Reforming a state in formation: from Structural Adjustment Programs to Results-Based Management – lessons from two decades of administrative reform in Cameroon

Abstract

This article sets out to examine, from a socio-historical standpoint, the administrative change process specific to Cameroon. By analyzing the mechanisms and processes driving the administrative reforms put in place since the end of the 1980s, the study pinpoints the regularities characteristic of the national trajectory of administrative reform in Cameroon. The article is divided into three sections. The first presents the analytical approach chosen. The second part presents the various repertoires of the reforms put in place, as well as an overview of the main programs. The third, finally, sets outs the lessons drawn from the study.

Points for practitioners

The article explores the dynamic relationship between the production of administrative reforms and the impact of reforms on the politico-administrative order in Cameroon. It is thus demonstrated that while reform has become considered over the years as a specialized know-how and an objective framework for the construction of public action, it continues to be plagued by rationales that are foreign to the organizational purpose, and comes across as the “art of doing.”