When 'street-level bureaucrats' act as cultural brokers

The normative dilemmas and personal commitment of government officials in southern Ethiopia

Bibliographic Data

ID3877803
AuthorsSusanne Epple (0000-0002-4686-8433, Frobenius Institute for Research in Cultural Anthropology at, Germany, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume33
Issue4
Pages348-364
Publication date2021-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCultural Dynamics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0921-3740 • E-ISSN: 1461-7048
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/09213740211029684
OpenAlexW3216761388
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited15

Following the implementation of ethnic federalism in 1995, for the first time, government officials have been appointed from among the various ethnic groups rather than being only drawn from the central Ethiopian highlands. As such, they carry the responsibility of mediating and translating between two rather different worlds and value systems: those of the state and state law and those of the local population, many of whom continue to widely apply customary law. Many of these native government officials find themselves in a normative dilemma, as they have to balance the, often contradictory, expectations of the government and the local population

Dilemma · Ethnic group · Federalism · Local government · Normative · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · African Studies and Ethnography · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · Public Administration

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