Conflict Resolution and the
Challenge of SelfGovernance in Africa (And
Other Regions)
Political Science Y673, Spring 2004
January 14, 2004
Overview of this Session
• About the Seminar (Y673)
• About the Workshop
• About the Consortium for Self-Governance
in Africa (CSGA)
• About doing Institutional Analysis
The Seminar
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Seminar Overview
Key Question Asked
Bodies of Literature to be Used
Seminar Requirements
Preview of Weekly Sessions
About the Workshop
• Founding of Workshop
• Basic Themes of Workshop Research
• Workshop-Affiliated Programs
The Consortium for SelfGovernance in Africa (CSGA)
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Mission and Objectives
Members
Research Interests
Activities: Past, Current and Future
Institutional Analysis at the
Workshop
• Workshop’s approach
• The Institutional Analysis and
Development Framework
• DECIDERS Framework (to be presented
by Mike McGinnis)
Seminar Overview
• Seminar will apply theoretical concepts &
analytic tools of institutional analysis to
better understand capabilities & limitations
of mechanisms of dispute resolution and
potentials for establishing self-governing
orders.
• Focus on Africa, but not exclusively.
Similar challenges exist in other regions
Key Question
• Can African countries & developing countries
elsewhere establish and sustain self-governing
orders?
• To address question, use analytic tools of
institutional analysis to:
– Understand how contemporary governing orders are
constituted; their capabilities and limitations
– Understand constitutional alternatives to failing orders
– Explore existing capabilities, potentials and limitations
within societies
Two Approaches to Governance
(stylized)
State-Centered
Approach
Community/PeopleCentered Approach
Focuses on political
institutions: elections, courts,
bureaucracies, etc.
Leaders tend to exploit topdown institutions
Sees social institutions as
foundation for governance
(Tocqueville)
Public entrepreneurs build
institutions that enhance
local capabilities
Self-Governance builds
upon indigenous and local
institutions, nested within
supportive structures built
Decentralization empowers
local extensions of central
government; limited
community involvement
Two Approaches to Governance
(cont.)
State-Centered
Approach
Community/PeopleCentered Approach
Ethnicity as tool for
partisan political
mobilization and conflict
A common language is
imposed by ruling elite
for nation-building
Ethnicity as source of
social capital and
collective action
Language diversity
utilized by public and
private actors
Foundations of Y673 Seminar
Bodies of Research Literature
• Institutional Analysis (Workshop)
• Dispute/Conflict Resolution (IR,
Comparative Politics, Anthropology and
Law)
• African Governance
• Work of members of Consortium for SelfGovernance in Africa (CSGA)
Institutional Analysis (Workshop)
• Understanding constitutional foundations of governing
orders
– Theories of sovereignty
– Self-governance as goal and polycentricity as means
• Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework
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Models of Decisions: Boundedly rational
Types of goods, attributes of community, rules-in-use
operational, collective and constitutional choice levels
understanding Institutions (rules)
• A grammar of Institutions
• Institutions as social capital
Dispute/Conflict Resolution
• From IR:
– Models of conflicts
– Institutions and processes of CR
– International development institutions and regimes
• From Legal Anthropology
– Ethnographies of traditional systems of dispute
processing
– Legal pluralism
African Governance
• Over-centralized & autocratic governments
• Contemporary crisis of governance, failed
states and ongoing conflicts
• Flaws of decentralization and
democratization processes
• Potentials for self-governance
How Seminar will proceed
• First Five Weeks (Jan 14 – Feb 11):
– introduction, concepts, theories and analytic
frameworks
• Next Seven Weeks (Feb 18 – April 7):
– crisis, challenges, and capabilities
• Last Three Weeks (April 14 – April 28)
– regional conflicts, peacebuilding and
international development support
Seminar Requirements
• Complete assigned readings
– Essential readings are listed
• Weekly memos
– On a thought, puzzle or issue arising from or triggered
by any of the weekly readings
• Research paper
– On any aspect of a governance challenge or dispute
resolution in some specific context
• Mini-conference
– May 1 and 3, 2004
Readings for Seminar:
Weeks 2 and 3
• Hobbes and theories of sovereignty
– Hobbes
– Ostrom
• Tocqueville’s approach to the study of
constitution of order in human society
• Barbara Allen
• Sheldon Gellar
• Vincent Ostrom
Week 4
Patterns of conflict Resolution:
Indigenous, Plural and International
• McGinnis’ review of literature
• Nature of conflicts and the conception of
law:
– Mary Parker Follett and “Constructive
Conflict”
– Sally Falk Moore and the conception of law in
Anthropology
– Peter Ekeh and the meaning and enforcement
of sanctions in two publics
Week 5
Social Capital and Potentials for
Self-Governance
• Foundations of social capital
– E. Ostrom and T.K. Ahn
• Community collective action units: social capital
as foundations for democratic self- governance
and self-reliant development
– Ayo
– Gellar
• Social capital as building blocks for post-conflict
reconstruction
– Sawyer
Week 6:
Origins and Nature of Governance
Crisis
• Legacies of colonialism, decolonization and
false quest for development
– Ake
– Doornbos
• Failure to establish control over territory and
legitimate rule over population
– Herbst
• Top-down institutions for delivery of public goods
– Wunsch
Week 7:
Governance Challenges in Central
Asia
Readings to be announced
Nazif Shahrani to make a presentation
Baqui Zai to lead participation
Week 8:
Problems with Decentralization &
Local Government
• Summary discussion of decentralization: types,
goals, dimensions, challenges
• Smoke
• Decentralization of control over natural
resources:
– Understanding what property rights and capacities
are devolved to local communities
• Agrawal and E. Ostrom
– Need for constitutional transfers and nesting resource
management in larger system of democratic local
governance
• Ribot
Week 9
Citizenship, Identities, and
Educaton
African state-building project and the conception of
citizenship:
– bifurcation of citizen identity: Citizens and Subjects
• Mamdani
– Social dislocation, transformed property rights and the
creation of “lumpen” youth: Neither citizen nor subject
• Fanthorpe
– Conceptions of citizenship as product of interaction
among ethnic identity, political authority, and
legitimacy: “civic-republican” citizenship vs. “liberal
democratic” citizenship
• Ndegwa
Week 10:
Islam, Abrahamic Religions, and
Democratic Governance
Readings to be announced
Nazif Shahrani to make presentation
V. Ostrom to lead participation
Week 11:
The Place of Language in
Democratic Self-Governance
• Analyzing the place of language in democratic
governance
– V. Ostrom
• Language, democracy and development in
Africa
– Obeng, Prah, Wafula
V. Ostrom will conduct seminar
Eric McLaughlin will lead participation
Week 12:
Civil Society and Democratization
Beyond Elections
• Polycentricity and democratic governance
• V. Ostrom
• Local self-governance and community
development:
– Experience from Andean Ecuador
• Korovkin
– From Nigeria
• Barkan
Week 13:
Understanding Rebel Movements
and Coping with Regional Conflicts
Understanding systems of conflict: Exploring
interconnection among processes of
peacemaking, rebellion and post-conflict
reconstruction
Mike McGinnis
Week 14:
Peacebuilding as Process of
Constitutional Choice
• Making peace settlements hold
– Hartzell, Walter
• Grounding peace settlements and peacebuilding
processes in local communities
– Spears
• Truth and Reconciliation as people-centered
peacebuilding
– Tutu
Week 15
International and Regional Orders
and the Prospects for Local
Governance
Understanding interconnections between
international organizations and local level
of governance: FAO and local forest users
communities
– Marilyn Hoskins
The Workshop and Institutional
Analysis
• Founding
• Basic themes of Workshop Research
• Workshop-Affiliated Programs
– IFRI
– CIPEC
Workshop in Political Theory and
Policy Analysis
• Established in 1973 at IU-Bloomington
• Network of affiliated scholars
– Faculty, students and visiting scholars
– Collaboration with many institutions
• Series of research programs
– Diverse topics (no master plan)
– Common themes and approach to research
• Scientific rigor and policy relevance
Basic Themes of Workshop
Research
• Public Economies
– Formal and informal networks of political, economic
and social institutions at multiple scales of
aggregation
• Focus on patterns of Self-Governance
– Conditions and consequences
• Polycentric Systems
– Multiple layers, overlapping jurisdictions
(all studied in a multi-disciplinary manner)
Fundamental Assumptions
• Community self-governance is essential
– Fundamental normative value
– Foundation for liberty
• Local participation a practical necessity for
sustainability
• Polycentricity makes use of economies of scale
at all levels of aggregation. (not just “small is
beautiful”)
• We can learn from a centuries of experience;
– Appreciate wide diversity of institutional
arrangements
– Not just “State vs. “market”
Long-Term Research Programs at
Workshop
1. Local Public Economies
– Water, Police, Employment Services
2. Management of Common Pool Resources
– Water, Irrigation, Fisheries, Forests: IFRI, CIPEC
3. Constitutional Order and Governance
– Constitutional foundations of order, development
assistance, conflict management, CSGA
4. Conditions for Collective Action
– Experimental research
1. Local Public Economies
• Debates over consolidation in U.S.
metropolitan (urban) area
• Analysis of police services
• Study of networks of public and non-profit
organizations and production of
employment services
2. Management of CPRs: What
works? (E.O’s Design Principles)
• Wide participation in institutional design and
processes of collective choice
• Clearly defined boundaries (membership,
resources)
• Congruence with physical conditions
• Consistency with community values
• Incentives for regular monitoring
• Graduated sanctions applied to rule violators
• Easy access to dispute resolution mechanisms
• Nested with supportive institutions (that grant
recognition of rights to organize)
Broad implications for
Governance?
• Critical resources, thus political relevance
• Challenges for governance:
– Conflicts among multiple user groups
– Expansion of state, global economy
environmental degradation
– Sustainability over time
• Fundamental need to understand
governance of multiple resources over
long periods of time
International Forestry Resources
and Institutions Research Program
(IFRI)
• Forests as “public economy”—multiple
resources and overlapping users groups
• Developed systematic coding form (physical,
social, economic, and institutional data)
• Extensive field research
• A dozen Collaborating Research Centers
(CRCs) around the world
• Plan to develop time series data on forestry
resources and institutions
Center for Study of Institutions,
Population, and Environmental
Change (CIPEC)
• Multi-disciplinary research program (NSFfunded)
• Originally focused on deforestation and
environmental change in Latin America
• Expanding to cover other areas of the world
• Biological and demographic data (in addition to
political, economic, social measures)
• Extensive use of remote sensing and GIS
Governance of Multi-Use
Resources: Initial Perspectives
• Global impact of human activities is shaped, in
fundamental and systematic ways, by
– Individual incentives
– Governance systems
• Analysts need long-term monitoring of economic
factors, environmental conditions, and
institutional arrangements
– Individuals researchers typically have short time
horizons
– So do most funding agencies
3. Constitutional Order and
Governance
• Historical and conceptual studies of macro-level
public economies in several countries
• Shared sovereignty vs. unitary sovereignty
(polycentricity vs. monocentricity)
• Political institutions not necessarily the most
important explanatory factors (Tocqueville)
• Democratic self-governance possible in diverse
cultures, but under diverse institutional
arrangements
• Community property rights deserve protection
Development Assistance
• Development sector as public economy system
of international and domestic public, private, and
voluntary organizations
• Perverse incentives may occur:
– International dev agency to “move the money”
– Recipients to act strategically simply to get the money
• Local participation (co-production) essential for
sustainable development
• Maintenance of infrastructure is a key indicator
of success
Conflict Management
• “War economy” or “coercive sector” is a system
driven by public and private actors
• Workshop-affiliated scholars involved in
indigenous-based conflict resolution and
constitutional negotiations in Southern Sudan,
Somaliland, Liberia
• Analytic Task: systematic research on conflict
management mechanisms (indigenous,
traditional, informal, national and international)
• CSGA major focus of this research program
Future Research: Design Principles
for Dispute Resolution
Mechanisms?
• Maintain multiple forums for dispute resolution,
each with clear jurisdictional boundaries
• Facilitate forum shopping, access to multiple
forums
• Facilitate creation of new mechanisms or forums
• Provide dispute resolution specialists with
incentives for continued participation in that role
– Sensitivity to local values and power relations
– Scope for autonomy and interest in
consistency
Future Research (cont)
• Sanctions should draw upon broader
relationships between parties (or ties to broader
community)
• Increase costs of using violence in disputes
• Avoid monopolization of decision making
authority (in individuals or specific principles) for
any forum
• Allow appeals of judgments and reform of
institutions
4. Conditions for Collective Action
• Fundamental concern in all public economies
(including laboratory experiments)
• Evaluate conditions for collective action beyond
group size and heterogeneity
• Investigating broader interactions among trust,
reputation, reciprocity, social capital
– Agent-based models of complex networks
• Experiments reveal systematic deviations from
theoretical expectations
– Similar results in diverse cultural settings
Summary: Recurring Themes in
Workshop Research
• Institutional analysis of public economies
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Resource management
Public services
Informal sectors
Conflict management
• Conditions for community self-governance
• Polycentric systems
All with policy relevance, scientific rigor, and
multiple methods and levels of analysis
The Consortium for SelfGovernance in Africa (CSGA)
• Network of teaching, research and
research-action centers
• Established 2002
• Institutional members in Africa and U.S.
• Website http://www.indiana.edu/~csga
CSGA Mission
• To help the diverse peoples of Africa
enhance their own capacities to govern
themselves.
• Building upon ongoing enterprises in
Africa, each member organization strives
to realize a shared vision of democratic
governance securely grounded in local
culture
Overarching Objective
• To deepen understanding of Africa’s
governance dilemmas and explore
possibilities offered by the self-organizing
potentials of African societies for
developing and sustaining self-governing
orders
CSGA Founding Members
• African Centre for Development and
Strategic Studies (ACDESS), Nigeria
• African Studies Program, IU,
• Associates in rural Development, Inc.
(ARD), Vermont
• Centre for Advanced Studies of African
Society (CASAS), South Africa
• Centre Universitaire Mande Bukari
(CUMBU), Mali
Founding Members
(cont.)
• Department of Political Science, University
of Ibadan (Nigeria)
• Institute for Contemporary Studies Press
(ICS), San Francisco, Calif.
• Pan African Centre for Research on Peace
and Conflict Resolution (Nigeria)
• Workshop in Political Theory and Policy
Analysis, IU
Other Members
Ghana Institute of Management and Public
Administration (GIMPA), Accra
• Department of Rural Technology, University of
Conakry, Guinea
• Institute of Federalism and Local Government
Studies, Ethiopian Civil Service College, Addis
Ababa
• Department of Political Science, University of
Sierra Leone, Freetown
• Department of Public Administration, University
of Maiduguri, Nigeria
Research and Research-Action
Goals
• Understanding patterns of indigenous,
traditional, and local governance
• Understanding conflicts and conflict
resolution mechanisms of local, national
and regional scales
• Understanding the place of African
languages in enhancing the constitution
and the establishment or sustaining of
democratic orders in Africa
Research goals (cont.)
• Developing and strengthening public entrepreneurship
through the generation of relevant intellectual knowledge
that can help communities draw upon the best of their
own traditions, while remaining open to innovation and
change, and thereby strengthen their capabilities for
democratic self-governance.
• Exploring the possibilities of religion as a form of social
capital that can enhance enlightenment and liberty, as
Tocqueville put it.
• Understanding the complexities of multiple forms of
identity as they bear upon citizenship, identity and
collective action
Task for Education and Training
• Learn more about indigenous practices
• Develop frameworks for comparative
analysis and evaluation
• Train scholars to apply frameworks in
further studies (multi-disciplinary)
• Share findings with local communities
• Civic education based on comparative
evaluation of indigenous knowledge
Current Activities of Members
• Community centers as centers of learning
(Mali)
• Studies of neighborhood associations
(Nigeria)
• Indigenous technology and community
development (Guinea)
• Peacebuilding (Sierra Leone)
• Civil service training (Ethiopia)
Current activities (cont.)
• Indigenous mechanisms of conflict
resolution (Eastern Nigeria)
• Development and Harmonization of
orthographies for languages in Southern
and West Africa (CASAS)
• Evaluation of natural resource
management policies & practices (ARD)
CSGA-Focused activities of
Workshop
• Research exchange
• Research resource generation (with
colleagues elsewhere)
• Coordination
Publications
• Ayo, S. Bamidele, 2002. Public
Administration and the Conduct of
Community Affairs Among the Yoruba In
Nigeria.
• Duany, Julia Aker. 2003. Making Peace &
Nurturing Life
Research nearing completion
• Gellar, Sheldon, Democracy in Senegal:
Tocquevillean Analytics in Africa
• McGinnis, Michael, Organizing for
Rebellion and for Peace in the Horn of
Africa
• Sawyer, Amos, Beyond Plunder:
Constitutional Foundations for Peace in
Liberia
Research in progress
• Hoskins, Marilyn is writing on her
experiences in community forestry
• Joseph, Sam is doing a practitioner’s
guide to peacebuilding
Projects for 2004 - 2009
• Create data base for comparative analysis
of local self-governance (neighborhood,
community-based associations,
indigenous governance)
• Workshops for practitioners
• Build research capacity
– Support training of grad students
– Visiting scholar exchange
– Publications
Workshop Approach to Institutional
Analysis
• The IAD Framework used as theoretical foundations for
a variety of empirical studies
• Shows how physical and material conditions, rules-inuse and community attributes jointly shape policy
outcomes
• Draws from multiple disciplines: economics,
anthropology, political science, etc.
• Allows for multiple levels of analysis: operational,
collective choice, constitutional levels
• Allows for investigation of configural or interactive
relationships
General Elements of Institutional
Analysis*
Context
Action Arena
Incentives
Interactions
Outcomes
Evaluations
Figure 2.2: A Framework for Institutional Analysis
Context
Physical/Material
Conditions
Action Arena
Attributes of
Community
Action
Situations
Perceived
Incentives
Patterns of
Interactions
Actors
Evaluative Criteria
Rules-in-Use
Outcomes
Source: Adapted from E. Ostrom, Gardner, and Walker (1994: 37).
Innovative Analytical Distinctions
• Nature of Goods
– Private goods, public goods, CPR
• Production vs. provision
– Both processes occur at multiple scales of
aggregation
• Polycentric system of governance
– Allows for mixing and matching production
and provision at multiple scales
Understanding Rules
• Rules as shared understandings with
reference to enforced prescriptions about
what is required, permitted, prohibited
• Rules assign responsibility to other actors
to impose costs on rule violators
• Understanding the source(s) of rules and
the enforcement of rules is fundamental to
the understanding of rule-ordered
relationships
Important Rules for Institutional
Analysis
• Identify rules-in-use (working rules) as
against rules-in-form
• Examine how rules-in-use affect variables
in action situation
Types of Rules
• Boundary rules (define membership, entry and
exit)
• Position rules (determine who undertakes
specialized/specific tasks)
• Authority rules (assign sets of actions that
actors at positions must, may or may not take)
• Scope rules (determines latitude of actions to
be taken, what is considered “off-limits”
Types of Rules (cont.)
• Aggregation rules (determines how
actors are configured to make choices;
level of control of an actor at a position)
• Information rules (determines access to
information; who should know what)
• Payoff rules (determine monitoring,
benefits, sanctions)
ADICO Grammar of Institutons
(Crawford and E. Ostrom)
• Grammar for Institutions Statements
A: Attributes of actors to which it applies
D: Deontic statement (may, must, must not)
I: Aim of statement (object, action, outcome)
C: Conditions under which statement applies
O: Or Else: consequences of violation
ADICO (CONT.)
• Helps us distinguish shared strategies (AIC),
norms (ADIC), and rules (ADICO)
• Strategy specifies action (I) of actors (A)in all
circumstances (C)
• Norms add intrinsic costs for violating deontic
logic (no roles assigned)
• Rules assign responsibility to other actors to
impose costs on rule violators
– Roles defined with responsibility for enforcing the “Or
Else” component of rules
ADICO (CONT.)
• ADICO statements fit together configurally into
mutually constitutive networks
• Normative systems (belief system)
– Network of ADICO statements
– No agents assigned responsibility to punish norm
violation, but may be specialized roles involved
• Rule System as definition of formal
organizations
– Network of ADICO statements, each “or else”
statement linked to some actor assigned the role of
enforcing sanctions
– Organizations as network of roles (linked by rules)
DECIDERS Framework
• See Michael McGinnis, Varieties of
Institutional Analysis: The DECIDERS
Framework (Y673 seminar syllabus)