Real Governance and Practical Norms in Sub-Saharan Africa ─ The game of rules

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.

Tom De Herdt is Senior Lecturer in political and institutional aspects of development and Chair of the Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp.

Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan is Senior Researcher at LASDEL, Niamey, Niger, Professor of Anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Marseilles and Emeritus Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.