Getting analytical on our political power, the priority of authority Government institutions often do not work effectively in weak states, yet this does not mean that a country has descended into anarchy. In weak states some of the most central aspects of people’s lives, such as property rights and rights to political participation, seem to be governed outside statutory institutions, as Professor Christian Lund of the Rule and Rupture project explains A number of countries across the globe are characterised as weak states, in which government institutions are not working effectively. However, this does not mean that there is no government at all in these countries, says Professor Christian Lund. “Once you get closer to people’s daily lives in weak states, you see that it’s not a state of pure anarchy, there’s a lot of governance going on. It just doesn’t take place through government institutions,” he explains. Based at Copenhagen University in Denmark, Professor Lund is the Principal Investigator of the Rule and Rupture project, an initiative studying the local institutions which exercise political authority in different countries
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across the world; this could be a village council for example, or even institutions with no formal mandate. “A village council is among the lowest official bodies in the state, but sometimes chieftancies take on governance roles, although they are not formal institutions, or it might be NGOs. In Indonesia and Colombia, you have areas which are occupied by farmers movements or other social movements, which are outside state control,” says Professor Lund. The focus in research is on six different countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, all of which have experienced different kinds of political ruptures over recent years. While these countries have significant
social and economic differences, Professor Lund believes that a certain pattern can be identified in terms of governance. “The pattern is basically that people’s demand for land rights, or political rights, are addressed not just to statutory institutions, but to all kinds of local power-holders,” he outlines. This effectively empowers these local powerholders, and over time they come to be seen as the relevant authority, rather than the statutory institutions. “When we talk about failed states, it’s usually from the perspective of statutory institutions, but this is not always a true picture of how governance is
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performed,” says Professor Lund. “When we talk about failed states, very often an almost unrealistic image of what is going on is presented. It’s either that it’s complete chaos, or that nothing happens. Both are wrong – it’s not chaotic, and a lot of things happen, that’s what we’re trying to investigate.”
Social contracts A statutory institution may takes responsibility for certain issues in weak states, while other areas of policy are left to local institutions or organisations, which local people themselves have created. This is a topic of great interest to Professor Lund. “How does this work?” he asks. In many weak states, some of the most central aspects of people’s lives, such as property or citizenship rights, seem to be governed outside statutory institutions, a topic at the core of the project’s research. “We’re essentially trying to look at social contracts, where some kind of authority authorises access to land or to political participation for example. The people who claim rights simultaneously acknowledge the authority of the institutions they address to grant it,” outlines Professor Lund. “It was important to find situations in which it’s not just the state that issues these rights, which re-confirms the authority
of the state – it was also about contexts where people were instituting authority in local organisations, which then exercise that authority. To do that, we needed to find moments of rupture, where old social contracts had broken down, and new social contracts were established.” The aftermath of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal in the ‘90s provides a good example, a time when central institutions were not in control of parts of the country. Similarly, at certain points in history, government has been virtually absent from parts of the Congo. Following these periods of instability, the population then had to reestablish relationships with the authorities. “We aim to identify those points in time when people’s rights to land and to political participation have to be re-established,” says Professor Lund. Points of rupture, of a breakdown of conventional political authority, give researchers a window into how it is then re-established. “I’ve spent some time in Indonesia for example, in rural areas where people have been occupying land. The people who occupied the land believe it was their land, but it was taken over by a Dutch plantation in the early part of the 20th century,” explains Professor Lund. “With Indonesian independence, they got the land
back, but when the Suharto regime took power in 1965, they were excluded from the land again. Then from 1998, they occupied the land once again.” This land occupation was technically illegal, as the Indonesian government did not recognise the land rights of these people. The people involved could try to gain recognition of their rights to the land from either the local farmers movement, that helped them get the land back initially, or the local village council. “Now, the village council is part of the Indonesian government – they can’t recognise the land as the property of these farmers. However, the farmers basically collected taxes among themselves and paid it to the village council as a kind of property tax,” outlines Professor Lund. The village council isn’t mandated to collect taxes, but of course money is always welcome, so in the end it took the money; while this was technically illegal, Professor Lund says this to an extent legitimised the actions of the farmers. “It gave some kind of public recognition of people’s land claims, and it also gave the village council some level of status as a public authority with a mandate to recognise people’s land rights,” he explains. “Even though it’s outside the law, a kind of political relationship is built around this exchange.”
When we talk about failed states, it’s usually from the perspective of statutory institutions, but this is not always a true picture of how
governance is performed
Field at the urban perimeter, Medan, Indonesia. Photo: Fachrizal Sinaga
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Rule and Rupture State Formation Through the Local Production of Property and Citizenship
Project Objectives
Rule and Rupture is an interdisciplinary research programme directed by Christian Lund. We aim to investigate how political authority is constituted after moments of rupture. The focus is on the global south.
Project Funding
The programme is funded by the European Research Council (ERC). ERC Grant: State Formation Through the Local Production of Property and Citizenship (Ares (2015)2785650 – ERC-2014-AdG – 662770_Local State).
Project Participants
Professor Christian Lund, Director Eric Komlavi Hahonou, Associate Professor at Roskilde University Mattias Borg Rasmussen, Assistant Professor at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen Michael Eilenberg, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Aarhus University Veronica Gomez-Temesio, Post Doc Rune Bolding Bennike, Post Doc Penelope Anthias, Post Doc Prathiwi Widyatmi Putri, Post Doc Kasper Hoffmann, Post Doc Inge-Merete Hougaard, PhD student Tirza van Bruggen, PhD student
Police tape marking out land in conflict, Indonesia. Photo: Christian Lund
Contact Details
Professor Christian Lund, Director of Rule and Rupture, Copenhagen University The programme is based at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, IFRO, at the University of Copenhagen, and runs for five years (2016-2020). T: +45 28 49 69 82 E: clund@ifro.ku.dk W: http://www.ruleandrupture.dk
Professor Christian Lund
Christian Lund is Professor of Development, Resource Management, and Governance, at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, at Copenhagen University. He previously held a professorship in International Development Studies at Roskilde University for a number of years. He has been a Visiting Scholar at University of Leiden, University of California, Berkeley, London School of Economics, Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen, and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Marseille.
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These are the kinds of micro-dynamics that Professor Lund and his colleagues in the project are looking at, with researchers working on both rural and urban field sites. One postdoc student in the project is working in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast country with a history of political instability. “We’re looking at who authorises people’s land rights in urban areas. I doubt that we will find anything linked to the national government as such – there’s just a different kind of governance structure emerging, sidelining the statutory institutions. That’s what we are trying to explore,” says Professor Lund. The political culture is an important factor in this respect; Indonesia for example has a long history of very strong central control, but following Suharto’s resignation in 1998, there was a move towards de-centralisation. “There’s a strong will among local politicians in Indonesia to extend their jurisdictions and possibly exceed their mandate. It’s been a centrally governed country almost since it gained independence, but this has changed since 1998 and there’s now strong demand for the empowerment of local politicians,” outlines Professor Lund.
Political landscape This points to a wider shift in how we think of state governance. While many of us commonly think of political authority as residing solely in national parliaments and statutory institutions, Professor Lund believes we should take a wider view. “When we look at the political landscape of a particular country, we shouldn’t limit ourselves just to looking at the institutions that have been assigned roles of governance. We should look at the institutions that actually do governance, even though they may not have been assigned specific roles,” he says. This means trying to remove preconceived ideas and look more deeply at how fundamental social contracts and property rights are governed. “What is the institutional configuration of this, in these settings where statutory government seems to be failing somehow?” asks Professor Lund. “Many different institutions are part of the governance of society. If we exclude them from our analysis, just because they haven’t been assigned an official role, then we are missing the point.”
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