Reforming Africa's Institutions
Part of Book Linking the Formal and Informal Economy
by John Toye Is bureaucracy a vital institution that has to be built up by poor countries in pursuit of economic development? Or is it, on the...
Public sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries. Much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures. This paper asks about the successes and investigates which of two competing theories best explain why some reforms...
After its 14-year civil war, Liberia worked with multiple donors and partners to restore security. This paper explores the Liberia National Police’s innovative efforts to create a more gender-sensitive police service and describes the international...
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