Fixing the African State Recognition, Politics, and Community-Based Development in Tanzania

Fixing the African State explains why the predominant approach to international development produces outcomes that are incompatible with its underlying assumptions and intended objectives. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research undertaken in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania over the past decade, Brian J. Dill examines the relationship between community participation in the development process and the exercise of state power. Although the primary objective of community-based and -driven development is to shift the balance of power from the state to the benefit of non-state actors, Fixing the African State shows that, in fact, what is strengthened is both the image of a coherent, efficacious, and autonomous state, and the capacity of the state apparatus to exercise authority.

Brian J. Dill is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.