Tracking the expansionary state: machinery of government change in South Africa

The paper traces the growth of South Africa's national bureaucracy from 1994 to 2014, identifying a trajectory of sustained but uneven expansion. It argues that while early changes under President Mandela were driven by democratic transition and public demand, the Mbeki era focused on centralized coordination, and the Zuma era saw a punctuated increase in departments potentially driven by patronage and 'runaway state-building'. The author concludes that the state has become 'functionally splintered' rather than simply bloated, leading to redundancies and coordination failures.

• South Africa's national government machinery experienced a sustained but uneven expansion from 1994 to 2014, with only seven departments remaining in continuous existence throughout the entire period.
• The first sub-period (Mandela presidency, 1994-1999) was characterized by incremental growth and organizational remodeling driven by the need to scale up service delivery to groups disenfranchised under apartheid and the pressure of inter-party power-sharing.
• The second sub-period (Mbeki presidency, 2000-2008) was a phase of consolidation and relative stability, focusing on political centralization through the expansion of 'The Presidency' and the use of 'clustering' to coordinate cabinet departments.
• The third sub-period (Zuma presidency, 2009-2014) saw a 'big bang' punctuated increase in ministerial departments, which the author suggests may have been driven by patronage pressures and the need to sustain a coalition of cabinet support.
• The author argues that the South African state is 'functionally splintered' rather than 'bloated' in scope, meaning that functional splitting and organizational specialization have occurred without necessarily expanding the state's actual activities, leading to redundancies.
• Efforts to implement 'New Public Management' or private sector efficiency values have had little impact; instead, the growth of non-departmental 'public entities' occurred in an ideological vacuum to circumvent red tape rather than to improve efficiency.
• The expansion of the state machinery has coincided with a ballooning budget deficit from 2009/10 through 2014, indicating significant financial strain in sustaining the overhead costs of the bureaucracy.

APA

Naidoo, V. (2017). Tracking the expansionary state: machinery of government change in South Africa. Public Affairs Research Institute. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Machinery-of-govt-working-paper.pdf

Chicago

Naidoo, Vinothan. Tracking the expansionary state: machinery of government change in South Africa. Public Affairs Research Institute, 2017. https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Machinery-of-govt-working-paper.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Naidoo |first1=Vinothan |title=Tracking the expansionary state: machinery of government change in South Africa |publisher=Public Affairs Research Institute |date=July 2017 |url=https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Machinery-of-govt-working-paper.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{naidoo2017tracking, author = {Naidoo, Vinothan}, title = {{Tracking the expansionary state: machinery of government change in South Africa}}, institution = {Public Affairs Research Institute}, year = {2017}, month = jul, url = {https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Machinery-of-govt-working-paper.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }