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There have been tremendous pressures in the 1990s to change the character and functions of the state in developed and developing countries alike. Multilateral financial agencies and neoliberal analysts question the state's nationalistic, hierarchical, redistributive and interventionist character, which they believe is partly responsible for poor service delivery and economic performance in many countries. They seek to transform the state into a market-friendly, lean, managerial, decentralized and customer-oriented institution. However, the core elements of reforms are sometimes contradictory as different social forces drive them in different contexts. There are tensions between, on the one hand, concerns for market efficiency and deregulation, and issues of accountability and equity, on the other. This paper provides an overview of the major issues, trends and problems in public sector reform. The Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development does not spell out concrete strategies of public sector reform for achieving the goals of poverty eradication, employment promotion and social integration. The state's capacity to produce the desired results was generally taken for granted. But will efforts to reform the state along pro-market lines facilitate governments' pursuit of development? Are states likely to assume and sustain their responsibilities in providing good, affordable services to their citizens? The paper addresses these issues in seven sections. The first section introduces the basic argument. Section II examines four global issues that are driving public sector reforms: financial globalization, fiscal deficits, the adjustment programmes of multilateral agencies, and democratization. Sections III to VI discuss the various components of public sector reform, which are fiscal stability, managerial efficiency, capacity building and public accountability. Reforms dealing with fiscal stability apply to all states, although they may vary across countries. In general, fiscal reforms are the most consistently pursued reforms, and have implications for public sector employees, state capacity and social development. They deal with issues of downsizing or expenditure reduction, privatization and tax reform. Public expenditure reforms reflect differences in expenditure patterns, with the reforms in industrialized countries focusing on welfare and social services and those in developing countries on capital expenditures and government administration. Privatization, a central component of downsizing, is now a global phenomenon. More than $300 billion worth of state assets were transferred to the private sector between 1988 and 1996 around the world. Governments are surely disengaging, even if unevenly, from direct ownership of public enterprises. There are however, welfare, unemployment, ethnic and nationalist problems associated with privatization. The data suggest that although governments grew, albeit slowly, up to the early 1990s, it seems that for some regions, central governments were beginning to shrink in the mid-to-late 1990s. The massive cuts in education and health provisioning suffered by low-income countries in the 1980s have not been sufficiently offset by the efforts of the 1990s, which seek to protect social sectors from state contraction. Reforms in the area of managerial efficiency focus on organizational restructuring and introduction of market or quasi-market principles in the delivery of services. They address three main issues: decentralized management and creation of executive agencies out of monolithic bureaucracies; performance contracts for employees; and contracting out of services to the private sector. The most comprehensive reforms in efficiency promotion are in OECD countries, with Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom as the lead reformers. However, aspects of these reforms are being applied in many developing and transition countries, especially those that are heavily donor dependent. As these reforms deal with institutional issues, there is often a wide gap between expressed goals and concrete outcomes. Pre-reform methods of work, weak capacity, and market failures constrain policy implementation. Capacity-building reforms are restricted largely to developing countries, especially the "least developed countries" most of which are in Africa. They address issues relating to the technical capacities of civil servants in policy analysis and implementation; management of recurrent costs to ensure sustainability of projects; and pay reforms to motivate staff. Despite their importance in promoting development and other reforms, capacity-building reforms have not received the sustained attention they deserve. Section VII concludes the paper by focusing on three issues that may help ensure that reforms are accountable to society and sensitive to the political realities of states, especially those with weak institutions. First, public sector reforms need sound political pacts or coalitions. The vast majority of countries that are implementing reforms are also grappling with complex programmes of democratization, which seek to lay the ground rules for the way their societies are governed. There are governance issues that have not been satisfactorily resolved in a large number of low-income countries, which raise serious questions about their capacities to implement far-reaching state reforms. In most cases, the drive for reform is more external than internal as governments are forced to meet conditions set by donors for loan disbursements. Market-oriented managerial reforms will be difficult to implement in countries that have not established a professional civil service. Without this, market reforms may further fragment the state systems of low-income countries and encourage more corruption therein. However time-consuming they are to promote, dialogue and coalitions, or social and political pacts, are essential elements of effective modern statecraft. They facilitate the establishment of sound and durable administrative systems. Second, reform governments and multilateral agencies should also try to understand and support some of the enduring missions of states, which are nation-building in multi-ethnic societies, rapid industrialization with an appropriate role for the state in facilitating the process, social equity and wealth distribution. Although costly mistakes were made in the past in many countries, these goals are at the heart of the aspirations of broad masses of people seeking to create developmental, humanistic and harmonious societies. The failure to pay sufficient attention to them in the last decade-and-a-half of market reforms may go a long way in explaining the high incidence of failed states, civil wars and stagnant development in large parts of the world today. Third, for reforms to be institutionalized and serve the public good, they must also allow pressures to be brought to bear on public managers in service delivery. Among the instruments that have emerged for the attainment of these goals are Citizens' Charters, Ombudsmen and service delivery surveys. Parliamentary plurality, press freedom, independent judiciaries, mass-based political parties and civic action are also central to public accountability.

ABSTRACTSince the early 1980s, most African countries have experienced unsatisfactory rates of economic growth and profound changes in livelihood systems, which have affected the way their modern institutions function. However, when confronted with evidence of poor economic performance in countries undergoing adjustment, the international financial institutions often blame governments for their lack of political will in regulating the activities of bureaucrats and vested interests. They recommend policies aimed at restructuring public sector institutions through privatization, public expenditure cuts, retrenchment, new structures of incentives and decentralization. Despite efforts to implement these measures in a number of countries, the problems of low institutional capacity remain. Two key contradictions appear to explain why institutions have been largely ineffective in crisis economies in Africa: the growing contradiction between the interests of bureaucratic actors and the goals they are supposed to uphold; and the contradiction between the institutional set‐up itself and what goes on in the wider society. To understand how these contradictions work, it is necessary to look more closely at the set of values and relationships that anchor institutions on social systems. The issues here are social compromise and cohesion; institutional socialization and loyalties; overarching sets of values; and political authority to enforce rules and regulations. The crises in these four areas of social relations, which are linked to the ways households and groups have coped with recession and restructuring, have altered Africa's state institutions so that it has become difficult to carry out meaningful development programmes and public sector reforms without addressing the social relations themselves.

ABSTRACTCrisis and economic reforms have changed the status of intellectuals and their relations with dominant élites and policy makers. Because of the technical and ideological nature of these reforms, policy makers have tended to rely on intellectuals as opposed to bureaucrats to shape the agenda of change. This has converted a large number of intellectuals into technocrats and undermined the fabric of academic life in universities. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in developing countries with a large middle class and an economic or financial base that ensures some degree of independence from the multilateral financial institutions. Understanding the success or failure of economic reforms in developing countries requires some analysis of the complex relations between technocrats and political leaders and the societal constraints both sets of actors face. This article explores these issues in the context of Nigeria, whose academic community, bureaucrats and professionals grew in leaps and bounds in the 1970s, following an oil‐induced boom. The crisis of the 1980s led to attempts at economic reform and a highly programmed strategy of political change in which academics played a leading role. The article examines the effectiveness of intellectuals in government, and compares the Nigeria case with technocratic experiments in Ghana, Botswana and Côte d̂Ivoire.

This paper seeks to explain how ethnicity and religion shape social identity and social conflict, and how people are mobilized in support of movements based on such cleavages. It also looks at the role of violence in social conflicts, at why some movements use violence to pursue their objectives, and at how such violence, in turn, structures the identities of social actors and the dynamics of the conflicts. Finally, it examines policy issues relating to the resolution of ethnic and religious conflicts and political violence. The subject of identity is very complex as it encompasses the totality of social experience, much of which is influenced by history. What constitutes the identity of a group is not always easy to determine given differences in the way individuals are socialized during the course of their lives: as members of different families, clans, neighbourhoods, villages, municipalities, professions, social interest groups or transnational organizations. Thus, although the concept may convey a picture of social uniformity, identity is always a contested issue as individuals who are assumed to share common values may be structured in hierarchical or functional ways. This may not correspond to what is held up as a group's identity. When people evoke identity, they are less concerned with the totality of social values than with a primary or core set of values that are assumed to transcend social divisions. Such core values are often based on religion, language, race, colour or an assumed common culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that identity issues are all too often embedded in emotions.

Kernpunkt dieses Beitrags über die Auswirkungen der Wirtschaftskrise in den kapitalistischen Ländern auf die afrikanische Bevölkerung ist die Kritik an der Politik des "structural adjustment" von IMF und Weltbank: infolge der Akkumulationskrise und der diversen Anpassungsprogramme, die das nationale Selbstbestimmungsrecht untergraben, ist - so der Autor - der Lebensstandard der afrikanischen Bevölkerung drastisch gesunken, die Kraft der Arbeiterorganisationen geschwächt und die politische Repression verstärkt worden. Abschließend werden Beispiele aus verschiedenen afrikanischen Ländern für den erfolgreichen Kampf der Bevölkerung gegen die Politik des IMF genannt. (DÜI-Hns)

Retrenchment In Nigerian vehicle assembly plants in consequence of economic recession has provoked an active response from the workforce. At Steyr‐Nigeria in Bauchi, workers walked out in October 1985 in protest at the management's intransigence in negotiations with union officials. Bangura charts their initial success and provides a lucid account of the reasons for their ultimate failure. His analysis of the Steyr‐Nigeria dispute is explicitly situated within the broader context of policy and economic performance in the Nigerian economy as a whole. He considers the extent to which workers emerged as victims of policy essentially motivated by the interests of quick profits and production of luxury consumer goods for an emergent bourgeoisie. The irrationality of such policy as a means of enhancing Nigeria's development, or even of catering to a market which might reasonably be expected to emerge, is detailed by the author. Bangura focuses on a single case, but his concern is not with the factors making for immediate industrial victory. It is rather with a broader strategy extending beyond the preservation of workers' jobs in any given industrial unit to the interests of the class as a whole. What is called for, he argues, is a policy which matches needs of the entire population with available resources and which gives priority to a society's disadvantaged members.

In der vergleichenden Studie werden die wirtschaftlichen Schwierigkeiten der beiden afrikanischen Staaten auf die von einer kleinen nationalen Elite forcierte Abhängigkeit von der Weltwirtschaft und multinationalen Unternehmen zurückgeführt. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden die verschiedenen Versuche zur Lösung der wirtschaftlichen Probleme nach IWF-Vorgaben detailliert beschrieben. (DÜI-Gbh)

Im Zuge der Strukturanpassungspolitik hat sich die wirtschaftliche Lage der Arbeiterklasse verschlechtert, demokratische Rechte sind eingeschränkt worden. Die Option auf den Sozialismus kann nur gewahrt bleiben, wenn der politische Kampf um mehr Demokratie aufgenommen wird. (DÜI-Spe)