SESSION 1 - session – It’s what you do and how you do it – what types of services and what processes build legitimacy

A central plank of donor and aid agency engagement in places affected by conflict and fragility has been the assumption that supporting local and central governments to deliver services translates into legitimacy gains for those public authorities, and thus builds peace. In other words, service delivery is expected not only to generate orthodox development outcomes, such as improving school attendance and educational attainment or keeping populations healthy, but has also come to be seen as an instrument for building more legitimate and peaceful states. This idea – that services have a ‘transformative potential’ – has entered into donor thinking and practice over the last decade. The SLRC research programme set out to interrogate these assumptions. One of the key emerging findings is that how services are delivered can have an impact on peoples’ perceptions of the state and so may help to strengthen legitimacy. Positive experiences, grievance mechanisms and participatory approaches may help to strengthen legitimacy but negative experiences can quickly erode legitimacy gains. This panel will bring together quantitative findings from the major 5-year SLRC survey and qualitative findings from Afghanistan. It will be complemented by insights from a major World Bank South Asia study on services and legitimacy, reflections from NSP practitioners within the Afghan government and insights into the impact of service delivery on state building in Tajikistan.

Chair: Paul Harvey, SLRC

 

This panel is part of a recovering from conflict conference sub-stream convened by The Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC) in collaboration with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI). SLRC is a six-year global research programme exploring livelihoods, basic services and social protection in conflict-affected situations. Funded by UK Aid from the UK government (DFID), Irish Aid and the European Commission (EC), SLRC was established in 2011 with the aim of strengthening the evidence base and informing policy and practice around livelihoods and services in conflict. SLRC’s research focuses on eight conflict-affected countries: Afghanistan; Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC); Nepal; Pakistan; South Sudan; Sri Lanka; Uganda; and Sierra Leone. The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) is a partner institution and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is the lead institution. www.securelivelihoods.org

 

Abstract:

Building village-level institutions in Afghanistan – or not?

Dr Adam Pain, SLRC Afghanistan and Swedish University of Agricultural Science (SLU), Uppsala

Afghan villages differ. Some are more developmental in character while others are run largely for the exclusive benefit of the elite and have limited public good provision. Where villages are rich in irrigated land and a small group of economically secure landed elite own most of the land, the village may be run in their interests. Where the village is more resource-poor, land holdings more equally distributed and the village leadership economically insecure, there may be more of a concern for the collective welfare of the village. Patron-client relationships and a socially embedded economy characterise daily life.

Life inside villages and the connections villages make to the outside world are thus structured by personalised relationships and a web of networks of access. What happens when the rules of accountability implicit in introduced programmes to reform village-level government collide with a different logic and structure? Consider the position of a village leader who is also head of an introduced committee and expected to behave impartially according to formal rules. Households within the village on the other hand expect him to behave in an entirely different way using networks of access through patronage connections to higher authorities. Incoherence results because of contradictions between two powerful relationships of accountability demanded of the same person. Drawing from a study of village variability in Afghanistan, this paper will explore the extent to which the formal rules are blended with or fully captured by the informal rules.