From Lant Pritchett's "The Illusion of Equality: The Educational Consequences of Blindingly Weak States," a parallel to the reality of bureaucratic function here in West Africa:
What Scott terms "bureaucratic high modernism," according to Pritchett, "...blinds the state to the many observable social characteristics on which localized social processes had historically depended...to produce equal treatment of all citizens by the state's bureaucratic apparatus." I would add that in the reality of bureaucratic function, or nonfunction, the equal treatment so referred to is, in fact, a collective inability create and administer administrative outputs for these mentioned citizens. The differing organizational structures that have been implemented in the developing world, I would argue, are in fact the very "zombie" apparati that Pritchett, himself, earlier references. Organizational structures actively dissolving incentives for outputs through completely regimented, top-down decision making, restricted to those at the very top of the hierarchal bureaucratic pyramids. The end result: structures with no inherent meaning other than to mimic the functions in the Western world; function without actual output.
What Scott terms "bureaucratic high modernism," according to Pritchett, "...blinds the state to the many observable social characteristics on which localized social processes had historically depended...to produce equal treatment of all citizens by the state's bureaucratic apparatus." I would add that in the reality of bureaucratic function, or nonfunction, the equal treatment so referred to is, in fact, a collective inability create and administer administrative outputs for these mentioned citizens. The differing organizational structures that have been implemented in the developing world, I would argue, are in fact the very "zombie" apparati that Pritchett, himself, earlier references. Organizational structures actively dissolving incentives for outputs through completely regimented, top-down decision making, restricted to those at the very top of the hierarchal bureaucratic pyramids. The end result: structures with no inherent meaning other than to mimic the functions in the Western world; function without actual output.
