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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Emma Crewe at #Statecraft2026 on instilling a sense of public value in civil servants: it is not something that can be taught in class - what really makes the difference is professional community, networks and peer pressure.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Funke Adepoju at #Statecraft2026 Training is most effective when it is attached to live institutional responsibilities, not abstract learning. Learning must be connected to decisions that you actually have to take.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Crewe at #Statecraft2026 - quotes George Herbert Meade and argues that public sector leadership is about using #imagination to expand the sense of community, particularly in bureaucracies where things can get quite stuck.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Crewe at #Statecraft2026 the relational and negotiated character of civil service leadership means that leaders need to be good researchers - not only in the academic sense but in the ability to find out what is actually going on. Pragmatic leadership in complex context requires #imagination.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Emma Crewe at @soasuni.bsky.social , addressing #statecraft2026 about leadership from an anthropological point of view. Training contributes only 10% of the practical judgement civil servants need. And leadership is a relational practice, so training needs to contest orthodoxies

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

emphasise the importance of strong investment in training infrastructure with a broad reach that goes beyond civil servants to include acamics and offer postgraduate teaching.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Day 2 at #Statecraft2026. Funke Adepoju, Director-General, Administrative Staff College of Nigeria talks about the challenges of creating an effective civil service in the postcolonial world. The critical thing is not merely adherance to policy but the abilty to exercise practical judgement.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Chipkin at #Statecapture2026 points out that an interesting natural experiment is developing in the IR sphere: there is a deep divergence between countries in the Global North that backsliding toward #statecapture, and countries in the post-colonial, post-socialist world making headway against it.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ivor Chipkin argues that inter-elite competition can play a crucial role in interrupting #statecapture. But an elite bargain is essential to a sustained pushback against it. #Statecraft2026 Reforming institutions to close the loopholes that allowed state capture is also essential.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Daniel Kaufmann ex @brookings.edu at #statecraft2026 argues that while the USA is not yet completely captured it is on a steady trajectory to broad based #statecapture. Central here is not only the subversion of institutions but the capture of narratives and of the international system.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Dušan Pavlović at #Statecraft2026: #Serbia is another example of a place where #statecapture is driven, not by firms but by politicians intent on extracting public resources not only for private gain but also to serve political projects and political machines.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Bálint Madlovics describes Orban's #statecapture: in Hungary state capture was not 'bottom up'; it was executed by holders of power within the state itself.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Chipkin: state capture in South Africa emerged from an environement in which emergent black owned firms in the capitalist economy felt excluded from access to state resources by mainstream firms ('white monopoly capital') and felt they had to instrumentalise their relationship with the state

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ivor Chipkin at #Statecraft2026: what is the difference between #corruption and #statecapture? State capture is an elite project. In other words, state capture is self-righteous: it tries to redefine its subversion as legitimate.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Margot Conrad at #Statecraft2026: shifting criteria for the appointment of senior civil servants in the USA are emphasing narrow compliance with the rule of law and commitment to the aims of the administration, which means that officials feel less and less safe to speak up when things go wrong.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Margot Conrad of the @volckeralliance.bsky.social on the current assault on the #administrative state at the #Statecraft2026 conference: not only it there a sharp increase in political appointees, but also much more churn and turnover, with serious consequences for continuity.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Fasinating talk about the complexities of the appointment of senior civil servants in #Indonesia by Eko Prasojo

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Magdalena Rojas Wettig of the Council for the Senior Executive Service in #Chile argues that the appointment of senior officials requires a mix of professionalism and political confidence. (Administration is never simply politically neutral).

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Brian Levy at #Statecraft2026 - the lessons of international experiences of statecraft and governance are NOT 'best practices' - government is a radically context bound activity.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Chipkin at #Statecraft2026 - if democracy is to survive, we need to go beyond the anti-administrative utopianism of both the left and the right. We have to appreciate the recognition of #Weber of bureaucracy as an institution that is at the same time problematic *and* absolutely essential.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Chipkin at #Statecraft2026 - the antipathy to #bureaucracy and the failure to constitute an administrative state is not the outcome of incompetence - it has deep links to a long tradition of right-wing and left-wing #utopian analyses of modern alienation.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Chipkin highlights the continued prevalence of Marx's critique of #bureaucracy and his argument that it cannot represent the general interest. While few quote Marx today this analysis still circulates today - including in critiques of the #DeepState by Trump and right-wing populists #Statecraft2026

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ivor Chipkin argues that much of the crisis of statecraft in South Africa over the last 20 years, including #statecapture, lies in the failure to recognise that administration not a discretionary but a constitutive sphere of the state. #Statecraft2026

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

#Statecraft2026 Chipkin quotes Woodrow Wilson: Administration lies beyond the proper sphere of politics. (This is not to say that it is not political; it obviously is. But neither can it be collapsed into politics. Instead it is a relatively autonomous sphere of political deliberation).

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Chipkin: something remarkable is happening in South Africa. The #ANC and other governments are setting in place the key regulatory elements for an #administration fit for purpose for democratic governance. This inaugurates the third and most crucial phase of the democratic transition.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ivor Chipkin inaugurating #Statecraft2026 at #GIBS. Solving the problems of democratic government requires practical judgement. But for practical judgement to be possible, analysis is needed. The challenges of democratic governance need an accurate diagnosis of the causes of problems.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It is with pleasure that Jelena Vidojevic and I share the inaugural post of Histories of Government, a Substack aimed at exploring the challenges of democratic statecraft in the post-colonial and post-socialist worlds. historiesofgovernment.substack.com/p/reflection...

historiesofgovernment.substack.com

Reflections on Government in Most of the World

The View from Elsewhere

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Reposted by Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

You might imagine that an event celebrating 75 years of the Turing Test would be all "Wasn't he prescient, and look, now we really do have machines that think!" Mercifully, this event yesterday was close to the opposite. /1 royalsociety.org/science-even...

royalsociety.org

Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Turing Test | Royal Society

An event celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Turing Test, held at the Royal Society on 2 October 2025.

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

An Austrian theologian named "Wolfgang Palaver" unwillingly guiding Thiel down the road to Apocalypse is more Thomas Pynchon than Thomas Pynchon. www.wired.com/story/the-re...

wired.com

The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession

Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since.

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Reposted by Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC

Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 30/09/2025

I'm coming to realise that the primary purpose of a doctoral thesis is that it's essentially a nicely-organised citation repository for my specific interests.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

I am not sure. Perhaps he rushed into print when he should’ve given himself time.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

I think Ezra’s position on Kirk’s politics was silly and badly articulated. But his viewthat the Dems need to get better at politics seems to me correct. And his insistence on the need for a ‘third space’ beyond the spiralling polarisation seems to me courageous.

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Thanks for all the discussion on this. I'm pleased to see the debate. Also pleased (and interested) that my 19-yr-old daughter, a classicist, is much more hardline than me in refusing to use AI, for a variety of reasons.

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

None of this is to deny that the technology has some uses in these capacities (though not ones I've felt any need for myself). But I worry that we are starting to see intellectual labour as just a means to an end, and as something that can be shortcut.

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

And as for writing, don't get me started. Most often, the process of writing is not a laborious business of transcription, but a process of thinking itself. I'm not about to outsource my thinking to a machine.

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

...I mean that even with careful prompts I would not be confident LLMs could perform the function I'd want. How do I know that any bland AI summary of a paper is going to extract what might be of value to *me* in it? I don't even know that myself before I read it...

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

I'm often surprised at how much researchers are using LLMs for intellectual work. It's not that I disapprove, or at least not on principle. It's more that I'm surprised at the trust being placed in the process. And by that I don't just mean LLMs can give wrong information...

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

The little groups around fires will be in the former US.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

In about 40 years, some history postgrad class (probably in China) will run seminars trying to understand why the US liberal establishment, at one moment so smug and arrogant, allowed a bunch right-wing authoritarian nationalist idiots to take over their country, apparently with zero resistance.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

We are currently in the procyclical phase of the investment bubble. The moment of transition to the anticyclical phase is not a simple matter of reality asserting itself but rather a consequence of the situation when the underlying political conditions driving the bubble falter — even for a moment.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

The folks at Globalizations have managed to get their hands on one of those devices from Wm Gibson's novel The Peripheral that allows you to send messages to people in the past. This one arrived today, 19 September from, let me see, 23 October 2025. Reviewer 2 is presumably in a different stub.

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

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Andries du Toit - School of Government, UWC @andriesdutoit-uwc.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

Yes. Once you begin with the ‘slippery slope’ argument there’s not much to hold you back

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University of the Western Cape @uwconline.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

[READ] Professor John-Mark Iyi promised his older brother, Godwin, that he would complete his PhD before getting married and starting a family. He kept that promise and worked hard to achieve academic success that far exceeded his family's expectations. #IAmUWC

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