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² Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert W. Vishny make a similar point in a recent paper. Their econometric analysis shows that bigger governments are also better governments (in the sense of being good for capitalist development), which is not to make a case for expanding any particular state. See Porta, La et al. , “The Quality of Government,” NBER Working Paper, no. 6727 (Cambridge: NBER, 1998)Google Scholar.

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⁴ In this paper, the term “civil service” is used broadly to include core public administration (economic policy-making and management, law enforcement, and adjudication) and other public services, such as education and health. “Bureaucracy” will be used as a synonym. When distinctions are made, as, for example, between central and local government employment, they will be noted in the text. The discussion by and large does not include either military employees or employees of state-owned corporations. To avoid tediousness, this paper uses “Africa” and “sub-Saharan Africa” interchangeably.

⁵ According to World Bank and IMF data, average GDP growth in Botswana was 11.1 percent from 1970 to 1995—the highest in Africa (and the world). Mauritius averaged 5.3 percent per year during the same period, the third best in Africa (Lesotho was number two, with a 6.9 percent GDP growth rate). One might object that Mauritius is only nominally an African country, and it does bear a close resemblance to many other small island states, for example, in the Caribbean. Still, it became independent with “Africa-like” strikes against it, including overpopulation, dependence on a single export commodity, ethnic tension, physical isolation, and destruction wreaked by cyclones. Botswana also entered into nationhood inauspiciously. Thirty years ago it was one of the poorest countries in the world with drought and being landlocked among its many problems.

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¹⁵ Sometimes the uncertainty is due to records being decentralized, though often individual departments lack accurate information on whom they employ. They may know the number of permanent posts they have but not how many are filled or whether casual workers have been hired as a stopgap. See Robinson, Derek, Civil Service Pay in Africa (Geneva: International Labour Organisation, 1990), 9Google Scholar.

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²⁷ A general government employee refers to a worker at the central, state, or local levels (excluding nonfinancial public enterprise) in the IMF study. It must be reemphasized that the quality of the underlying data prevents anyone from drawing firm conclusions about the “optimal” size of any country's civil service.

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