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n e o l i b e r a l af r i c a
In his analysis of Tanzania, Mozambique and Uganda, Harrison
identifies a raft of policies that have served to realise governance:
administrative reform, new information management systems, in-
centivisation within the state, new financial management systems,
the creation of new agencies to promote transparency, new modes of
policymaking which include other ‘stakeholders’ (Harrison 2005).
It was this increasing intertwining of internal and external
agents and their developing of a more explicitly normative dis-
course concerning conduct that led to the nebulous discursive
constructions of neoliberal propriety that we can see today in
many states. Anti-corruption discourse remains prominent, ac-
companied by statements, training programmes and information
management systems which aim to engineer efficient and account-
able public servants. Anti-corruption reform practice involved a
number of changes to conduct. First, the internal auditing and
financial management systems of states were bolstered, but this
also led to a deeper process of invigilation in which surveillance
cascaded throughout the institutions of government. This is set out
in the Tanzanian Public Sector Reform programme for example
(Harrison 2004). The ‘islands of integrity’ approach to corruption
(Klitgaard 1988) was replaced by more encompassing attempts to
change the habits of governance (Williams 1996). Public officials
were also expected to change their practices of service delivery:
away from the hierarchical structures of the ‘office holder’ faced
with a citizen or subject towards the consumerist ethos of a service
provider engaging with a client or customer. Complaints processes
were publicised, posters setting out clients’ rights were placed on
public office walls, and deadlines for the completion of requests
made of public officials were set out and publicised.
These kinds of reforms were devised by policymakers, always
with technical assistance and advice from international consultants
and experts, to impose stronger codes of conduct (sometimes liter-
ally so-called) on the public administration as a whole. This was
a practice of mainstreaming transparent, efficient and disciplined