Bureaucratic politics in southern Africa

This study reviews more than 119 such efforts included in a total of 1,800 management events that were the subject of an August 1984 management study of 9 southern African countries. These mini-cases permit the analyst to identify common or ordinary issues of bureaucratic politics, to study the tactics of the "players" followed, and even to compare their effectiveness in terms of resolving the issues involved. The most successful tactic employed in these cases was the appeal to higher authority or the application of authority ("brute force"). Use of compromise was rare in these strongly hierarchical settings, and since the issues usually involved funding, personnel resources, and jurisdiction, horizontal negotiations were not common, a disturbing but not unexpected state of affairs. On the brighter side, the events reveal very little evidence of impropriety; the occasions when managers showed disappointment over the outcome of their efforts were much more frequently associated with incompetence than with corruption or venality. (Author absract, modified)