Conflict Resolution and Self-Governance: Insights from Africa and Beyond

1. Conflict Resolution and the Challenge of Self-Governance in Africa (And Other Regions)Political Science Y673, Spring 2004January 14, 2004

2. Overview of this Session • About the Seminar (Y673) • About the Workshop • About the Consortium for Self-Governance in Africa (CSGA) • About doing Institutional Analysis

3. The Seminar • Seminar Overview • Key Question Asked • Bodies of Literature to be Used • Seminar Requirements • Preview of Weekly Sessions

4. About the Workshop • Founding of Workshop • Basic Themes of Workshop Research • Workshop-Affiliated Programs

5. The Consortium for Self-Governance in Africa (CSGA) • Mission and Objectives • Members • Research Interests • Activities: Past, Current and Future

6. Institutional Analysis at the Workshop • Workshop’s approach • The Institutional Analysis and Development Framework • DECIDERS Framework (to be presented by Mike McGinnis)

7. 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

8. 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

9. Two Approaches to Governance(stylized)

10. Two Approaches to Governance (cont.)

11. 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 Self-Governance in Africa (CSGA)

12. 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 • 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. Week 4Patterns 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

19. Week 5Social 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

20. 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

21. Week 7: Governance Challenges in Central Asia Readings to be announced Nazif Shahrani to make a presentation Baqui Zai to lead participation

22. 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

23. Week 9Citizenship, 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

24. Week 10:Islam, Abrahamic Religions, and Democratic Governance Readings to be announced Nazif Shahrani to make presentation V. Ostrom to lead participation

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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

29. Week 15International 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

30. The Workshop and Institutional Analysis • Founding • Basic themes of Workshop Research • Workshop-Affiliated Programs • IFRI • CIPEC

31. 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

32. 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)

33. 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”

34. 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

35. 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

36. 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)

37. 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

38. 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

39. Center for Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC) • Multi-disciplinary research program (NSF-funded) • 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

40. 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

41. 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

42. 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

43. 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

44. 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

45. 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

46. 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

47. Summary: Recurring Themes in Workshop Research • Institutional analysis of public economies • 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

48. The Consortium for Self-Governance 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

49. 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

50. 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