Democracy and the emergence of meritocratic bureaucracies: Explaining variation in the Senegalese state

This study examines when, where and how meritocratic bureaucracies emerge in Africa. Meritocratic bureaucracies offer their employees rewarding career paths, performance incentives and adequate insulation from negative political interventions. They are a key component of developmental states. Because of the neo-patrimonial nature of many African political systems, however, they are often lacking in Africa where many bureaucracies tend to operate along clientelistic rather than meritocratic lines. Some believe that more competitive, open political systems in Africa will help meritocratic bureaucracies emerge. I test this assumption in Senegal, one of African's most successful cases of recent democratization.;Examining nine different Senegalese bureaucracies in the Ministries of Health, Agriculture and Finance, I use both a most similar and a most different systems design to identify the causes of variation in the level of meritocracy across bureaucracies in a single, democratic state. The dissertation presents two main variables that together determine the level of meritocracy across Senegal's bureaucracies. First, I argue that a bureaucracy's control of potential patronage resources will led politicians to undermine its professional autonomy and allocate scarce resources to providing patronage rather than covering the bureaucracy's organizational needs. Second, I contend that patronage potential must be considered in conjunction with donor priorities and actions. Bureaucracies that produce outputs or provide services valued by donor agencies tend to be more meritocratic than those which attract little donor attention. In particular, bureaucracies responsible for producing the outputs donors require as a condition for dispersing development assistance tend to be more meritocratic than other bureaucracies. They can become more meritocratic via one of two paths, either donor agencies can insulate them from undue political pressure and provide needed resources or politicians can do so because improving the bureaucracies' performance is more important than exercising discretionary control over civil servants' actions and the distribution of bureaucratic resources. The findings of the dissertation suggest that, despite democratization, the emergence of meritocratic bureaucracies in Senegal may be driven more by the priorities and needs of donors and politicians than those of Senegalese voters.