Attitudes and Development: The District Administration in Tanzania

Abstract

At the heart of the development process, insofar as it involves governmental activity, is the attitude of the administrator who is supposed to carry out that policy. An administrator who is not committed to a policy can either simply ignore it, or if the policy seems threatening, actively work to sabotage it. In the final analysis, it is the administrator in the field who must act as the lightning rod in the linking of policy planning in the center to policy implementation in the rural district. Development policy in Tanzania depends particularly upon the aptitude and the attitude of the district level administrator. Tanzanian socialism, with its emphasis on self help and cooperative effort, must be accepted by civil servants in the districts and regions who may be skeptical of much of the thrust of development policy. Heirs to an elitist administrative tradition, the Tanzanian district officer and his staff may have little financial incentive to implement a policy of egalitarianism which has at least some emphasis on the redistribution of wealth. This study focuses on the issue of administrative attitudes in an attempt to determine to what extent the administrative and political changes which have occurred in Tanzania have been accepted at the district level. This article will first examine the attitudes of a select group of Tanzanian district level administrators and then compare these attitudes with those of their closest colleagues at the district and at the regional level.

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