In the Shadow of Good Governance

In the Shadow of Good Governance traces the implementation of the good governance agenda in Malawi from the loan documents signed by the representatives of the government and the Bretton Woods institutions to the individual experiences of civil servants who responded in unforeseen ways to the reform measures. Ethnographic evidence gathered in government offices, neighbourhoods and the private homes of civil servants living in Malawi’s urban and peri-urban areas undermines the common perception of a disconnect between state institutions and society in Africa. Instead, the book presents a comprehensive analysis of civil servants’ attempts to negotiate the effects of civil service reform and economic crisis at the turn of the 21st century.

Gerhard Anders (Ph.D. 2005) is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Social & Cultural Anthropology, University of Zurich. His research focuses on the anthropology of emergent regimes of global order in the fields of criminal justice and development. He has published on legal anthropology, international criminal justice, good governance and corruption including the co-edited volume (with M. Nuijten) Corruption and the Secret of Law (Ashgate, 2009).

The anthropology of the postcolonial state takes a major step forward with Gerhard Anders' outstanding study. His ethnographic insights into the planning, implementation and manipulation of the civil service reform in Malawi give food for thought well beyond the specific case he writes about. No other study of the 1990s good governance agenda in Africa has accomplished Anders' nuanced account of the lived experience among civil servants caught up in the throes of change. This is a landmark study that challenges facile generalizations about corruption and the dysfunctional state in Africa.
Harri Englund, University of Cambridge