Scattered Public Action. Production and Institutionnalisation of Public Action in Water and Land tenure Sectors (Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger) – APPI

In West Africa, in contexts where States are weak and dependent on international aid, the possibility of elaborating autonomous and efficient sector-based policies is at question. Reforms implemented in main public services have been encouraged by international institutions and are based on liberalisation and privatisation. Beyond problems regarding their practical implementation, assessing these reforms has led to mixed reviews. Institutional changes have led to the emergence of public but also private actors as well as local associations contributing to deliver these services at the local level with various means and specific strategies. The outcome is a weakly efficient disseminated public action.
However, accomplished reforms can be identified in some countries as well as local original innovations and public action revealing State involvement. By taking the political economy of aid-dependent countries into consideration, an important issue is to empirically investigate the links among the State and sponsors and to examine the multiplier effects of public action actors and eventually to identify the conditions for effective public action.
More specifically, the research project aims to analyse the implementation process of a public action in aid-dependent countries and to identify the factors that might or not lead to its institutionalisation. The objective is to contribute to the debate on the nature of State, on the conditions of institutional and political changes in aid-dependent States, on the possibility of conducting autonomous public policies in these countries.
Research will be conducted on a limited number of countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger) and subjects (drinkable water, land tenure) to allow accurate comparability and robust conclusions. Final results will be discussed along with the implied stakeholders. These two sectors are key sectors of public intervention and refer to different principles : an articulation of private operators, public actors and associations for Water and a combination of public and customary principles for Land.
The project will :
-analyse the processes of policies’ negotiation and definition in two sectors (drinkable water, land tenure) at the national level by focusing on actors (domestic and international), on models and conflicting conceptions and on arbitration and negotiation processes;
- deeply investigate local innovations by identifying their origin, the involved actors and the institutional arrangements that are proposed;
- question the articulation among different action levels by documenting the way that local actors interpret, divert or take advantage of systems designed at the national and the international levels and the arbitrations by which local organisational and institutional innovations influence or not domestic policies;
- be dedicated to the issue of the articulation of Water and Land.

Several research disciplines (Institutional Economics, Development Anthropology, Sociology and Political Sciences) will be brought together to build a common analytical framework.
The project is original with regards to its expected theoretical findings since the analytical tools widely used in developed countries to analyse public policies will be wisely and maturely transposed to the context of weak international-aid-dependent States. The project is also innovative with respect to the implemented method since it targets interaction of various disciplines on specific research objects (Water and Land Tenure) by creating common analytical instruments. Eventually, the project will build on a research partnership involving both research institutions and operational field institutions to ensure the testability and the implications of the obtained results on an accurate basis. The project will thereby launch an ambitious research program on public policy production processes in developing countries.