Acknowledgements -- Glossary and abbreviations -- Map of Malawi -- 1 Introduction: Unpacking Good Governance -- Civil servants as implementers and "target population" -- The "dysfunctional" African state -- Good governance as technology -- Field sites -- Studying up, follow the policy -- Basic information about the civil service -- Outline -- 2 Historical Background -- Banda's rule and the "New Malawi" -- The results of two decades of structural adjustment -- The civil service - from localisation to good governance -- 3 Constructing Country Ownership -- Introduction -- The emergence of a concept -- Conditionality and country ownership -- The normativity of numbers -- The discovery of the "C word" -- Conclusions -- 4 The Implementation Process -- Deconstructing policy implementation -- Retrenchment of employees made redundant -- The introduction of new housing allowances -- Increasing fragmentation of the civil service -- Conclusions -- 5 Eroding Salaries and Doing Business -- The African entrepreneurial spirit -- The meaning of having a job in the civil service -- "How to make ends meet" -- Winners and losers of economic liberalisation -- Conclusions -- 6 "Distance Saves me" -- Introduction -- Kubwerera kumudzi -- Education and social stratification -- The importance of associations -- The nature of kinship duties -- Conclusions -- 7 The Democratisation of Appropriation -- Introduction -- "Bad politics" -- The office mores - a parallel social and moral order -- A "primoridial public sphere"or a patchwork of moralities? -- Conclusions -- 8 Conclusions: the State in Society -- The paradoxical policies of the World Bank and the IMF -- A note on theorising the postcolonial state -- References -- Index.