Governance and Institutions
Work Package Leader:
Prof. Koen Vlassenroot – Conflict Research Group, Ghent University
Overview
The objective of this Work Package is to analyse how institutions shape violent conflicts and how in turn they are re-defined and re-structured in response to violent conflicts. Although violent conflicts are frequently perceived as a form of state and governance failure, they nonetheless offer important opportunities for new classes of local and regional strongmen to challenge political powers. In most conflicts, a number of actors (militia-leaders and members, political elites, businessmen, petty traders, but also households and groups) have tried to improve their position and to exploit the opportunities offered by a context of internal conflict. The result is a profound reshaping of relations between populations, the politico-military or economic elites and legal and judiciary structures.
While the literature provides ample evidence of such changing opportunity structures at a national, state level, little is known about the changing power relations at a grassroots level and their impact on local governance structures. This Work Package tackles this literature gap.
Project 25: Governance without government?
Project leader:
Prof. Koen Vlassenroot – Conflict Research Group, Ghent University
Project researcher:
Dr. Timothy Raeymakers and Dr. Karel Arnaut – Conflict Research Group, Ghent University
Publications:
RWP38: Forced Displacement and Youth Employment in the Aftermath of the Congo War: From making a living to making a life - Timothy Raeymaekers
RWP57: Displacement in Post-War Southern Sudan: Survival and Accumulation within Urban Perimeters - Anne Walraet
RWP58: Social Mobility in Times of Crisis: Militant Youth and the Politics of Impersonation
in Côte d’Ivoire (2002-2011) - Karel Arnaut
This project looks at the ways individuals and households try to reduce and manage risk in situations of state collapse and armed conflict, and how these strategies relate to the incidence of local governance structures, with illustrations from the case studies of D R Congo, Sudan, and Côte D’Ivoire. The project will construct ‘sensitive indicators’ of non-state governance, and how these hold a potential for the improvement of political/human security.
The project will be undertaken in several steps:
- Development of a number of analytical parameters to evaluate the outcome of accommodation strategies during times of political insecurity through the interaction between micro level behaviour and meso-level ‘institutions’;
- Observation of formation of local alliances, networks, agencies and more broadly the new norms, policies and laws that are established using economic indicators (e.g. household surveys, micro-economic data) as well as the political science literature and methodology concerning institutions, networks and governance;
- Analysis of ‘scaling’ and ‘sitting’ of these governance structures along a sociological and geographical scale, by borrowing extensively from anthropological insights into the impact of social conflict, and more specifically from what has been recently baptised an ‘anthropology of mobility’.
The project will involve primary data collection based on individual interviews and participatory methods in the case studies.
Project 26: Water management and violent conflicts
Project leader:
Prof. Janos Bogardi – United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security
Project researchers:
Lars Wirkus, Prof. Libor Jansky, Sophia Bildhaeuser (née Schmidl) and Nicole Bendsen – United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security
Publications:
RWP22: Institutions of Water Management and Conflict Resolution in Lesotho on a Local Level: An empirical study of displacement areas of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project - Sophia Bildhaeuser (née Schmidl)
RWP33: Local Water Governance: Negotiating Water Access and Resolving Resource Conflicts in Tanzanian Irrigation Schemes - Joanna Kramm and Lars Wirkus
RWP34: Institutions and Conflict: Communal Water Management in North-West Namibia - Diego Augusto Menestrey Schwieger
This project will address important aspects of local management of water-related conflicts. Case studies to be analysed using individual and household evidence include:
- Management of forced migration of people affected by water-related infrastructure construction by the Lesotho Highlands Water Project;
- Comparison of previous cases with the success of local management and governance structures in the Okavango River basin in Botswana, Southern Kunene region in Namibia and Lake Eyasi in Tanzania.
Methodology for fieldwork includes interviews (individual and focus groups, formal and informal), oral history and storytelling, stakeholder analysis, conflict mapping, participatory action research and fieldwork, questionnaires, deep contextual and historical analysis and structured focussed comparison.
Project 27: Citizenship and land rights
Project leader:
Dr. Anne Hatløy – Fafo Institute of Applied International Studies
Project researcher:
Dr. Morten Bøås – Fafo Institute of Applied International Studies
This project considers the relationship between citizenship, land rights and economic recession in Côte d’Ivoire. This project will study how recent conflicts relate to the position of cocoa production in Côte d’Ivoire and increased focus on land and land rights, and tensions created between migrants with ‘user-rights’ to land and ‘autochthonous’ lineage-based claims to land. The project will draw on a combination of desk studies and qualitative interviews based on focus groups and individual anthropological-style life history approach interviews.
Project 28: The political economy of entitlement to resources in rural Tanzania – An institutional perspective
Project leader:
Prof. Koen Vlassenroot – Conflict Research Group, Ghent University
Project researcher:
Els Lecoutere – Conflict Research Group, Ghent University
Publications:
RWP23: Institutions Under Construction: Resolving Resource Conflicts in Tanzanian Irrigation Schemes - Els Lecoutere
RWP31: Who Engages in Water Scarcity Conflicts? A Field Experiment with Irrigators in Semi-arid Africa - Els Lecoutere, Ben D’Exelle, and Bjorn Van Campenhout
In rural Tanzania, local level institutions governing entitlement to resources for agricultural use and the resulting resource allocation are a function of the local power structure, rooted in political, socio-economic or gender privileges. Unequal distribution, less secure entitlement to water and land for less powerful agents are the consequence. And this is potentially a relentless source for local resource conflicts. Moreover, this kind of institutional arrangement induces resource insecurity for a large share of producers. Their need for self-insurance then leads to sub-optimal productivity. Persistent economic inequality and possibly an obstacle to endogenous growth follow.
More specifically, this project will focus on the following issues:
- What are the valid institutions for appropriation and for enforcement of entitlement to water and land in a ‘traditional’ irrigation system in rural Tanzania?
- How do relatively powerful agents exercise power to influence institutions for appropriation and for enforcement of entitlement to land and water to protect their interests?
- Do land and water insecure smallholder farmers forsake high yielding production choices to self-insure for these risks? And what is the welfare cost associated to ex-ante management of these resource insecurity risks?
The project will combine comparative case studies, experimental evidence and formal hypothesis testing using both qualitative and quantitative data collected during extensive fieldwork and from secondary sources. Local expertise will be integrated in the research project.
Countries studied in this Work Package
Angola
Botswana
Colombia
Côte D’Ivoire
Democratic Republic of Congo
Kenya
Lesotho
Namibia
Sudan
Tanzania
Funded by EC under FP6
