Abstract
This work aims to examine a malgovernance issue that is currently being felt in African countries, involving the indulgence of bureaucrats, politicians and ethnocorruptic practices. The principal-agency theory will be used to underpin this work. A literature data search was done to gather publicly accessible documents, including literary works, on African governance. The mal-governance acts were analyzed through content analysis on the detrimental problems that bureaucrats and political elites continue to promote through ethocorruptic behaviors that lead to malgovernance. Most cases of malgovernance in Africa are caused by political elites and bureaucrats who are either practitioners or supporters of ethnocorruptiv behaviors, as the secondary sources demonstrate. Additionally, the analysis suggests various factors, including personalism and leadership cults, elite dominance and state capture, unresolved historical traumas and grievances, clientelism and patronage, a lack of accountability and transparency, unresolved conflicts and historical issues, increase the susceptibility to malgovernance acts in their destructive forms. This is a theoretical investigation, but an empirical one could provide additional light on the ethnocorruptic practices that prolong malgovernance in Africa, which are the results of political elites and bureaucrats. To the best of my knowledge, this work is the first to use principal-agency theory to analyze malgoverance, specifically by considering the roles played by political elites and bureaucrats in the interaction between ethnocorruption and malgovernance.
Academians Publishers