Reforming a state in formation: from Structural Adjustment Programs to Results-Based Management – lessons from two decades of administrative reform in Cameroon
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852318790335 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Author | Raoul Tamekou |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Reforming a state
Sciences
2020, Vol. 86(3) 529–546
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in formation: from
The Author(s) 2018
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Structural Adjustment
DOI: 10.1177/0020852318790335
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
Programs to
Results-Based
Management – lessons
from two decades of
administrative reform
in Cameroon
Raoul Tamekou
University of Montreal, Canada, and Advanced Institute of
Public Management, Cameroon
Abstract
This article sets out to examine, from a socio-historical standpoint, the administrative
change process specific to Cameroon. By analyzing the mechanisms and processes
driving the administrative reforms put in place since the end of the 1980s, the study
pinpoints the regularities characteristic of the national trajectory of administrative
reform in Cameroon. The article is divided into three sections. The first presents
the analytical approach chosen. The second part presents the various repertoires of
the reforms put in place, as well as an overview of the main programs. The third, finally,
sets outs the lessons drawn from the study.
Points for practitioners
The article explores the dynamic relationship between the production of administrative
reforms and the impact of reforms on the politico-administrative order in Cameroon.
Corresponding author:
Raoul Tamekou, University of Montreal – Politics, C.P 6128 succursale centre ville, Montreal, Quebec,
H3C3J7, Canada.
Email: raoultamekou@gmail.com
530
International Review of Administrative Sciences 86(3)
It is thus demonstrated that while reform has become considered over the years as a
specialized know-how and an objective framework for the construction of public
action, it continues to be plagued by rationales that are foreign to the organizational
purpose, and comes across as the “art of doing.”
Keywords
administrative reform, Cameroon, trajectory
Introduction
The specialized literature on administrative reform in Africa appears to be marked
by three general trends: the contingency of the object; the clinical-technical and
prescriptive nature of the analysis process; and functionalism as the favored the-
oretical posture. First of all, concerning the contingency of the research object,
many studies focus on specific issues or on sectoral reforms targeting a specific
segment of the administrative organization, for example, performance (Balogun,
2001), customs (Bilangna, 2009) or payroll (Olowu, 2010).
Second, when it comes to the treatment of the objects, it should be noted that
much of the research is based on a clinical-technical and prescriptive approach. In
this perspective, the administrative reform is analyzed as a purely technical issue,
whose treatment usually involves the tools of the theory of organizations or man-
agement. The analysis of post-colonial administrative reforms put in place in
Nigeria by Sekwat (2002) provides a good overview of this type of approach.
Under the clinical gaze as well, the analysis focuses on the identification of the
factors of failure and success of the reforms, resulting in the inevitable prescription
of solutions or “remedies.” Biased in normative terms, this current has as its
implicit substrate the search for the “one best way.” Thus, even if the most
recent studies carried out under its aegis favor an inflection, and a critical recon-
sideration (Manning and McCourt, 2013), the clinical and prescriptive approach
has been favored for a long time by international institutions, for example, such as
the World Bank. Third, theoretically, the favored posture is functionalism. Under
this view, reforms are analyzed according to their assigned purpose, usually devel-
opment (Edigheji, 2008), or they are considered as organizational responses to
exogenous shocks, in this case, economic, financial, or structural crises (e.g. see
studies on the origin of new public management (NPM) in Africa; Larbi, 1999).
Taking Cameroon as a framework for reflection, this article aims to make a
double departure, both theoretical and analytical. Indeed, the administrative
reform—understood here as a set of rules, knowledge, techniques, and generic
practices that apply in a transversal way to the administrative organization
by
proposing
to
(re)define
the
operation,
management,
and
structure
(Bezes, 2009)—is analyzed as a multidimensional object whose proper analysis
Tamekou
531
requires the intersection of several scales of observation. The functional postures of
change and socio-organizational adaptation cover, in our view, only a part of the
relevant issues, hence the suggested socio-historical approach, which proposes to
highlight the dynamic and complex nature of the administrative change. Similarly,
in contrast to the vast majority of studies into administrative reform in Africa that
focus on implementation, this article looks at the origin of the reforms and their
political and institutional integration. The notion of trajectory makes it possible to
account for these two aspects. We postulate that exploring the origin of the
reforms, the way in which they are selected and replaced, offers productive avenues
for understanding and explaining their evolution, and, possibly, their results.
Studying the specific historical context and the modes of integration thus sheds
a heuristic light on our understanding of the reforms.
The article is divided up into three sections. In the first, we present the analytical
framework and the methodological approach of the study. The second section
provides a brief history of the reform programs set up in Cameroon between
1990 and 2015, or at least the evolution of their repertoires.1 The last section,
finally, presents some research outcomes. The lessons drawn from the observation
of Cameroon’s national trajectory are not intended to generalize, but rather set out
to open up avenues that help contribute to the debate on the study of administra-
tive reform in Africa.
Analytical and methodological framework
At the crossroads of the history and sociology of public action, the socio-historical
analytical approach consists in highlighting the historicity of social situations, that
is to say, the concrete ways in which the past influences the present (Hartog, 2010).
If the context is central, a major interest is also granted to processes, timings,
rationales, and categories mobilized in the construction and rollout of social
action (Buton and Mariot, 2009). Analyzing administrative reform from a socio-
historical perspective means highlighting the mechanisms that drive the phenom-
ena linking the underlying processes of change.
This article not only aims to pinpoint the genesis of reforms by questioning their
past, but also to addresses their institutionalization and their transformation over
time, highlighting, in particular, the conjunction of time frames that link the suc-
cessive sequences of reforms. It sets out to update regularities in the development
of administrative reforms in Cameroon, that is to say, the repeated institutional
constraints that weigh on the preparation of a reform, from one period to another
(Bezes, 2009: 58).
The advantage of such a positioning is, in particular, to abandon the contribu-
tion of history as a (simple) reminder of the past, to consider its influence on the
present action, and to restore meaning in the context of production (of the action)
(Fournier-Plamondon and Racine-Saint-Jacques, 2014). The notion of trajectory
strikes us as useful in this order because, unlike the approaches mentioned at the
beginning of the article, it makes it possible to offer a global picture of the
532
International Review of Administrative Sciences 86(3)
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