Taming the “Rogue” Sector: Studying State Effectiveness in Africa through Informal Transport Politics

Abstract

Despite widespread reference in international development discourses to the importance of “effective states,” the meaning of effectiveness is often unclear. This article presents a theoretical framework for analyzing state effectiveness and evaluates it through a comparative empirical study. Focusing on efforts to regulate and tax the lucrative informal urban transport sector, it maps out the landscape of institutions and political interests that underpinned remarkably effective outcomes in Rwanda and serial failure in Uganda in the decade 2000–2010. The article argues that the divergent outcomes are not so much a function of differing bureaucratic capacity as the interaction between factors such as the credibility of government policies, sources of legitimacy, and the role of “infrastructural power,” and how these are mediated through differences in political space.

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