Development Through Bricolage

Rethinking Institutions for Natural Resource Management

Frances Cleaver

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351569521
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Environmental Law
• Index: Law

Why, despite an emphasis on 'getting institutions right', do development initiatives so infrequently deliver as planned? Why do many institutions designed for natural resource management (e.g. Water User Associations, Irrigation Committees, Forest Management Councils) not work as planners intended? This book disputes the model of development by design and argues that institutions are formed through the uneven patching together of old practices and accepted norms with new arrangements. The managing of natural resources and delivery of development through such processes of 'bricolage' is likened to 'institutional 'DIY' rather than engineering or design.

The author explores the processes involved in institutional bricolage; the constant renegotiation of norms, the reinvention of tradition, the importance of legitimate authority and the role of people themselves in shaping such arrangements. Bricolage is seen as an inevitable, but not always benign process; the extent to which it reproduces social inequalities or creates space for challenging them is also considered. The book draws on a number of contemporary strands of development thinking about collective action, participation, governance, natural resource management, political ecology and wellbeing. It synthesises these to develop new understandings of why and how people act to manage resources and how access is secured or denied. A variety of case studies ranging from the management of water (Zimbabwe, India, Pakistan), conflict and cooperation over land, grazing and water (Tanzania), and the emergence of community management of forests (Sweden, Nepal), illustrate the context specific and generalised nature of bricolage and the resultant challenges for development policy and practice.

1
Getting Institutions Right: Interrogating Theory and Policy

Introduction: Why Focus on Institutions?

This book explores the ways in which institutions mediate relationships between people, natural resources and society. It aims to animate theory by showing just how the interaction between social structure and individual agency works through institutions. My primary focus is not on designing institutions for better resource management (already the subject of an impressive literature), but rather on understanding how institutions work in practice and consequently why the outcomes benefit some people and exclude others. This book raises the questions we need to ask if institutions tasked with natural resource management are also to promote equity of access and distribution, to further social justice.

Local institutions as the building blocks of ‘good’ governance?

‘Getting institutions right’ has become central to development policy in a number of ways. A curious amalgamation of policy ideas paradoxically link market reforms and the individualization of property rights to decentralization and community-based development (Peters, 2004; Osei-Kufuor, 2010). In such approaches, institutions are the channels through which individual and collective action is shaped, social capital built and the weaknesses of state or market provision redressed (Merrey et al., 2007; Osei-Kufuor, 2010). Robust local institutions are seen as fundamental to good governance and democracy, providing the spaces through which people express their needs and call representatives or service providers to account (Putnam, 1994; Cornwall, 2004; Houtzager and Lavalle, 2009). The current international policy consensus in the area assumes that institutions with clear roles, rules and lines of accountability will help to shape desirable governance arrangements of transparency, accountability and probity (Asian Development Bank, 1999; McGranahan and Satterthwaite, 2006; Grindle, 2007). My argument in this book, however, is that these desirable outcomes are not at all assured and that we need to understand why this is if we aim to attain them through development interventions.

This focus on designing the correct institutional arrangements to further good governance and development strongly influences policy approaches concerned with natural resource management at the local level. Here, well-designed institutions are seen as critical to regulating land rights, preventing degradation and depletion of resources (forests, fisheries, rangelands, wildlife, water), managing common property and creating sustainable livelihoods (Woodhouse, 2002). Mainstream approaches suggest that resource management can be strengthened through policy reform, capacity building, and particularly through redesigning community-level institutions so as to provide incentives to cooperate (Varughese and Ostrom, 2001; Heikkila et al., 2011).

Ideas about the inefficiencies of the state, the efficacy of local knowledge and action and the need to regulate individual behaviour are combined in a number of interlinked assumptions (see also Blaikie, 2006). Firstly, it is often asserted that communities can most effectively manage natural resources as they are best placed to monitor resource use and so deal with ‘open access’ problems of overuse. It is argued that they have an advantage in efficient resource use and allocation, being able to draw on their local knowledge of resources, environmental conditions and technology (Cinner, 2011; Ostrom, 2008). Secondly, community management is thought to be pro-poor. The claims are that local institutions can specify a place for marginalized people in decision-making, community norms often include the right for a living for all, and labour-intensive resource management activities may generate economic benefits. Thirdly, community management is seen as contributing to a virtuous cycle of ‘good governance’, so mitigating state failure. According to this view, it is through participation that people express their needs, call service providers to account and challenge corrupt practices. Fourthly, it is assumed that local traditions of cooperation provide the building blocks of good resource management, but often lack robustness due to informality and lack of clarity in rights incentives and authority structures. Policy approaches to rectify this ‘institutional deficit’ include formalization and codification of property rights and governance arrangements (for example, in relation to land tenure, see World Bank, 2001: 35–7, quoted in Sturgeon and Sikor, 2004). However, as will be illustrated in this book, this set of linked assumptions does not necessarily hold in practice and the related policy emphases may be misguided. Approaches to implementing local-level resource management tend to overlook the complex and changing interactions amongst community members, the state and service providers; to underestimate the dynamic nature of institutional governance in socio-economic systems (Huppert, 2008; Cleveringa et al., 2009).

Local resource management and its limits

The policy approach outlined above advocates the proper design of local participatory institutions for good natural resource governance. However, there is also a significant literature critiquing participatory approaches in development and community-based management of natural resources in particular. In this it is argued that the costs and benefits of such public participation are not evenly spread, and furthermore that some people find it more difficult to shape the communal rules than others. This literature is therefore more cautious about assuming that local governance will lead to ‘good’ governance and is concerned with the limits of decentralization, with unpacking over-romantic ‘myths’ of community and with the equity effects of local institutional arrangements (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999, 2001; Campbell et al., 2001; Cooke and Kothari, 2001; Mtisi and Nicol, 2003; Cleaver et al., 2005; Osei-Kufuor, 2010; Wong, 2010). Such questioning is compatible with critical social justice perspectives, which see the mainstream policy concerns with equality of opportunity in livelihood generation as too restricted (Morvaridi, 2008). Instead, advocates of critical social justice analyze the ways that power exercised through societal relationships produces unequal outcomes, and how this can be addressed through the broader redistribution of resources rather than just tinkering with the redesign of local institutions.

By way of introducing some of this more critical thinking on the institutions and community management, consider this sketch of the evolution of one village’s water supply scheme (for a more detailed elaboration see Cleaver and Toner, 2006¹).

The Evolution of a Local Water User Association

Since around 2000 a water users association has managed the supply of piped water in Uchira village in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, working from an office constructed with financing from a German development agency and through the labour and contributions of the villagers themselves. By 2005 the association had evolved from being a resource-poor sub-committee of the Uchira Village Council into a semi-professional organization able to manage a significant water supply system and to collect sufficient funds to cover day-to-day operations. It was constituted as a community-owned institution made up of paying members, separate from state institutions, governed by a board and managed by a professional team of staff, and was judged a success by the donors. However a number of tensions in its evolution and operation raise questions about community-based management of services and resources.

Who participates?

During the development of the water user association the balance shifted away from voluntary efforts towards professional management. By 2005, paid staff (some recruited from outside the village) included a general manager, an accountant, two technicians, two office watchmen, one intake watchman and an office secretary. At the same time public decision-making became dominated by a minority of residents. Villagers could become full members of the association, with the right to vote in elections and attend board meetings, by contributing labour or finance to the construction of the scheme and thereafter paying a yearly membership fee. However, only a small percentage of water users became full members (145 members of a village population of over 5,000), and these tended to be the wealthier villagers. Positions on the board of the association were dominated by a small elite of ‘big potatoes’ who were already heavily involved in other village organizations. Other villagers were reluctant to pay for membership when there was little chance of significantly affecting the decision-making dominated by these big men.

The Uchira experience echoes other literature which finds that actual participation at community level is often limited and the equal exercise of voice cannot be assumed. For example, women with small children or older dependents, young women married into an area, people from chronically poor households, or men and women from minority groups often experience participation as costly. Even if able to spend the time and effort to attend formal public meetings, they may be unable to speak effectively or to be heard in fora dominated by powerful members of the community. In such circumstances they may then bypass formal institutions in favour of accessing resources through kin and patronage networks or by stealing and cheating. Equitable participation in community-level institutions cannot be assumed merely because the arrangements are local and nominally open to all.

Attempts to address unequal participation by deliberately facilitating the inclusion of less-powerful people have had mixed results and cannot be assumed to automatically ensure a fairer distribution of resources (Dikito-Wachtmeister, 2000; House, 2003; Tukai, 2005; Zwarteveen and Bennett, 2005; Cleaver and Hamada, 2010).

Efficiency and social justice in tension

Decision-making at community level is not necessarily fair or just in its effects. In the Uchira case the board and management team considered their role to be the efficient management of the water system, with no remit for ensuring universal or needs-based access. There was therefore no provision made for graduated fees or for exemptions from contributions (although labour contributions could be transmuted into cash payments by those who could afford it). In practice the designed system of charging for water evolved in unanticipated ways, illustrating tensions between efficiency and equity considerations in community management.

The Uchira water system was formally established to include household connections and public taps. At the public taps elected water attendants were to charge people five Tanzanian shillings per bucket and to claim twenty per cent of their monthly takings back from the association. However, in practice, private attendants at some waterpoints (often in roadside or commercial areas) charged ten shillings per bucket. Some households with their own connections sold water on to neighbours (so potentially undermining the viability of paid attendants at public taps). In the remoter areas of the village households collected water fees (generally held at five shillings) by rota, or paid an attendant a monthly fee, and users unable to pay were sometimes able to obtain credit. Users complained about the fees (higher than when the Uchira Village Council ran the water supply) and grumbled about paying when they had already contributed labour and money to rehabilitate the scheme. However, the water users association managers considered higher fees and the unplanned sale of water from household connections acceptable in terms of ensuring financial viability and greater coverage by the scheme.

The example of the uneven development of the fee system illustrates how decision-making in formal institutions, whilst highly legible to officialdom, only partially reflects the ways in which decisions are shaped. An emphasis on formal rules and sanctions and on the public negotiation of differences overlooks the importance of the social relations on which people depend for their daily life. These may include unequal relations of patronage, reciprocity with neighbours and kin, the commercialization...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Development Through Bricolage
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Getting Institutions Right: Interrogating Theory and Policy
• 2 Introducing Bricolage
• 3 The Way We Have Always Done It
• 4 Plural Institutions: New Arrangements, Old Inequalities?
• 5 Continuity and Change: Gendered Agency and Bricolage
• 6 Piecing Together Policy Knowledge: Promises and Pitfalls
• 7 Remapping the Institutional Landscape
• 8 Transforming Institutions?
• Index