Real governance and practical norms in sub-Saharan Africa : the game of rules / edited by Tom de Herdt and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan.

First issued in paperback 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : the game of the rules / Tom De Herdt & Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan -- Informal regulations of public bureaucracies in Africa and beyond : practical norms as an exploratory concept / Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan -- Traditionalist Africanist culturalism : analysis of a scientific ideology and a plea for an empirically grounded concept of culture / Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan -- Hybrid orders and practical norms : a Weberian view / Tom De Herdt -- Juggling with the norms : everyday practice in an emergency service in Niger / Eric Hahonou -- The king is not a kinsman : multiple accountabilities in the postcolonial state in Africa / Giorgio Blundo -- Ethnography of everyday ethics in a South African medical ward / Frédéric Le Marcis and Julien Grard -- Local prison governance with global human rights : the merging of professional and practical norms in Ugandan prisons / Tomas Max Martin -- The evolution of practical norms through bricolage : "good" local water governance in Zimbabwe / Frances Cleaver -- Evident but elusive : practical norms in the gold sector in South-Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo / Sara Geenen -- Beyond corruption : the everyday life of a court of the peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo / Benjamin Rubbers and Emilie Gallez.

"Although international development discourse considers the state as a crucial development actor, there remains a significant discrepancy between the official norms of the state and public services and the actual practices of political elites and civil servants. This text interrogates the variety of ways in which state policies and legal norms have been translated into the set of practical norms which make up real governance in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that the concept of practical norms is an appropriate tool for an ethnographic investigation of public bureaucracies, interactions between civil servants and users, and the daily functioning of the state in Africa. It demonstrates that practical norms are usually different from official norms, complementing, bypassing and even contradicting them. In addition, it explores the positive and negative effects of different aspects of this 'real governance'. This text will be of key interest to academics, students and researchers in the fields of development, political science, anthropology and development studies, African studies, international comparative studies, implementation studies, and public policy"-- Provided by publisher.