Tracking the expansionary state: machinery of government change in South Africa

The aim of this paper is to explain the evolving size and shape of South Africa’s government machinery. The country’s state apparatus underwent extensive organisational restructuring following its democratic transition in 1994. However, this base component of South Africa’s public administration has largely been overlooked in the post-apartheid literature, which has focused on a host of more politically-sensitive issues such as personnel restructuring, service delivery pressures, and maladministration and corruption. In an effort to address this gap in the story of state transformation, I trace the structural evolution of the state in the democratic period.