Patchwork Leviathan

Pockets of Bureaucratic Effectiveness in Developing States

Erin Metz McDonnell

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English

Princeton University Press
03 March 2020

Sociology; Political science & theory; Regional government policies; Development economics; Economic systems & structures

Corruption and ineffectiveness are often expected of public servants in developing countries. However, some groups within these states are distinctly more effective and public oriented than the rest. Why? Patchwork Leviathan explains how a few spectacularly effective state organizations manage to thrive amid general institutional weakness and succeed against impressive odds. Drawing on the Hobbesian image of the state as Leviathan, Erin Metz McDonnell argues that many seemingly weak states actually have a wide range of administrative capacities. Such states are in fact patchworks sewn loosely together from scarce resources into the semblance of unity.

McDonnell demonstrates that when the human, cognitive, and material resources of bureaucracy are rare, it is critically important how they are distributed. Too often, scarce bureaucratic resources are scattered throughout the state, yielding little effect. McDonnell reveals how a sufficient concentration of resources clustered within particular pockets of a state can be transformative, enabling distinctively effective organizations to emerge from a sea of ineffectiveness.

Patchwork Leviathan offers a comprehensive analysis of successful statecraft in institutionally challenging environments, drawing on cases from contemporary Ghana and Nigeria, mid-twentieth-century Kenya and Brazil, and China in the early twentieth century. Based on nearly two years of pioneering fieldwork in West Africa, this incisive book explains how these highly effective pockets differ from the Western bureaucracies on which so much state and organizational theory is based, providing a fresh answer to why well-funded global capacity-building reforms fail-and how they can do better.

By: Erin Metz McDonnell
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780691197364
ISBN 10: 0691197369
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 03 March 2020
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Erin Metz McDonnell is Kellogg Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Her award-winning work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, and Comparative Political Studies.

Reviews for Patchwork Leviathan: Pockets of Bureaucratic Effectiveness in Developing States

Winner of the EGOS Book Award, European Group for Organizational Studies an excellent and refreshingly new look at state capacity that should be a must read for scholars of political sociology, development sociology, comparative politics, public policy, and good governance in less developed countries. ---Peter Ward, American Journal of Sociology