The paradigmatic ascent of the new public management (NPM) doctrine in the 1980s was a joyful moment for advocates of market-led public sector reforms. Four decades later, following disappointing results, the NPM is no longer dominant. Pending the emergence of a new leading paradigm, however, NPM-inspired reforms are still being pursued in several nations worldwide. The central African nation of Gabon is one of those. For 8 years, it pursued an unsuccessful program of agencification of the state apparatus reportedly to create a “modern” public bureaucracy that would support economic modernization. This article provides the first scholarly analysis of the effects of this program. It shows that agencification fundamentally undermined the fragile foundations of the Gabonese administrative state. The magnitude of the damage to the state apparatus stands as the key finding of this study. This outcome further strengthens the case against an uncritical adoption of exogenously-developed public sector reforms.

中文翻译：

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非洲官僚风尚的危险：考察加蓬国家机器的机构化的影响

1980 年代新公共管理 (NPM) 学说的典范性上升对于市场主导的公共部门改革的倡导者来说是一个快乐的时刻。四十年后，在令人失望的结果之后，NPM 不再占主导地位。然而，在新的领先范式出现之前，受 NPM 启发的改革仍在全球多个国家进行。中非国家加蓬就是其中之一。8 年来，它推行了一项不成功的国家机器机构化计划，据报道是为了创建一个支持经济现代化的“现代”公共官僚机构。本文首次提供了对该计划影响的学术分析。它表明，行政化从根本上破坏了加蓬行政国家脆弱的基础。对国家机器的损害程度是本研究的主要发现。这一结果进一步加强了反对不加批判地采用外生发展的公共部门改革的理由。