Panel 1: The Internal Dynamics of Hybrid Political Orders
Friday 18/7/2008, 16:00-17:30 | Room HOGC 03.101
In most developing societies, the boundaries between the polity, the economy and societal institutions are blurred. This interpenetration of social spheres leads to the emergence of hybrid political orders which encompass the formal state apparatus, informal institutions, ‚civil society' groups as well as economic actors. These hybrid orders are characterized by a plurality of overlapping rule systems which has a profound effect on politics and policies in these societies. However, at present very little is known about these orders' internal dynamics. This lacuna includes such basic questions as: How do these orders form and how do they evolve? How do hybrid orders relate to external actors as well as broader processes of social change such as globalization, urbanization and modernization? And how do hybrid political orders influence processes of state-building and state failure?
Chair: Volker Böge
Discussant: Tobias Debiel
From Popular Movements to Civil Society: A Discourse on Local Government and Civil Society in Uganda
Any political order whether seen as a mode of government, a mode of class domination, or a mechanism of union and solidarity, implies a de facto division, and probably a fractioning of the organic community through stratification. Yet it is a fact that civil society networks now embrace virtually every level of organization, from the village community to global summits and almost every sector of life from the provision of micro finance and the delivery of emergency relief supplies to environmental and human rights activism (Kofi Anan:2006).This is true of Uganda too.
Uganda also has an established system of local government composed of elected officials. This establishment starts right from the village to the District level. Both the civil society and local government have taken root in the last twenty years. These twenty years were preceded twenty six years of political instability (Eight Presidents and seven military coups). Militarized politics cannot therefore be ruled out in country with such a history.
This paper argues that a balanced tension among the local government, the civil society and a central government with military credentials, is necessary. To investigate the interaction of democratic principles in local government, the presence of a militarized civil service, and a proactive civil society all in one district (a local government unit) is the task of this paper. The significance of this paper is that it elucidates how the internal dynamics of a hybrid political order at the national level play out at the district level in Uganda.
The method to be used will be the historical analytical method to evaluate the evolution of these structures in a particular district to date and there translation into the so cherished common good.
The State, Ethnic Violence and Ethnic Peace: A Case Study in West Kalimantan, Indonesia
The nature of the state - its internal characteristics and external relationships with society - plays a pivotal role in the contribution to ethnic violence and the rise of ethnic peace. Situating a multi ethnic society and rich natural resources of West Kalimantan, this paper argues that there is a relationship between state authoritarianism and ethnic violence.
The policy of the management of natural resources is considered to have far reaching impacts on inter-ethnic relations. Here, it is important to analyse the rise and deepening of ethnic embeddedness in three institutions prior to the eruption of ethnic violence. First, the creation of ethnic councils (Dayaks, Malays and Madurese) as civil groups and their dynamic relationships with state apparatus and the mass. Second, the rise of Dayak revitalisation movement and its dynamic contestation against state apparatus and logging businessmen. Third, the evolving ethnic division in local economy and the rise of ethnic stereotyping. All those developments pave the way for the rise of hybrid institutions in which primordiality plays a vital role.
While ethnic peace seems to surface in the current democratising state, in essence, there are vulnerabilities of sustainable peace development. The development of a multi ethnic based-microfinance institution as an arena of peace-building is a case in point.
This paper based on a case study in West Kalimantan in 2004 and revisited it in 2007, using approaches of institutionalism, elite theory and culture. By combining them, the internal dynamics of hybrid institutions at macro, meso and micro level can be explored.
The Emergence of Hybrid Political Orders as a Result of Government and Donor Policies: The Case of ‘Civil' and ‘Political' Societies in Rural Morocco
This paper presents the main empirical findings from my recent doctoral research on local governance in Morocco. It considers the hybrid political orders that result from the interactions between processes of democratic decentralization and participatory approaches. Peter Evans' notion of "embedded autonomy" is useful as an ideal type of state-society relations against which to assess the empirical findings. Based on the findings from empirical data collected in two rural municipalities and a sample of 50 village associations, the paper concludes that there is currently limited scope for synergies in development between decentralization reforms and participatory approaches in the case of rural Morocco. This is mainly due to the relative lack of "autonomy" and the dominance of "embeddedness" in state-society relations. In other words, the boundaries between political and civil societies, and between public and private spheres, have become very much blurred. This situation further encourages elite capture and the expansion of clientelist practices, all of which stands in sharp contrast to the assumed positive outcomes of decentralization and participation policies, and the prospect of accountable co-governance. The paper builds on the "state-in-society" perspective and the "polity approach" to emphasize that state and society are not self-contained spheres but must be understood in relational terms through the concrete links that exist between civil society actors, political society and state institutions. Indeed, it stresses the fact that the boundaries of the spheres themselves are characterized by relative fluidity.