Bureaucracy as Resistance: Everyday Acts of Power in the Malawi Ministry of Health

This paper investigates the phenomenon of bureaucratic resistance in the Malawi Ministry of Health. While bureaucrats are often seen to resist their superiors through behaviours like shirking or mismanagement, I instead show how bureaucrats can also harness the tools of bureaucracy as a mechanism of resistance towards external actors. Through an interpretive analysis of ethnography and interviews conducted in Malawi between 2018 and 2021, I demonstrate how high-level bureaucrats in the Malawi Ministry of Health use the tools most readily available to them within their official purview – policies, documents and processes – to resist the will of donors and maintain control over health projects and their implementation. By quietly but strategically adapting their policies and processes to clarify the government’s expectations and vision, bureaucrats curtail the ability of partners to assert domination. In this way, everyday acts of bureaucracy transform into everyday acts of resistance, as government officials operating in a context of aid dependency codify who is actually in charge.