Since the 1980s, the Tanzanian state has been undergoing a transformation involving both the relations of power among the central organs of the state and the social role that the state plays in Tanzanian society. The dominance of the ruling party (CCM), with its goals of rural-based socialist development has eroded. Administration has triumphed over politics, and the state is coming increasingly under the sway of an administrative ethos. There is little indication that opening up politics through multi-party elections will counter this trend.

Several factors contributed to this transformation. The economic crisis of the 1980s was a catalyst, weakening the capacity and legitimacy of the state and the party in particular. A second element was international actors, particularly the IMF, empowered to intervene in Tanzania by the economic crisis. These actors played a significant role in defining policy shifts away from rural-based socialist development through their advocacy of structural adjustment. The crisis of capacity and intervention of outside influences might have generated some policy shifts, but did not necessarily determine that a transformation of the state would ensue. Adam Przeworski (1986) has suggested that transitions from authoritarian rule are possible only when there is a viable alternative to the authoritarian regime. Likewise, it is only when a sufficiently coherent counter coalition exists within the state to represent an alternative ruling elite that state transformation is possible. In Tanzania, the crisis of state capacity and intervention of foreign actors generated such a transformation because administrators presented a potential counter coalition. Never adequately incorporated into the CCM-dominated state, administrators retained elitist norms, viewing themselves as a development vanguard, contrary to the role specified for administrators by the CCM. Although political authorities explicitly sought to render administrators subordinate and responsive to the party which would define the social role of the state, bureaucratic autonomy remained high.