The Invention of a European Development Aid Bureaucracy

Through in-depth analysis of European development policy over the past thirty fifty years, this book outlines the significant influence that former French colonial officials had in designing and implementing development aid programmes in Africa and how the way their influence has continued to impact [...]
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Through in-depth analysis of European development policy over the past thirty fifty years, this book outlines the significant influence that former French colonial officials had in designing and implementing development aid programmes in Africa and how the way their influence has continued to impact upon EEC development policy in Africa. The study shows that the Directorate General 8 of the European Commission (DG8), the institution responsible for this policy, was well adapted to dealing with emergent African administrations, and was modelled on the neo-patrimonial system of DG8's African clients. Within this system, authority and legitimacy were based on mutual trust and obligations, personal and affective ties, political compromise, permanent exception to the rule, the core of what was termed 'Indirect Rule' during colonial times. It also examines how this administrative system evolved following successive EEC enlargements and the extent to which this evolution necessitated an incremental process towards bureaucratization, for example, the rationalization of procedures and the depersonalization of practices.