The Invention of a European Development Aid Bureaucracy - Recycling Empire

Through in-depth analysis of European development policy over the past thirty fifty years, this book outlines the significant influence that former French colonial officials had in designing and implementing development aid programmes in Africa and how the way their influence has continued to impact upon EEC development policy in Africa. The study shows that the Directorate General 8 of the European Commission (DG8), the institution responsible for this policy, was well adapted to dealing with emergent African administrations, and was modelled on the neo-patrimonial system of DG8's African clients. Within this system, authority and legitimacy were based on mutual trust and obligations, personal and affective ties, political compromise, permanent exception to the rule, the core of what was termed 'Indirect Rule' during colonial times. It also examines how this administrative system evolved following successive EEC enlargements and the extent to which this evolution necessitated an incremental process towards bureaucratization, for example, the rationalization of procedures and the depersonalization of practices.

1. Introduction 2. "Grandeurs et Servitudes Européennes en Afrique" 3. Brussels or the last French Colony: French Colonial Administrators' Leadership in Designing DG8 4. "Du Bon Usage de la Tournée": DG8's Quest for Legitimacy 5. Flag Dictatorship within the European Commission? The Construction of DG8's Autonomy 6. Fachoda Revisited: the Effects of the first EEC Enlargement on DG8 7. EEC Development Policy: a Sedimentation of Empire? 8. In the Name of Efficiency 9. From Indirect to Direct Rule: Towards Normative Power Europe? 10. 'Adieu les Artistes, Here are the Managers' 11. EEC Bureaucracy in Action 12. Conclusion