Shop Windows and Smoke-Filled Rooms: Governance and the Re-Politicisation of Tanzania

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Periodical article

Title:	Shop Windows and Smoke-Filled Rooms: Governance and the Re-Politicisation of Tanzania
Author:	Kelsall, Tim
Year:	2002
Periodical:	Journal of Modern African Studies
Volume:	40
Issue:	4
Period:	December
Pages:	597-619
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Tanzania
Subjects:	institutional change administrative reform Politics and Government
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/3876027
Abstract:	In the 1970s politics in Tanzania was substantially a bureaucratic affair. Since the 1980s, however, economic liberalization, multiparty democracy and governance reforms have on the one hand introduced measures conducive to building a legal-rational bureaucracy and a liberal civil society, and on the other accelerated political struggle for economic resources through personalized regional networks. Paraphrasing Emmanuel Terray, the first trend is described in this article as the manufacture of 'air-conditioned' politics, the second as the growth of 'veranda' politics. The article argues that donor reforms are not leading in a straight line to liberal governance, but neither is civil society simply being colonized by patrimonial networks. Rather, both 'air-conditioned' politics and 'veranda' politics are advancing simultaneously, inundating a previously bureaucratized political sphere. The dual character of this 're-politicization' makes the fate of governance reforms exceedingly difficult to predict. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]