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Module 5 - Understanding local institutions


After looking carefully at a range of household livelihood strategies and developing household livelihood profiles as suggested in Module 4, investigators should be in a position to identify which local institutions play important roles in those strategies. But in order to understand how these linkages work, and how to undertake development activities that will either strengthen existing institutional linkages that help poor households, or develop new linkages that are appropriate and sustainable, much more has to be understood about those institutions themselves.

Local institutions and organizations cannot be taken at “face value”. We must try to understand what goes on beneath their “surface”. Development workers tend to pay most attention to relatively formal, visible institutions, such as development agencies or various forms of associations and organizations that they find within communities. This is because they are easy to identify, and usually have fairly clearly stated objectives. But institutions often overlap - informal, “invisible” social or socio-cultural institutions, such as caste, gender or informal “rules of the game”, may exist throughout society and inside formal, “visible” institutions. These “nested” institutions can undermine the objectives and effectiveness of the formal institutions within which they are “hidden”.

For example, a cooperative society - an organized, formal institution - may claim to involve the rural poor as members and support their farming enterprises. But there may be socio-cultural institutions that make it a social obligation for people in positions of power or influence to help relatives and kin. This may mean that those in charge of the cooperative channel the benefits to particular members who are linked to them by kinship. This may completely undermine the capacity (and willingness) of the organization to achieve its objective of being open-access and egalitarian.

Trying to place local institutions and organizations somewhere along the axes in Figure 3 (Module 1) will raise many questions. This in itself can often be a learning experience, as it forces us to think about certain issues which we may not have considered. For example, the regulatory functions of a community-based forestry enterprise to monitor access to village-held common property land; they may be largely informal (or even, strictly speaking, illegal), and reach beyond forest resources to include access to arable land, grazing areas, water, etc.

1. The process for developing institutional profiles

Through the community and household livelihood profiles (see Modules 3 and 4), it should be possible to already get an idea of which institutions and organizations have the most significant impact, whether positive or negative, on the livelihoods of poor households. The process of developing institutional profiles described in this module aims to help investigators to achieve a more in-depth understanding of how those institutions work. This, in turn, should help investigators develop a clearer picture of the linkages to household livelihood strategies and how they may affect development efforts.

Investigating institutions generally requires qualitative research methods that can be time consuming to use, but much of the basic information required to complete the institutional profiles will probably already be available from the community and household livelihoods profiles. Therefore, it should be possible to keep the work required to complete the institutional profiles tightly focussed on specific aspects thus far not covered.

More visible institutions, such as organizations and formal associations, will generally be easier to investigate - they usually have offices and staff who can be approached, and their key attributes are easier to discuss and analyze. These institutions will probably have already been clearly identified and little extra work may be required to complete their profiles. However, even these types of institutions may require understanding the unwritten “rules of the game” at work within them.

For example, it may be easy enough to discuss with members of a local farmers’ association how that association is structured, its objectives and the criteria for membership. However, if key informants have reported that the association is not functioning properly, is inefficient and the managers are misappropriating funds and helping only their relatives and “clients” whom they wish to patronize, it will be more difficult to get the ‘real story’ from the current managerial staff. Information about these kinds of controversial processes can only be collected using indirect methods, such as historical accounts of the institution (how it has changed and how it has dealt with conflicts) and by talking to stakeholders both inside and outside the institution.

The bulk of the field work required for the institutional profiles is likely to be taken up by the investigation of informal institutions like these, whether they are processes going on inside existing formal institutions or organizations or in society as a whole.

The process for developing the institutional profiles shown in Figure 9 has to be approached in a flexible way. The actual steps that are likely to be required will depend very much on investigators’ priorities, the amount of information they have already been able to gather during their field work so far, and the amount of time they have at their disposal to go into detail. Investigators may choose to focus initially on just one or two institutions that seem to be particularly important, or particularly relevant for the agency they are working for, and try to establish mechanisms for continuing their learning through the duration of the project or programme.

In every situation, the team must decide which institutions and organizations are the most relevant and should be explored further. Some “supplementary tools” are presented below for that purpose, which also serve to investigate the interplay and “nesting” of different institutions.

Figure 9 - Suggested Process for the Institutional Profiles

2. Starting out

Secondary data

Particularly with institutions, secondary data can provide an important basis for the initial development of the institutional profiles. Some of this data may have already been collected at the very beginning of the investigation. Sources include project and programme documents, legislative bulletins and reports, data at the different government administrative levels, and research articles from libraries. The nearest local government office should be visited not just as a formal matter of courtesy, but with the aim of collecting and discussing available data and policy and legal documents. Likewise, reports and statistics from government ministries and departments may provide useful background. It may be worth visiting extension agents working in the area and other individuals familiar with institutional issues and related topics.

Developing a checklist

A checklist of key questions to guide investigators as they develop their institutional profiles is important to ensure coverage of complex issues that need to be understood. This checklist can be developed using the key attributes of institutions discussed in Module 1 - Preparing the investigation. An example of a checklist for the institutional profile is provided on the page that follows.

The questions that make up this checklist are relatively specific and can easily be developed into a questionnaire if investigators feel that this is the best way to proceed. Otherwise, the questions can be used as a guide for semi-structured interviews.

Drawing up a “draft” institutional profile

Once it has developed a checklist, the investigating team can apply it to the key institutions that it has identified during the community and livelihood profiles. Some of the questions may already have answers, but others will almost certainly require further investigation using the methods suggested in Section 3. The process of developing these “draft” profiles will also help the team to get a better grasp of the institutional issues that it needs to address. Examples of completed institutional profiles using a table format are given in Section 4. Using this format for the draft institutional profiles as well should highlight clearly where more work needs to be done in the field.

Identifying gaps in the information base

The drafting of the institutional profiles may point out possible gaps in information and data, which can also be addressed using the methods suggested in Section 3. In addition, they may serve to fine-tune the checklists to better respond to certain more specific situations, so that a given checklist itself will be refined on a “made-to-measure” basis and thereby improved for use during the remaining time period allocated to fieldwork.

Table 12 - Checklist for Developing Institutional Profiles “Visibility” and “Invisibility”

The form and structure of institutions, their ownership and the key actors or stakeholders

LEGALITY

LEGITIMACY

What is the legal status of the institution or organization?

for example

does is have an official, legal status?
is it registered?

How was that status determined?

for example

by a policy decision?
by legislation?
by registration?

Who was involved in establishing that legal status?

How and when did the institution or organization originate?
What sort of local support does the institution or organization command and why?
Who initiated the creation of the institution or organization?

for example

local people?
local leaders?
outsiders (NGO, government, etc.)?

Who regards the institution or organization as legitimate?

FORMALITY

INFORMALITY

What procedures or formally established rules of behaviour does the institution or organization have?
What formal roles and tasks are established within the organization?
How are meetings called?
How often are they called?
Are they recorded?
Who decides procedures?
Who calls the meetings?

What role is played by different informal rules or processes?

for example

gender?
kinship?
class?
social status?
ethnic group?
How do these informal rules affect what the institution or organization does?
for example
do they influence who comes to meetings?
do they influence who speaks up at meetings?

Who establishes or influences informal rules or processes?

LEVEL

GEOGRAPHIC COVERAGE

At what level does the institution or organization operate?

for example

family?
lineage, clan or tribe?
professional group?
community?
inter-community?
women or men?

Who, or what, determines the level at which the institution operates?

What area does the institution or organization cover?

for example

neighbourhood?
village?
beyond the village?

How (and whom) is the coverage of the institution determined?

Table 13 - Checklist for Developing Institutional Profiles Objectives and Activities

Their normative versus practical attributes; what institutions say they do and what they actually do

CAPABILITIES

WILLINGNESS

What are the stated objectives of the institution or organization?
What is the capacity of the institution or organization to reach those objectives?
Are the objectives realistic when compared to its capacity?
Who is involved establishing, changing or influencing the objectives of the institution and its capacity to achieve those objectives?

Do leaders and community members sometimes disagree on the management of the institution or organization?
What commitment is there on the part of the institution or organization and its members to achieve its objectives and to follow its rules?
Are the names of members and their rights and duties posted on the village council door, or elsewhere?
Does the institution or organization have a ‘vision’? If yes, is it stated or expressed anywhere?
Who is involved in influencing the commitment of the institution to achieving its objectives?

MANDATED OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

AD-HOC OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

What objectives and activities does the institution or organization have a mandate to achieve or carry out?
What, or whom, does the institution or organization claim to represent?
How was this mandate established?

for example

by a government policy?
by traditional decision-making procedures?
by local consensus?
by established practice?
Who gave them that mandate?

for example

government?
traditional authorities?
local people?

What objectives or activities, besides the stated ones, have emerged over time?
How have they been addressed?
Does the institution or organization defend the interests of a particular group of people (does it play an advocacy role)? For whom?
Who is involved in establishing or influencing these ad-hoc objectives and activities?

ACTUAL ACTIVITIES

FUTURE ACTIVITIES

How does the institution or organization achieve, or try to achieve, its objectives?
What activities does the organization undertake now?
Who participates in activities and who determines where, how and when activities are carried out?

How does it plan to achieve its objectives in the future?
What activities are planned for the future?
Who will participate in future activities?
Who determines what future activities will be undertaken?

Table 14 - Checklist for Developing Institutional Profiles Membership and Participation

Who is included and excluded from institutions or organizations; the rules that govern membership

CONDITIONS OF PARTICIPATION

CONTRIBUTIONS

What are the conditions for membership?
Does membership in this institutions or organization exclude membership elsewhere?
Who participates in the institution or organization?
Who is excluded for the institution or organization and why?

What fees or other forms of contribution are expected from members?

for example

a lump sum investment, food, time, charitable contributions, sharing of land, water, animals, labour?

Is membership transferable or inheritable?
How are these contributions determined?
Who determines these contributions?
Who collects them?
Who decides how they are used?

RULES OF THE GAME

“NON-WORKING” RULES AND SANCTIONS

How, when and by whom were the rules established to determine who benefits (most/least)?
How, if at all, do women participate in the institution or organization?
What forms of patronage and protection, if any, does the institution or organization provide?
Who are the institution or organization’s main beneficiaries?
Who decides on how benefits from the institution are distributed?

Are some of the rules applied differently to different people?
Are there any rules that are no longer working or applied?
What sanctions are there in place for not following the rules?
How are they enforced? By whom?
Are they applied to everyone in the same way?
How often have they been applied in the past?
Who decides on and enforces these rules ad sanctions?
Who has been subject to them now and in the past?

DECISION-MAKING

LEADERSHIP

How, where, when, and by whom are decisions made?
How are they transmitted to others?
What possibilities are there to debate decisions?
What form of consensus is involved in decisions?
How and among whom is consensus normally achieved?
Are decisions ever revoked?
Why and when has this happened?
Who influences the decision-making process?

What leadership exists in the institution or organization? Is there an organigramme?
How are leaders chosen/elected? For how long?
How closely does the level at which the leadership operates correspond to the level at which the whole institution or organization operates?
Who participates in the leadership of the institution, both formally and informally?
Who has participated in the leadership in the past?

3. Methods for developing institutional profiles

To a considerable extent, a thorough checklist of institutional issues and the questions to ask about institutions constitutes the single most valuable method for developing the institutional profiles. The development of these checklists should help the investigating team to clearly identify where information gaps still exist.

Where these gaps are identified, additional information may need to be collected directly from people involved in the concerned institutions or from people affected by them, using semi-structured interviews either with key informants or with focus groups. By the time the investigators arrive at this point, they should have sufficient familiarity with the community so that they can easily identify those people who will be in the best position to inform them about different institutions. The interviews carried out at this point will generally be shorter and more sharply focussed than those carried out during the community and livelihood profiles.

Key informant interviews

Key informants can be selected based on their role in the local institutions concerned, their detailed understanding or first-hand experience of particular events (conflicts or crises) which need to be investigated, or because of their overall knowledge of the institutional context and players on a particular situation. When controversial issues are being investigated, attempts should be made to carry out interviews with more than one key informant in order to cross-check information and compare the viewpoints of different interest groups.

Focus group interviews

Focus group interviews or discussions will help investigators to identify consensus opinions, which are often particularly relevant when looking at local institutions. The discussions held with focus groups can also help to identify the grey areas surrounding institutional roles - areas where opinions about institutions differ or where the roles and responsibilities of different institutions are not clear. Issues where members of a particular focus group disagree will often indicate these grey areas.

One important issue when organizing focus group discussions will be the identification of appropriate groups. From the point of view of the study as a whole, groups of people involved in particular livelihood strategies, already identified during the community and household livelihood profiles, will generally constitute the most relevant focus groups for clearly identifying how institutions inter-relate with specific livelihood strategies. However, during the institutional profiles, focus groups may also bring together groups of individuals that are not connected by their livelihood strategies but rather by their roles, responsibilities and relations with particular institutions -- for example, office-holders in particular organizations, or the members of a particular association or club, or people who are subject to a particular set of rules because they all belong to a particular clan or tribe.

For more structured, visible institutions, focus group discussions can be set up involving the members of those institutions or organizations - office-holders, decision-makers - and those who are affected by institutions or who use the services they provide. For example, if the institutional analysis is focussing on the local agricultural extension service, separate focus group discussions might be organized with the administrators and managers of the service, field extension staff, local leaders and the farmers for whom the service is supposed to provide services. Each focus group might concentrate on different sets of issues illustrated in the checklist. The involvement of a range of stakeholders will allow these institutions to be understood from multiple perspectives.

Institutions, or processes, that are less visible and more associated with the establishment of norms of behaviour or “rules of the game” may require a somewhat different approach. Discussion might focus on actual events or hypothetical situations and on people’s reactions to those situations.

Structured surveys

Questions that will contribute to the institutional profiles can also be included in any structured surveys carried out as part of the investigation. Clearly only some aspects of institutions can be easily included in household level surveys, such as questions regarding membership, attendance and contacts with different institutions.

When the team members come to the institutional profile phase of their investigation, they can draw out this information and use it to add quantitative data to their profiles. Limited structured surveys can also be carried out directly with institutions to collect key information about their functions, membership and activities. These will generally be more appropriate for looking at organizations and institutions with clear structures, objectives and activities rather than processes.

Venn diagrams

During key informant interviews and focus group discussions, Venn diagrams provide a simple, visual technique that can help to focus discussions on particular institutions, their relationships with one another and their membership. They are useful for identifying key local institutions, particularly visible institutions with well-defined membership and spheres of activity. They can also provide a means of representing the key institutions in a community and so introducing those institutions selected for more detailed profiles “in context”.

BOX 6 - TENURE NICHES: FOCUSSING ON LAND TENURE, A COMPLEX INSTITUTION

A tenure niche is “a discrete area of land within the landscape defined by application to it of a specialized set of tenure rules” (Bruce et al. 1993). The same individuals and households often hold different parcels of land under different tenures, and this is commonly because they hold the parcels of land for different uses in different tenure niches. Not all community members may have the same rights within different niches. The space covered by tenure niches may vary seasonally; for example when, after the harvest, household fields become “common-land” where all community members can let their livestock graze on crop residues. In swidden systems, tenure niches may move. Tenure niches may overlap when there are distinct tenure regimes for two resources that physically overlap, as when tenure of trees is defined independently from that on land. In this case, the concept of tenure niches may also be adapted to be applied to forested areas (tree tenure) or to water bodies (sea tenure).

So, how to identify tenure niches? The main tool for finding out about the physical properties of a community’s natural resource base and their linkage to tenure niches and agricultural activities is through participatory resource mapping (described in the community profile, Module 2). But tenure also determines the distribution of benefits (and duties) of resource use. As “tenure” is too broad as an institution to be analyzed through the type of questions presented in Module 4, this can only be explored through more in-depth investigation at household level. Certain tenurial arrangements can be analyzed through the household surveys, such as sharecropping, or annual leases of land for cultivation. To find out more about tenure niches, the household survey results can be supplemented with some in-depth semi-structured interviews at household level, following the typology of livelihood strategies established on the basis of Module 3. It is important to recognize that land and land-use rights may be held at individual (men, women), household and community levels.

Life histories, narratives and stories

The accounts of local people of past events provide a rich source of material for investigators about what institutions really do (as opposed to what they are supposed to do). Local people and key informants can be asked to “tell the story” of a particular event or change in the community. They should then be left to recount that story as far as possible in their own words, with care being taken to record what they say and how they say it. Often, the peculiar turns of phrase used by people will provide important clues to how they regard the roles of the institutions involved, and these phrases need to be recorded as faithfully as possible. (Obviously, the collection of these life histories and narratives needs to be carried out by investigators who understand the local language.)

The types of events that these accounts can focus on include:

natural or man-made disasters;
particular changes in the local environment;
the stories of particular activities, individuals or households;
episodes of civil unrest.

BOX 7 - UNDERSTANDING COMMON PROPERTY: A FORM OF INSTITUTION THAT MAY BE DIFFICULT TO “CRACK”

An important aspect of understanding the linkages between household livelihood strategies and local institutions is evaluating the role of common property institutions. Interactions among kinship groups of unequal social status are nested in historical power relations, and the priority rights for some lineages are largely the consequence of who occupied the land first. Common property resources can be extremely important to the poorest rural population groups (including ethnic minorities), who may be landless and/or enjoy only limited and precarious access to natural resources. These groups suffer the most from inadequate legal definition and protection of common property resources - for example, herders who need to move to find adequate pastures for grazing, or “forest-dependent” peoples. Local institutional arrangements that offer a certain degree of tenure security with regard to common property resources are often a key component in the livelihood strategies of the poor. Through the use of the methodological tools offered in the Guidelines, it is possible to uncover the importance in local livelihoods of common property, but additional “probing” may be necessary to achieve an understanding of the dynamics and prospects of common property resources under the pressure of demographic changes, corporate outside interests, market liberalization, individual land titling, privatization, decentralization, globalization, etc. To understand priority rights of access and ownership versus use rights in common property resources, it is advisable to construct short local settlement histories, starting with when, by whom and how a given village or hamlet was founded (this can be done through key informant interviews with elders). Then, the process illustrated below can be used to develop institutional profiles for specific common property resource use arrangements.

Conflict analysis[2]

The analysis of conflicts in the community, or between communities, can be particularly useful in helping the investigators to understand the role of local institutions and their relations with different groups of households. Conflicts will often shed light on different people’s claims over access to resources and productive assets and especially on how those claims are motivated or enforced through various local institutions. They may also make it clear which resources are most important, and the networks of power and influence that surround those resources will often illustrate relations of power in society at large. Conflicts may also reveal much about how social groups organize themselves, how interest groups are formed and split up and the different priorities of those groups.

It also shows how the working of institutions is influenced by power relations, and how official rules, laws and procedures can become political instruments. Different villagers may seek support from different institutions to advance and substantiate their claims over access to resources. For example, in the case of land, these may be “modern” ones (“All land belongs to the State”); “traditional” ones (“Land parcels are assigned by the Chief”); or “religious” ones (“He who revives the land, it shall be his”).

A historical analysis of conflict situations will often help investigators to understand how institutions have changed and what effects that may have had on households and their livelihood strategies.

The conflict situations to be analyzed should be chosen based on the results of the investigations of household livelihood strategies (Module 4). A simple process for carrying out a conflict analysis might include:

1. Start by defining “conflict” - what is it about? how did it start? who is involved? how long has it being going on? A timeline can be used with key informants to try to locate the beginning of a conflict and to trace its history and evolution. A flow diagram can be used to portray its root causes and to elaborate a “conflict tree”.

2. Define the stakeholders and analyze their different interests and concerns in relation to the conflict. A stakeholder matrix can be used for an analysis of stakeholders and stakeholder positions or interests that revolve around a given development issue. An example of a stakeholder matrix is given in the following table.

Table 15 - Matrix Analyzing the Interests of Stakeholders in Different Aspects of a Coastal Area Development and Conservation Project in Malatuk

Stakeholders in the Project

Different areas of concern of the project

Ministry of Environment

Local fisheries cooperative

Swamp fishers/ shrimp seed collectors (settled)

Swamp fishers/ shrimp seed collectors (migratory)

Private sector/ entrepreneurs

Shrimp farm development

Significant (provides income for the project via licensing arrangements

Potential role in marketing produce (not yet defined)

Very significant (creates higher demand for shrimp seed)

Mixed or insignificant (creates higher demand for shrimp seed but diminishes access to mangrove areas currently used)

Very significant (potentially high return on investment, opportunities to expand into processing and marketing)

Biodiversity protection

Significant to the project’s/ Ministry’s objectives

Significant (reseeding the ranges helps preserve biodiversity)

Very significant (preserving natural resources, more possibilities for diverse activities, protecting local environment)

Significant (preserving natural resources, more possibilities for diverse activities)

Not significant

Tourism promotion

Very significant

Significant (opportunities for diversification of activities)

Significant (opportunities for livelihood diversification)

Insignificant

Very significant

Social development aspects

Significant (ecological awareness raising)

Significant (is one of the cooperative’s objectives)

Significant (contact with the outside world)

Insignificant (are afraid of threat to their identity and lifestyle)

Significant for children

Process documentation

With some institutions, it may prove very difficult to achieve a proper understanding of how they function within the scope of a short-term study of this kind. Where the investigation of local institutions is being carried out as part of an on-going programme of development work, the investigating team may decide on an alternative approach involving the monitoring of institutional processes over a longer period. This can allow the team, or the organizations it is working for, to observe institutions and their functioning in practice and often leads to a far better overall understanding of how they work.

This process-oriented approach, described by Mosse (1997), can be used to focus on institutional issues from a variety of points of view. The team might decide on a particular institution and arrange for key players in that institution to be contacted a regular intervals in order to review different aspects of the institutions in question. The sort of issues discussed might be:

changes that have taken place;
particular events that have involved the institution;
decisions that have been made;
activities undertaken;
sanctions imposed;
the views and perceptions of members of the institution or other people affected by its activities or decisions.

Alternatively, the team may choose to focus on a particular set of resources, on a particular set of people or on a particular set of rules or regulations that it wishes to understand in more detail. The team can then establish a system for collecting information about the decisions, rules and institutional actors surrounding those resources on a regular basis over time.

Checking on the invisible attributes of an institution

Even the most thorough of institutional profiles can miss some of the more invisible attributes of institutions. For example, in some cultures, it may be considered normal and necessary to share individually earned wealth and success with family and friends rather than using it for personal gain. If this is “the way things are done” and local respondents know of no other way of conducting their lives, they may not mention it or highlight it to outside investigators. But if this “rule of the game” is not recognized by investigators, efforts to promote sustainable private enterprises may quickly run into problems if earnings are not reinvested in businesses but used to cement social relationships within the kin group and community. So how can the investigators try to understand these aspects of local institutions and processes in the short time available to them?

The checklist below aims to help the investigating team check on some of these invisible aspects of institutions. For each institution identified, the team should pose these questions. Often investigators will find the answers from the responses to their original checklist for the institutional profile. But this can be regarded as a double-check on possible invisible aspects of those institutions that they may have not have thoroughly analyzed or that they may have missed completely. Often, by this stage of the investigation, teams may not have the time or resources available to go into these areas in more detail, but this checklist can at least help to identified gaps and encourage the team, or the users of the output of the investigation, to set up mechanisms in the future for finding out about these issues more thoroughly.

Table 16 - Checklist for the “Invisible” Attributes of Institutions

VALUES

How does the institution represent values or norms that are common to its members, or to the community at large?

What are those values?

IDENTITY

Do any particular social groups identify closely with the institution?
Does the institution play a role in forming or preserving the identify of that social group?
How does this identification affect the way in which the institution or its members act?
How does it affect the sustainability and effectiveness of the institution’s actions?
How does it affect the relations between this institution and other institutions, both locally and at higher levels?

INCENTIVES AND MOTIVATIONS

Do the members have any incentives (economic, social, cultural, etc.) or motivations (political, familial, cultural, etc.) for participating in a particular institution?

How do these incentives or motivations affect the way in which they participate?

How are these incentives or motivations realized?

How do these incentives or motivations relate to existing or past social obligations?

How have they changed over time and why?

CHANGE

What is the potential and capacity for change in a particular institution? what changes have taken place in the past? how did they take place? who or what promoted them?

What role has the institution played in determining change in the neighbourhood/village/community in the past?

What role could it play in the future?

In the existing situation, how is the institution likely to change in the future?

How do different members and participants think it will change?

How would they like it to change?

How can they influence that change?

INDIVIDUALITY

What room is there for individual initiative in the institution?
How is individual initiative accommodated or encouraged by the institution?
Is such initiative limited to certain members or participants of the institution?
Has this changed in the past and how could it change in the future?

LEADERSHIP

How is leadership established within the institution?

What role do the personal characteristics (e.g. charisma) and leadership skills (e.g. clear speech) play?

How has this changed compared with the past?

How do the leadership skills and style affect the success or failure of the institution?

How important are the following for establishing leadership in the institution:

political power
patronage networks
family and kin relations.

RELATIONS WITH OTHER INSTITUTIONS

Is the institution part of, or linked to, another bigger institution?

Are there other smaller institutions that are part of, or linked to, this institution, either formally or informally (for example, are there sub-committees, or kin and communal linkages that are typical of the members of the institution)?

How do these linkages affect the institution?

Questions like these can help the team to understand aspects of the institutions it has identified that may not be immediately obvious from the initial investigations.

4. Outputs of the investigation of local institutions

In order to be useful to decision-makers, such as project managers or elected officers, the profiles need to be presented in a way that highlights several key areas:

what are the most important features of institutions?
what are their links with other institutions?
who are the key stakeholders in institutions?
who is affected by institutions?

There are many ways in which this information can be presented. Diagrams showing the relationships between institutions, or between different parts of the same institution, can be useful. Flow diagrams or decision trees can usefully illustrate the way in which decisions are taken or activities carried out within an institution. But diagrams can usually only illustrate one particular aspect of an institution. They need to be used in the context of a more complete picture of institutions. Tables, such as those shown on the following pages, can be particularly useful for presenting such a complete profile of an institution. They can also help the team to cover all the relevant aspects of the institutions and keep track of the information that has been collected which illustrates the different features identified. They also show clearly how the team has arrived at the conclusions about the institutions it is investigating.

As a starting point, the tables take different institutions identified by the investigating team during the course of the community and household livelihood profiles. This tight focus on institutions ensures that the various aspects of those institutions are covered thoroughly. Understanding the ways in which these institutions are linked to different livelihood strategies is addressed in Module 6, but it is important that the various groups of people that are affected by the institutions being analyzed are identified so that investigators have a clear starting point when they come to look at these linkages.

The steps developing the tables are as follows:

1. Start by looking at a particular institution identified as being of importance during the community or household livelihood profiles (in the cases presented, a variety of institutions of different types are given as examples).

2. For each of these institutions, the table reviews key features that the team may have uncovered. These features are divided according to the three sets of attributes used to structure the checklist at the beginning of this module -the relative visibility and invisibility of the different aspects of the institution, the objectives and activities of the institution, and the inclusiveness or exclusiveness affecting the membership and participation in the institution.

3. In the first column, under each of these sets of attributes, key features of the institutions in question, or key bits of learning that the team may have uncovered, are listed.

4. In the next column, the consequences of each feature are noted. These might include particular rules, regulations or sanctions that the institution produces, it might be a particular form of behaviour by members of the institution, or it might be failures and successes in achieving institutional objectives.

5. Next, any other institutions that are involved or affected by that particular feature are noted.

6. In the following column, the ways in which this interaction between institutions takes place are recorded.

7. In the fifth column, the key stakeholders within the institution who are concerned with this feature are listed.

8. Finally, the people affected by this feature are also noted. This is particularly important as it will help investigators move on directly to the process described in Module 6 where the precise linkages between the institution and the livelihoods of different groups of people will be elaborated.

9. As in the tables described in Modules 3 and 4, further columns can be added to note down precisely which tools have been used to investigate each of these features and the form in which information is available to illustrate each of these points.

A key feature of this procedure for building up a profile of the institution is that it focuses attention on different aspects of the institution and then analyzes them in detail. There will often be overlap between the points entered in different rows of the table - for example the consequence of certain invisible features of an institution may be a particular type of activity that also appears lower down the table. But these overlaps can help to highlight some of the internal dynamics of the institutions in question.

Some of the elements in different columns will require much more detailed description and analysis than might be possible within the format of a table, but the table can provide a reasonable overview of key institutions and point readers to more detailed descriptions of important features, such as conflicts, or historical developments, that cannot be easily contained in the table itself.

In the examples of institutional profiles, three very different kinds of institution are looked at. Table 1 creates a profile of a very visible formal organization - a Fisheries Department. Note that in this example, because the focus is on a particular village (Baraley from the imaginary Malatuk case study), the Fisheries Department is looked at from this community’s point of view. Table 2 looks at a very different, less visible and much more informal institution - the kinship relations between a particular group of people in this same village. Table 3 covers another visible institution - a particular type of savings group in the village.

Note that the issues identified in the first column of all these tables closely follow the key areas identified in the Checklist for the Institutional Profile suggested in Section 2 of this module. Also note that, for some institutions, and particularly for organizations, some additional information regarding the size of the institution, the numbers of people involved, the resources controlled and other basic quantitative data would also be important for completing the institutional profile.

Table 17 - Institutional Profiles - Baraley Village Fisheries Department

Key institutional attributes

Consequences

Institutional stakeholders involved

Other institutions affected or linked

How affected or linked

Who impacted

“Visibility”/”invisibility” - legality/legitimacy, formality/informality, level/geographic coverage

formal legal status - low legitimacy compared to local institutions

More consideration of traditional institutions involved in fisheries among local people

Fisheries Department staff

traditional owners of fishing rights (estanio)
traditional fishing captains

informal control of fishing rights and traditional management mechanisms still strong and not challenged by formal system

traditional owners of fishing rights (+++)
traditional fishing captains (++)

formal structure of department mirrors local social structure

Most department staff from estanio households

Fisheries Department staff

traditional owners of fishing rights (estanio)
traditional fishing captains

traditional status quo supported or not challenged by formal institutions

traditional owners of fishing rights (+++)

coverage - no local branch office in Baraley.

support to fisheries in Baraley limited;
formal enforcement of fisheries regulations limited

District Fisheries Officer - transferred local fisheries extension officer to another village

Agricultural Extension Department

local agricultural officer sometimes asked to perform fisheries duties

local fishers in Baraley (-)

“Practical” / “normative” - capabilities / willingness, mandated /ad hoc objectives and activities, actual / future activities

fisheries extension officer covers large area with limited resources

limited presence of fisheries department in Baraley;
visits to village usually to address problems

Fisheries Extension Officer

Agricultural Extension Department

provides resources for extension activities
low priority given to fisheries

all fishers in Baraley (-)

Department sees itself as “protecting” fishing communities’ interests

focus on ensuring flow of benefits to fishing communities

Fisheries Department senior staff
Fisheries Ministry



estanio fishers (++)

multiple mandated objectives

conflicts between mandates - fisheries development, data collection, enforcement of fisheries regulations
Fisheries Department not trusted locally
more faith among fishers in traditional fisheries management institutions

Fisheries Extension Officer
district fisheries staff
Fisheries Ministry

traditional controllers of fishing rights
local fishing captains

local systems of control of fishing rights still strong in Baraley
fishing captains highly respected and influential locally

local fishers (+)
abaduk fishers - no recourse for grievances (--)

rigid operating procedures and bureaucracy

unable to react quickly to changing needs of fishers

Fisheries Department staff
Fisheries Ministry

traditional fishing captains

more important as source of information

fishing captains (+)

activities in Baraley mostly data collection and fishing licensing

Fisheries Department regarded as purely administrative body by local people in Baraley
fisheries management functions not recognized

Fisheries Department staff
fisheries data collectors

traditional fishing captains

regarded as main source of knowledge and expertise on fisheries

fishing captains (+)

“Exclusive” / “inclusive” - membership and participation, conditions / contributions, actual and “non-working” rules, decision-making, leadership

official policy of implementing projects and programmes through progressive “contact” fisher households

mostly wealthier, estanio fisher households involved in fisheries projects and programmes;
benefits of fisheries department activities almost exclusively for estanio households

Fisheries Department staff
Fisheries Ministry

relations between estanio and abaduk households

power relations favouring estanio households strengthened

estanio fishers (++)
abaduk fishers (-)

Fisheries officers in district office mostly from estanio households

Most contacts between Fisheries Department and fishers are with estanio households

Most Fisheries Department staff

relations between estanio and abaduk;
fisheries projects and programmes.

power relations favouring estanio households strengthened
benefits of existing and past projects mostly for estanio households

estanio fishers (++)
abaduk fishers (--)

no contact with women

no government support to post- harvest activities carried out by women
fisheries regulations enforced ignoring possible impacts on women who fish
no data on women’s fishing activities collected

Fisheries Department staff - mostly male
Fisheries Extension Officer - male

women fish processing groups

women’s processing groups financing men’s fishing operations not taken into consideration when fisheries programmes formulated
women processors suspicious of government support to fisheries

women fish processors (--)
processed fish dealers (--)

Table 18 - Institutional Profiles - Baraley Village Kinship Links between Estanio Households

Key institutional attributes

Consequences

Institutional stakeholders involved

Other institutions affected or linked

How affected or linked

Who impacted

“Visibility”/”invisibility” - legality/legitimacy, formality/informality, level/geographic coverage

strong traditional leadership among estanio households

conflicts between estanio households rare and dealt with internally
village leadership dominated by estanio households
community leadership protects the interests of estanio households

village elders from estanio households
traditional village headman
formal village administration

local judiciary
local government administration
local government services

few disputes involving estanio households arrive to local courts(compared to other communities)
needs and priorities of Baraley village always communicated to government agencies through estanio leadership

estanio households (+++)
abaduk households (--)
local traditional leaders (++)

legitimacy of rights to leadership among estanio households largely accepted

no real challenge to the status quo (either among estanio or abaduk)

estanio leaders

abaduk leaders
local roscas
religious associations
local temples

very limited scope to acquire legitimacy
occasionally given special grants by leading estanio leaders for social purposes

rosca members(+)
local priests and temple-goers (+)

estanio families who founded Baraley control rights of access to most and best farming and fishing areas

access of most farmers and fishers to productive land or fishing grounds dependent on relations with estanio households
more and more land coming under maraney arrangements - rights controlled by absentee estanio landlord living in provincial capital- use in return for informally agreed services by locally-resident relative
rights of local land users, particularly abaduk, precarious - encourages poor management
resource degradation commonly blamed on abaduk and outsiders

estanio leaders

Provincial Land Reform Agency

land reform measures nominally implemented in Baraley but effectively ignored

estanio households (+++)
abaduk households (---)

network of kin relationships extends outside village to neighbouring areas and provincial capital

increasing flows of resources to and from urban areas
estanio family and community interests no longer purely local

estanio households

Urban business community
provincial government
National government


all community members? (+ / -)

“Practical” / “normative” - capabilities / willingness, mandated /ad hoc objectives and activities, actual / future activities

traditional obligations to help relatives and other estanio households in times of need

strong system in place to deal with times of crisis
individual gains tend to be spread among family - discourages enterprise

all estanio households

government food-for- work programmes

food-for-work programmes for disaster relief have weakened reciprocal obligations among some poorer estanio households
food-for-work seen as alternative to informal ties to wealthier households

all estanio households (+++)

loyalty to the interests of the family highly valued norm among estanio households

traditional meetings of elders of estanio kin groups decide on contraventions and sanctions among their own groups

all estanio households

formal institutions of all kinds

interests of the family often take precedence over law and larger community

all estanio households (+/-)

resources involved in these obligations growing - more estanio households migrating to cities, involved in business and politics

obligations within estanio community now include finding jobs, providing funds for new businesses in town
flows of cash involved in obligations increasing - purely rural based estanio households with limited cash resources regarded as “2nd class”

all estanio households

provincial-level political system

Jobs in district-level government offices now sought after through estanio relatives in provincial capital

wealthier estanio households (++)
village as a whole? (-/+)

“Exclusive” / “inclusive” - membership and participation, conditions / contributions, actual and “non-working” rules, decision-making, leadership

network of obligations and responsibilities includes all estanio households

strong sense of community and common interests among estanio households

all estanio households



all estanio households (+++)

decision-making within estanio kin groups exclusive preserve of male elders

women’s participation in decision- making very limited

estanio elders

roscas of women’s groups

male elders try to direct how savings and credit from roscas should be used

men in estanio households (++)
women in estanio households (--)

estanio kin groups share almost exclusive control of resource access and community-level decision-making

non-estanio households, abaduk, clearly excluded from control of resource access and decision- making mechanisms in Baraley
little commitment among abaduk to community objectives

traditional village head
heads of estanio lineage groups
fishing captains



all estanio households (+++)
abaduk households (---)

Table 19 - Institutional Profiles - Baraley Village Rocas (Rotating Savings and Credit Associations)

Key institutional attributes

Consequences

Institutional stakeholders involved

Other institutions affected or linked

How affected or linked

Who impacted

“Visibility”/”invisibility” - legality/legitimacy, formality/informality, level/geographic coverage

originally based on traditional village “chit funds” run by women in community

well-accepted and strong basis in community
widely used to finance ceremonies and weddings in the community
with changes in formal status, some households have continued with their old chit funds rather than participate in new roscas

women from leading households in the community (usually wives of elders and traditional village heads)

traditional reciprocal self-help arrangements

funds from chit funds could feed into these self-help systems
help to poorer households was regarded as a “good thing”

most village households (++)

8 years ago given official mandate and formal constitution

increased bureaucracy
increased importance of literacy for management of organizations
bigger role for elite groups with education
higher profile
increased access to resources from formal credit institutions

women in roscas;
husbands of women rosca members

Rural Development Department
local rural banks

given mandate to encourage, support (and interfere with) roscas
rural banks instructed to hold savings of roscas and provide loans to groups through roscas

rosca members (+/-)

increasingly influenced by party politics and local interest groups

support confined to agriculture. As corresponds to priority of most households: no innovative activities, youth discouraged

traditional village leadership;
local politicians

village government
local rural banks

opportunity to gain access to and influence over significant flows of resources

local officials (++)
rosca members (--)

“Practical” / “normative” - capabilities / willingness, mandated /ad hoc objectives and activities, actual / future activities

high level of commitment and self- management by local people

widespread commitment to maintaining roscas

traditional village leadership

village government;
gender roles

debate over functions of roscas encouraging more participation by women in village discussions

women in the community (++)

mandated objectives recently established for local development, particularly in agriculture

fewer resources available for original social expenditure and relief for households in difficulty
new mandate for roscas not based on consensus among rosca members

formal village leadership

Agricultural Extension Service
local rural banks and agricultural development bank

roscas as contact point for extension activities
banks formally required to channel 20% of their funding to development through roscas

local farmers (+)
rosca members (-/+)

traditional objectives maintained side-by-side with new mandate for roscas

some resources still made available for social expenditure and relief for households in difficulty
consensus among rosca members regarding rosca objectives and activities different from formal mandate

rosca organizers and members

Rural Development Department

regarded as a threat by many rosca members

rosca members (++)

“Exclusive” / “inclusive” - membership and participation, conditions / contributions, actual and “non-working” rules, decision-making, leadership

meetings held in village chief’s house: informal and generally inclusive

good participation by members;
strengthens standing of village leader in the community

traditional village leaders



rosca members (+)
village leaders (+)

rosca members are formally all women

at least nominally maintains primary role of women in controlling the resources of roscas
men see it as “discrimination”


gender relations

one area of decision making in community where women’s role is “protected” by mandate

female rosca members (+)
husbands of rosca members (-)

covers most households in the community who are regarded as trustworthy

a small number of the poorest households are excluded because not regarded as trustworthy

traditional village leaders

relations between estanio and abaduk

most of poorer households are abaduk

poor households (-)

decision-making regarding use of rosca funds increasingly influenced by development agenda from outside the rosca

funds more frequently invested in agricultural activities (rather than social expenditure like weddings or relief for households in difficulty)
priorities of men increasingly taking precedence over priorities of women

traditional village leaders

local government departments

roscas seen as useful contact points for mobilizing local communities for development work and channelling development funds

female rosca members (-/+)
husbands of rosca members (++)

The Malatuk Story - doing the institutional profiles

Musa and the team complete their investigation of the livelihoods strategies by drawing up a set of tables, based on those suggested in the FAO Guidelines. For each key livelihood strategy, they identify the people involved and the institutions that influence it. In many cases, they identify several institutions that seem to play a role in one livelihood strategy. At first, they worry that this will complicate their task when they come to doing the institutional profiles. But when they review their livelihood profiles, they realize that the same institutions appear over and over again, making it is easier than they expected to identify a few key institutions and processes that seem to dominate.

They draw up a list of these institutions and develop a checklist of institutional issues which they then try to apply to the institutions they have identified, answering the questions based on what they already know. They realize that they already know how to answer a lot of these questions and now need to go into a little more depth about how these institutions function.

As a starting point for their institutional investigation, they decide to make use again of their community-level focus groups, made up of people involved in particular sets of livelihood activities. They organize to meet with them in order to validate the impressions formed so far of the key local institutions they have identified. These validation sessions generate an interesting range of new information and helps the team to sharpen its focus. The discussions are particularly useful in helping the team to come to terms with some of the less tangible, invisible institutions in the three communities.

Based on these discussions, they refine their list of the different institutions which they need to develop detailed institutional profiles. They identify the gaps in the information they have about those institutions and develop a work plan for contacting key informants to help them understand those institutions in more depth. The team members are aware of the possibility that these informants may represent only the local elite. So they decide to add extra interviews about talk about institutional issues with informants from the most marginalized sectors of village society.

The investigators arrange to split up and visit the different communities in order to contact the key informants they have identified but arrange to meet again after a few days to review their findings. Musa hopes that after this initial period looking at a broader range of institutions in the three communities, the team will then be able to concentrate its efforts on understanding institutions that are likely to be particularly relevant for the work of the MPAP.

The range of institutions that they have identified based on their work so far is quite broad and varies significantly from village to village. In Baraley, they have identified a complex range of land tenure arrangements that they need to understand in more detail, as well as a bewildering array of fisheries and water tenure institutions. They have also identified the importance of the relations between the long-term residents in the village, the estanio, and the newer settlers, the abaduk. Many of these institutions seem to overlap and intertwine, but each of them needs to be understood fully.

They already have considerable information about different land and water tenure arrangements, but they choose a group of people for a focus group discussion to review what they have found and go into it in more detail. They use copies of their community maps from the community profile as a starting point for their discussions and then analyze the importance and extent of different tenure arrangements using matrix and ranking exercises. For each arrangement they develop historical profiles, which proves particularly revealing as they highlight the important changes that are underway in the area.

Talking about the relations between estanio and abaduk is more difficult and more sensitive. They start by talking to key informants from each group but always feel that they are getting only one side of the story. Interestingly, they make the most progress during a focus group discussion on fisheries tenure arrangements where both estanio and abaduk swamp fishers are present. It is when both of these groups end up complaining about some of the recent changes in fisheries management practice in the area that some of the most interesting information about estanio-abaduk relations comes out.

It becomes clear that, from the point of view of people involved in the fisheries and given that almost all rights are controlled by estanio families anyway, the issue of whether fishing rights are controlled by estanio or abaduk is less relevant than whether those people are good managers or not. Good managers are regarded as those who invest time and resources in looking after the fish, maintaining fishing areas and controlling the amount of fishing done. Most of these good managers seem to be locally based whereas many of those regarded as poor managers are people who have migrated to the city and seem to consider their control of fishing rights simply as another source of income. Their investment in the fishery is usually minimal and they take no direct interest in how the fisheries are conducted.

This discussion highlights another “nested” feature of institutions in Baraley that the team had not fully appreciated to date - the divide between urban-based and rural-based community members. This new understanding is confirmed by an interview with an NGO worker in the nearby District town who provides an interesting outsider’s perspective on the situation. It becomes clear that this urban-rural divide is an important factor that influences the way many local institutions function. As well as fisheries rights, it is affecting land tenure, the arrangements by which people have access to land and the terms of employment for people working in the community.

In Cosuma and Yaratuk, the situation is equally, if not more, complex. The team has to look at institutions governing the allocation and control of agricultural land, rivers, swamps, mangroves, beaches, wasteland and the sea. These coastal villages seem to have had more population movement, and this has resulted in a complex “layering” of local institutions originating in different areas and among different groups of people. In addition, market connections with urban centres seem to have a far greater influence here, and so these need to be looked at and understood as well.

Among the key areas they look into in more detail in Yaratuk are the relations between the “masleyarih” they had identified during their community profile and the surrounding community. From their livelihood profiles of this group, they already have a good understanding of which institutions interact with the different activities that they use to support their livelihoods - for example the governance arrangements in the mangrove swamps where they fish, rules and regulations affecting the use of swamp resources, the informal rules affecting their interaction with local people, their complete lack of participation in any forms of local consultation or decision-making. The investigators feel that they still need to better understand the details about how each of these institutions affects their livelihoods. They decide that a good tool to uncover some of these would be to construct a small set of life histories of different masleyarih households to try to understand the impacts. The team approaches the masleyarih in the early afternoon in the swamp and spends the rest of the day and evening with this group.

They discover that the social stigma attached to this group of people - obvious from the way they are generally referred to by people in surrounding communities and even by local officials - is partly due to their origins. Among their ancestors are former slaves and captives whom the colonial regime had also exploited as free labourers for the construction of the railroad track that connects Malatuk with the country’s capital. They are now seasonal migrants who take up the lowest-status jobs to survive, and it is this type of itinerant livelihood has become known by the name of “masleyarih”. The people engaged in “masleyarih” work are referred to with this (derogatory) term, are excluded from traditional mutual aid arrangements and do not enjoy access rights to land or water. Rather, they are “tolerated” within village boundaries as long as they are able to play useful roles. Their supply of fish and shrimp seed to fishponds provides an important service which most local people are unwilling to undertake because of the difficult nature of the work, the harsh environmental conditions of swamps, the poor water supply and the risks of disease.

Talking to the masleyarih, they recognise the importance of investigating several institutional concerns in more detail, such as land tenure and access rights to other natural resources, and traditional mutual aid arrangements. Through the community profile, they know about the importance of kinship relations and patronage networks in land tenure. It has also become clear that good-quality land is becoming increasingly difficult to access and that, in recent years, land conflicts have multiplied. The masleyarih have been encroaching on certain plots of land, claiming that since that land formally belongs to the state and no one is using it, they are entitled to do so.

Ravi convinces the team to carry out a short conflict analysis of the most recent of these confrontations involving the masleyarih, to deepen its investigation of land tenure institutions. By talking to the individuals who were involved in that conflict, the team finds out that most land belongs to the three families who descend directly from the founders of the settlements today known as Baraley, Cosuma and Yaratuk. Most of the landowners are in fact absentee agriculturalists, and there exist a number of institutional arrangements by which they let others use “their” land. Under the most common of these, the user(s) pay the owner(s) three-fourths of the agricultural produce from their land. As this practice is formally forbidden under national law, it is concealed and therefore talked about reluctantly. The masleyarih did not denounce this type of arrangement to the district commissioner, because they know that she too descends from one of the three founding families and is unlikely to side with them in their request for land rights.

The reluctance of the masleyarih to approach local institutions is confirmed when the team decides to talk to the council of elders in the village to get its perspective on the issue. The members of the council claim that if they had been approached by the masleyarih with their case - which they had not -they would have been willing to try to help them to gain some kind of temporary land-use rights.

The discussions with the masleyarih prompt the team to look a little more carefully at land tenure issues in Yaratuk and Cosuma. Dewi takes the lead on this. She decides to use, as a starting point, a recent programme involving the Provincial Land Commission and a local NGO that has looked specifically at ways of regularizing land and water rights in the province. As an approach she applies the process documentation method, as she feels that at this stage in the investigation, getting people to “tell the story” of this programme will probably be the most revealing way of getting at the issues involved.

Dewi begins her documentation trail by talking to villagers who have mentioned their involvement in this regularisation programme during the field work. She soon realizes that it would be better for her to first get from government staff a more complete overview of what appears to be a pretty complex programme, so she makes an appointment with the Provincial Land Commissioner of Malatuk. After being briefed by the Commissioner about the programme, Dewi asks for his permission to interview some field staff, and also for another appointment with him in four days time, when she thinks she’ll have a clearer picture to act as a basis for their discussions.

Dewi’s comparisons of the information she was given by the field staff, the official documentation from the Commission, the NGO’s records and the team’s own data from their institutional profiles of land tenure arrangements reveal some interesting grey areas and new aspects of the institutions involved that they had not identified before. For example, there are major discrepancies in the figures from different sources regarding the number of agricultural plots in all three villages. It turns out that the Land Commission, in an attempt to speed up the process of surveying land for the programme, introduced an incentive scheme for their land surveyors that rewarded them according to the number of plots surveyed. Perhaps not surprisingly, this encouraged many of the Commission’s field staff to over-report the number of plots. Rather more worryingly, their figures and land tenure information are used for planning all donor-funded development interventions in Malatuk, and Musa knows that the MPAP project is already using these figures for their project planning activities.

The team members meet up to pull together their information and incorporate it into their institutional profiles. Dewi recounts her story about the land and water rights programme, and this drives home to the team how there might be complications and grey areas of some of the institutions they have analyzed. But Musa encourages them to start the process of compiling the institutional profiles and to worry about possible gaps later.

The task initially looks daunting. They have collected information about a wide range of institutions and some of the tables they develop for complex institutions, like “land tenure arrangements”, seem enormous. Dewi’s findings about the official information on land tenure encourages the team members to think about some of the institutions they have looked at to identify the incentives that participants in those institutions have. They eventually agree that the question of incentives is really part of the “practical / normative” axis of their institutional diagram, as it effects people’s capability and willingness to achieve the objectives of the institution. But they realize that they have not always looked specifically at the issue of institutional incentives during their analysis. So, for some of the key organizations that they have already dealt with, they go back to their profiles and try to add this dimension to their analysis.

The process of developing these profiles is quite lengthy, but the team members realize that by the end, they have a very complete picture of the key institutions. They are aware that there are bound to be some institutions or aspects of institutions that they will have missed or not understood completely, but they feel they have a good basis for going on to defining which linkages between institutions and livelihoods are really important and need to be addressed by the project

It takes them another day and a half to complete all their institutional analysis, but Musa feels that the time has been well-spent as she can already see how most of their work for the subsequent linkage profiles has already been done.

In addition, Musa and the team are particularly satisfied about the relationship they have managed to establish with the communities where they have been working. Several local people have commented on the fact that, while they may have experienced different surveys and studies conducted by projects or research institutes in the past, this is the first time that they have really been given the opportunity to sit down with the research team to talk about what the team is doing and what its findings are. Ravi and Diana are particularly enthusiastic about the use of focus group discussions as a basic part of the investigation. They feel that these discussions have created a sense of ownership among local people of the information and learning that the investigation has generated.

The team’s discussions of the methods it has used leads Musa to recall the interest that the monitoring and evaluation cell of the project had expressed in the study. She decides that, during the next part of the study she should try to get them involved to see whether they might be able to build on the study team’s experience to set up appropriate monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for the project.


[2] In part, adapted from Appendini and Nuijten 1999.

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