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The Politics of the Decentralisation Reform in Mali

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The Politics of the Decentralisation Reform in Mali CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives THE POLITICS OF THE DECENTRALISATION REFORM IN MALI Democratisation, state-society relations and local governance Øivind Hetland Department of Sociology and Human Geography University of Oslo Dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor rerum politicarum The Faculty of Social Sciences University of Oslo 2007 © Øivind Hetland, 2007 Series of dissertations submitted to the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo No. 81 ISSN 1504-3991 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. Cover: Inger Sandved Anfinsen. Printed in Norway: AiT e-dit AS, Oslo, 2007. Produced in co-operation with Unipub AS. The thesis is produced by Unipub AS merely in connection with the thesis defence. Kindly direct all inquiries regarding the thesis to the copyright holder or the unit which grants the doctorate. Unipub AS is owned by The University Foundation for Student Life (SiO) TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface................................................................................................................................. v Acknowledgements........................................................................................................... vii List of figures..................................................................................................................... ix List of acronyms ................................................................................................................ix INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 State crisis, democratisation and decentralisation.................................................3 Democratisation and decentralisation in Mali.......................................................6 A brief political history of democratisation and decentralisation............................... 6 Local government and decentralisation: the reform ................................................. 10 PURPOSE AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................................. 17 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ............................................................ 23 Research design: qualitative case-study............................................................. 23 Critical realism – methodological considerations .............................................. 25 Causality ................................................................................................................... 27 Critical realism and decentralisation: research questions and strategies .................. 29 Methods in critical realism........................................................................................ 32 Employing critical realism – an illustration.............................................................. 35 Fieldwork and secondary sources of information .............................................. 38 Fieldwork over time.................................................................................................. 38 Documents and secondary sources of information ................................................... 41 Positionality, local knowledge and fieldwork.................................................... 41 Positionality, local knowledge and fieldwork........................................................... 42 Positionality and fieldwork interactions ................................................................... 45 Conclusion.......................................................................................................... 48 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK.................................................................................... 49 Deconstructing decentralisation: normative assumptions and institutional reforms................................................................................................................ 49 The benefits of decentralisation................................................................................ 50 Decentralisation as an institutional reform ............................................................... 50 Two schools: administrative and political decentralisation ............................... 53 Politics, policy and governance ................................................................................ 55 Democratisation and decentralisation....................................................................... 58 Centralisation and decentralisation within the administrative and political sphere: institution-building strategies ................................................................ 60 State, society and politics in Africa – analytical approach ................................ 63 Society-centred and state-centred approaches .......................................................... 64 The state-in-society approach ................................................................................... 65 State-society relations in the post-colonial African state.......................................... 67 The neo-patrimonial state and patrimonial practise ..........................................................67 The politics of the belly and reciprocal assimilation of elites ...........................................69 The geography of decentralisation and state-society relations: space, place and scale .................................................................................................................... 71 Conclusion.......................................................................................................... 74 MAIN CONCLUSIONS: THE POLITICS OF DECENTRALISATION........................ 77 Research questions and focus of analysis .......................................................... 77 The geography of decentralisation in Mali – case-based conclusions ............... 79 The politics of decentralisation: democratic transition, institution-building and hegemony.................................................................................................................. 79 The construction of the municipality as scale of governance – spatial functionality81 Decentralisation and local politics: place-space tensions ......................................... 82 Decentralisation and democratisation: state-society relations and politics from below ................................................................................................................................... 83 The politics of decentralisation: theoretical implications .................................. 85 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................. 89 PAPER 1 THE HISTORICITY OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND PRACTICES – DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION AND POLITICAL CONTINUITY IN MALI ..... 95 Democratic institutions and democratic practices.............................................. 96 Institution-building strategies............................................................................. 98 The historicity of political practices................................................................. 100 Colonialism and the rise of political networks................................................. 102 Usurpation and assimilation: the redistributive quest for hegemony during the 1st Republic............................................................................................................ 104 The 2nd republic – reciprocal assimilation and cooptation within the one-party state................................................................................................................... 107 Hegemonic crisis, transition and democratisation ........................................... 109 ii Reciprocal assimilation in a multiparty context............................................... 111 Decentralisation, cooptation and local politics ................................................ 113 Conclusion: democratic transition but politics as usual? ................................. 116 Bibliography..................................................................................................... 117 PAPER 2 THE POLITICS OF DECENTRALISATION IN MALI: THE DEMOCRATIC POTENTIAL OF DECENTRALISATION.................................................................... 121 Democratic transition and demands for decentralisation................................. 123 The politics of decentralisation ........................................................................ 126 Popular demands captured ............................................................................... 128 Decentralisation as nation-building.................................................................. 130 Decentralisation: the spatial and scalar reconfiguration of the state................ 134 Spatial reconfiguration – viable local communities................................................ 134 Scalar reconfiguration of the state – devolution and deconcentration.................... 136 The democratic potential of decentralisation ................................................... 138 Institutional bottlenecks – no real devolution......................................................... 139 Politisation of local relations – clientelism and exclusion...................................... 140 Conclusion: empty decentralised units - recentralisation and informalisation
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