Chiefs as Critical Partners for Decentralized Governance of Fisheries: An Analysis of Co-Management Case Studies in Malawi

Russell, A.J.M.; Dobson, Tracy

doi:10.1080/08941920.2010.501432

Cited by 28 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…That the Chief and the councilor chose to ignore community voices in Masoka is a broader phenomenon that relates to traditional power relations between Chiefs and their subjects in rural African (Eggen, 2011;Ncube, 2011;Russell and Dobson, 2011). In our case study, the Chief dismissed committee members who refused to honor his requests because that challenged "his authority."…”

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confidence: 89%

Re-assertion of Elite Control in Masoka’s Wildlife Program, Zimbabwe

Muyengwa¹,

Child²

2017

JSD

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Local level governance is crucial in delivering benefits of conservation to communities. This paper provides a historical review of the evolution of governance and the emergence of elite capture in Masoka's wildlife program in Zimbabwe between 2009 and 2011. Fifty-four key informant interviews and reviews of numerous secondary data sources analyzed in order to understand accountability mechanisms, collective decision-making, and the allocation of wildlife revenues into various local initiatives. The local narratives and secondary data suggested that the governance had flipped from one of impersonal and democratic rule to one based on personal rule of traditional leaders. These outcomes were in part a result of the shift in meso level structures that previously supported the program structures at community level, the shifting national politics that led to increased sense of enfranchisement and impunity among traditional leaders, and non-merit based system of appointing committee members. The results suggest that locally elected committees when left at the peril of strong and unchecked powers of traditional leaders they are bound to collapse. Second, the findings also indicate that in the absence of weak land tenure rights, locals have no "teeth" to challenge tradition-based authorities in order to demand for accountable governance. We conclude that given such condition of weak tenure and access to resource rights, local democratic institutions do not emerge naturally even if most people want them and if not protected from outside, they are bound to fail and superseded by personalized ones.

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confidence: 89%

Re-assertion of Elite Control in Masoka’s Wildlife Program, Zimbabwe

Muyengwa¹,

Child²

2017

JSD

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“…The previous section has already made it clear that besides the BVC Chair, village chiefs are holding a powerful position in the Elephant Marsh Fishery; see also Lewins et al (2014) and Russell and Dobson (2011). Our interviews with fishers, village chiefs, and BVC Chairs at the Elephant Marsh revealed four roles of chiefs in the small-scale fishery, as follows: (i) A BVC Chair cannot accept a new fisher without first asking for consent from the village chief.…”

Section: Power Relations Between the Village Chief And Bvc Chair Are mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Village chiefs are given ex officio (nonvoting) roles as patrons of the BVCs (Russell and Dobson 2011). The term "beach" stands for a fish landing site: sandy or swampy (as at the Elephant Marsh).…”

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confidence: 99%

Actor-Based Design of a Management System for the Elephant Marsh Fishery in Malawi

Kosamu

Groot

Kambewa

2016

Society & Natural Resources

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In Malawi, fishing community user groups known as beach village committees, traditional chiefs, government officers, and fishers are the key players in fisheries management. Fish catch trends at the Elephant Marsh Fishery in southern Malawi are declining. Based on interviews and participant observation, this article uses an actor-based framework (known as Action-in-Context) to unveil the issues that are crucial in devising a sustainable governance system for the fishery. We establish and propose that the key social variables for the design of a three-pillared (locally based, weak, and amorphous) resilient institution for sustainability of the Elephant Marsh Fishery are (i) the social reputation of the leaders of local fishery institutions (beach village committee leaders), and (ii) the power dynamics between traditional chiefs and these local fishery leaders. We end the article by exploring the implications of the findings on the sustainability of the fishery under rising resource pressure. ARTICLE HISTORY

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“…Commonly, institutions that endure across time and space are seen to reproduce and further embed inequitable relations of access to resources (Johnson 2004, Roth 2009). This poses a challenge to those adopting a critical institutional lens to plan development interventions; whether to work with the grain of inequitable power relations and to facilitate the role of powerful bricoleurs in the interests of effectiveness, or whether to work against the "elite capture" of institutional arrangements (Russell and Dobson 2011, Rusca et al 2015, Haapala et al 2016 Back to "getting institutions right" Although critical institutionalism offers complex analyses of institutional formation and functioning, some analysts have attempted to use the perspective to pragmatically identify possibilities for transformation in development practices. Here the plurality and plasticity of institutional dynamics is perceived to offer multiple entry points for facilitated change (Merrey and Cook 2012).…”

Section: The "Complex-embeddedness" Of Critical Institutionalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding process, power, and meaning in adaptive governance: a critical institutional reading

Cleaver¹,

Whaley²

2018

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Adaptive governance continues to attract considerable interest in academic and policy circles. This is with good reason, given its increasing relevance in a globalized and changing world. At the same time, adaptive governance is the subject of a growing body of critical literature concerned with the ways in which it theorizes the social world. In this paper, we respond to these critiques, which we see as broadly concerning the process, power, and meaning dimensions of environmental and natural resource governance. We argue that adaptive governance theory would benefit from engaging constructively with critical institutionalism, a school of thought that, like adaptive governance, has one foot in commons scholarship. Critical institutionalism conceives of institutional change as a process of bricolage, where those involved piece together new arrangements from the resources to hand. This approach highlights the interplay of structure and agency, and illuminates how new governance arrangements form and come to be seen as natural in dynamic relation to the wider social and cultural landscape. We consider how these arrangements tend to reflect dominant power relations, whilst the plural nature of social life also provides scope for adaptation and transformative change.

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Chiefs as Critical Partners for Decentralized Governance of Fisheries: An Analysis of Co-Management Case Studies in Malawi

Cited by 28 publications

References 15 publications

Re-assertion of Elite Control in Masoka’s Wildlife Program, Zimbabwe

Re-assertion of Elite Control in Masoka’s Wildlife Program, Zimbabwe

Actor-Based Design of a Management System for the Elephant Marsh Fishery in Malawi

Understanding process, power, and meaning in adaptive governance: a critical institutional reading

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