Rulers are powerless without administrative structures that enable them to effectively project their authority, implement their preferred policies, and deter or punish noncompliance. But reliance on bureaucrats within state administrative structures exposes rulers to the risk of agency loss. In other words, as part of the principal-agent relationships that characterize administrative apparatuses, bureaucrats (agents) may use their power to advance their own interests or undermine the authority of the ruler (principal). This means that, to protect their authority and power, rulers must strategically manage administrative bureaucracies with a view to limiting the risk of agency loss. In Regime Threats and State Solutions: Bureaucratic Loyalty and Embeddedness in Kenya, Mai Hassan brilliantly explores the strategic choices that rulers make to ensure effective social control through bureaucratic administrative structures. Such control enables rulers to stave off both elite-level and popular threats to regime stability. The book challenges existing accounts of how leaders solve principal-agent problems within state administrative structures and makes important contributions to our understanding of the strategic management of state bureaucratic structures under autocracy and electoral democracy, the drivers of subnational variations in state capacity, and, more generally, the politics of state-building and governance in multiethnic societies.

Hassan observes that rulers are seldom able to solve the problem of agency loss by exclusively relying on the selection of “good type” (i.e., loyal) agents. In most contexts, administrative bureaucracies tend to include individuals whose policy preferences and political loyalties may diverge from the ruler. This is because, in the process of co-opting potential elite challengers, rulers typically incorporate their supporters as well into state bureaucracies. Such supporters often have competing loyalties and pose the highest risk of agency loss. These dynamics are particularly important in countries with geographically concentrated and diverse populations. Under these conditions, rulers’ ability to maintain effective administrative control relies on the strategical deployment of bureaucrats across subnational jurisdictions. Such deployments often consider the demographic characteristics, political affiliation, and/or policy preferences of both bureaucrats and resident populations.

With material evidence from Kenya, Hassan argues that, to balance the need for bureaucratic loyalty and the co-optation of fellow elites (and their mass supporters), rulers judiciously post and shuffle administrative bureaucrats conditional on three factors: (1) alignment between the ruler and administrative unit, (2) the loyalty of the bureaucrats, and (3) embeddedness between bureaucratic administrators and the resident populations within an administrative unit. For example, co-ethnicity or significant political support for the ruler may make an administrative unit aligned to the ruler, while a loyal bureaucrat may be a co-ethnic or reliably co-opted non-co-ethnic. In the same vein, embeddedness captures the relationship between bureaucrats and the populations within their jurisdiction. Embeddedness may arise due to duration of tenure at the same posting or co-partisanship/co-ethnicity between the bureaucrat and the administrative unit’s resident population. With these factors in mind, leaders post the most loyal administrative bureaucrats to units from which compliance is of absolute necessity and assign embedded bureaucrats to areas they want to co-opt or that are already reliably loyal. Stated differently, when faced with the challenge of balancing co-optation and effective coercive control, rulers do not necessarily have to deploy a uniform national administration but can vary bureaucrats’ types and capabilities conditional on the demographic characteristics of administrative units. The end result may be subnational variation in state capacity.

Regime Threats and State Solutions is an extremely well-researched book. Hassan marshals an impressive array of data and methodological approaches to support its core arguments. This includes micro-level data on 2,000 bureaucrats and 15,000 postings, more than 100 elite interviews, and impressive archival research carried out over 16 months of fieldwork in Kenya. The core of the empirical analysis focuses on the Provincial Administration—an administrative apparatus responsible for projecting presidential power and authority, law and order, and general coordination of the functions of the national government’s ministries and agencies at the subnational level.

In chapters 3 and 4, Hassan outlines the origins and evolution of the Provincial Administration. Founded under colonial rule, the administration’s bureaucratic architecture survived decolonization and became the unchallenged backbone of the Kenyan state. At different levels—provinces, districts, divisions, locations, and sub-locations—Kenyan presidents deployed administrators both to facilitate service provision and enforce social control. Hassan also summarizes the specific elite and mass threats faced by different presidents in Kenya and how they responded to them using the Provincial Administration. By specifying the incentive system motivating the interests and actions of presidents, fellow elites, bureaucratic agents, and the masses, these chapters clarify the ways in which Kenya’s ethnic geography influenced different presidents’ strategic management of officers of the Provincial Administration.

Chapters 5–8 focus on the successive presidencies of Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi, and Mwai Kibaki and the specific ways in which each strategically managed high-level officers of the Provincial Administration. Kenyatta faced threats from co-ethnics over land scarcity and non-co-ethnic defectors from the ruling party. Moi, whose rule spanned both autocratic and competitive multiparty eras, faced threats largely from non-co-ethnics. Finally, Kibaki’s biggest threat came from an emboldened opposition and the resulting high-stakes electoral competition. Across the three periods, Hassan presents evidence in support of the claim that the deployment, shuffling, and promotion of officers of the Provincial Administration were driven by concerns over their loyalty, embeddedness with resident populations, and each presidents’ political alignment with subnational administrative units. In aligned jurisdictions, presidents tolerated embeddedness as a means of increasing the effectiveness of policy implementation. Meanwhile, bureaucrats with suspect loyalties (such as co-opted non-co-ethnics) were likely to be deployed in areas where their noncompliance would not pose significant threats to the president’s authority. The book also shows instances whereby bureaucrats who veered off the equilibrium path faced presidential sanctions. The fact that Moi’s administration spanned both autocratic and democratic eras allows Hassan to examine bureaucratic management strategies across regime types. Overall, the consistency of the evidence presented throughout these chapters strongly supports the core argument of the book. Furthermore, the insights highlighted in each case readily travel to other contexts beyond Kenya, as compellingly described in the book’s conclusion.

Hassan has written a book that is bound to ignite debates and more research on bureaucracies, public service provision, and state-building in multiethnic societies. In particular, it raises questions about the relationship between Kenya’s administrative bureaucracy and other institutions of state (such as the police and individual line ministries), how democratic consolidation and increased electoral accountability may affect the evolution of the principal-agent relationships within state administrative structures, and the political and policy consequences of persistent legacies of subnational variation in administrative capacity. Is there always a trade-off between bureaucratic loyalty and effectiveness? Can electoral incentives under democracy reduce subnational variation in bureaucratic capacity and effectiveness? Is it possible to overcome historical differences in subnational state capacity (e.g., through decentralization)?

In answering these questions, future works will undoubtedly benefit from the solid theoretical and evidentiary foundation built by Hassan. This foundation and the important wider contributions to the study of bureaucratic management, state capacity, and the politics of co-optation and control under autocracy and democracy make Hassan’s book a necessary read for students of comparative politics.