Rwanda is a posterchild of economic success in twenty-first century Africa. Dominant explanations for the country’s growth use the political settlements framework, asserting that concentrated political power enabled long-term planning. In contrast, this article uses the case of Rwanda’s impressive boom in electricity generation to demonstrate that such concentrated power also distorts policy-making processes, creating a fiscal crisis that jeopardizes Rwanda’s economic transformation. Therefore, this article questions a central premise of the political settlements framework. Concentrated political power in Rwanda enabled rapid and ambitious construction of power plants but resulted in an oversupply crisis, plunging the sector into significant debt and raising the cost of electricity. Rwanda’s political settlement prevented experts from challenging unrealistic targets set by top politicians, which led to a headlong pursuit of electricity generation capacity. To understand this process, we assert the importance of focusing on the bureaucratic/politician relationship, which we label ‘bureaucratic independence’, rather than on the oft-used concept of ‘bureaucratic autonomy’ usually associated with the concentration of political power.

中文翻译：

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集中权力的局限性：卢旺达的官僚独立与电力危机

卢旺达是二十一世纪非洲经济成功的典范。对国家增长的主要解释使用政治解决框架，声称集中的政治权力可以实现长期规划。相比之下，本文以卢旺达令人印象深刻的发电繁荣为例来证明，这种集中的权力也会扭曲政策制定过程，造成财政危机，危及卢旺达的经济转型。因此，本文对政治解决框架的一个中心前提提出了质疑。卢旺达的政治权力集中，使得发电厂的建设得以迅速而雄心勃勃，但也导致了供应过剩危机，使该行业陷入巨额债务并提高了电力成本。卢旺达的政治解决方案阻止了专家挑战高层政治家设定的不切实际的目标，从而导致了对发电能力的轻率追求。为了理解这一过程，我们主张关注官僚/政治家关系的重要性，我们将其称为“官僚独立”，而不是关注通常与政治权力集中相关的经常使用的“官僚自治”概念。