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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Insecure entitlement to water in rural Tanzania: The role of power and institutions. Exploring a new institutional economic framework for analysis
| Panel |
32. Water in Africa: policies, politics and practices. National and local appropriation of global management models and paradigms
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| Paper ID | 292 |
| Author(s) |
Lecoutere, Els Ivonna
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | Water insecurity threatens rural livelihoods in Tanzania. Water scarcity is an issue but equally important are institutional reasons. In rural Tanzania, institutional arrangements for securing entitlement to water are characterized by parallel and competing institutions, most reflect unequal power relations and tend to endure attempts at institutional change. As a consequence, persistent insecure and inequitable entitlement to water, elite capture and conflicts over water are observed.
A change in the Tanzanian national water policy offers opportunities for institutional change for the better, but little change is observed. The fact that the policy is contextually ill-adapted or irrelevant and unintentional ‘stickiness’ and robustness of institutions can provide partial explanations. But the status quo is probably intentional to some extent. Powerful actors, gaining power and benefits under current institutions, are also in a better position to shape institutions and are inclined to strive for a status quo.
I distinguish two mechanisms by which power influences institutions and institutional change. First, given that actors’ beliefs and action-choices, together the core of institutions, are socially embedded, and power relations are expressed in social relations, social exchange games can alter actors’ strategies to the benefit of the powerful. Secondly, powerful actors are skilled social actors that have the ability to manipulate the cognitive frames of other actors and skew beliefs about institutions to their advantage.
It is argued that the ‘institution-as-equilibrium-summary-representation’ model (Aoki, 2001) is a new institutional economic framework for analysis that permits to integrate these mechanisms and is reconcilable with the inherent, more sociological, actors’ models. A formal model for analysis is suggested.
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