Administrative authority and trust between state and society in South Africa
Odd-Helge Fjeldstad
The Admin-South Africa project studies the formation and functioning of administrative organisations historically and under the new democratic dispensation in South Africa. In particuler, the project focuses on the interplay of knowledge systems and the formation of professionalised knowledge regimes and how they mediate between state and society. Furthermore, the project examines how political authority, knowledge regimes and trust are related in five fields of activity deemed essential for democratisation: education; health/housing; agriculture/natural resources; local government/intergovernmental relations; and parliament/parliamentary committees. It examines how administration affects trust in society (horizontal trust) and between communities/actors and the state (vertical trust). Key questions focus on the politics of administration in South Africa: (1) How the political transition from apartheid is interpreted and organised as administration. (2) How earlier suppressed knowledge systems manage to penetrate into the new democratic/professional/administrative organisations and the knowledge regimes established there. (3) How the administration communicates/interacts with both defined and autonomously activated clients. The project involves researchers from the School of Government, University of the Western Cape, Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen, and Chr. Michelsen Institute.
