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Mediating bureaucrats: embedded economic action in the Mozambican sugar industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2020

Lars Buur  and
Malin J. Nystrand
Lars Buur*
Affiliation:
Roskilde University, Denmark
Malin J. Nystrand*
Affiliation:
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
*
Email: lbuur@ruc.dk
Email: malin.nystrand@gu.se
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Abstract

This article develops the concept of ‘mediating bureaucrats’ by exploring their role during liberal reforms that led to rehabilitation of the sugar industry in Mozambique. By focusing on how relations between the state, government and business are mediated by a group of cadres who have occupied positions in different social domains, the article argues that these ‘mediating bureaucrats’ cannot easily be identified in one-dimensional terms as belonging to either the public or private sector, the state or the market. It is argued that as ‘socially embedded actors’, the group of ‘mediating bureaucrats’ are in a position to translate and mediate between diverse and sometimes conflicting interests and aspirations of the state, the government and business. We use the rehabilitation of the sugar industry in Mozambique to show how mediating bureaucrats adopted two practices – muddling through and translation – in order to straddle conflicting interests during different reform initiatives in post-independence Mozambique.

Keywords

Mediating bureaucratsmuddling throughtranslationmediationliberal reformssugar sector
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 337 - 360
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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