State Formation Through the Local Production of Property and Citizenship

Project Information

Local State

Grant agreement ID: 662770

DOI

10.3030/662770

Project closed

EC signature date 28 October 2015

Start date 1 January 2016

End date 30 June 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 469 285,00

EU contribution

€ 2 469 285,00

Coordinated by

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - Local State (State Formation Through the Local Production of Property and Citizenship)

Reporting period: 2020-07-01 to 2021-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

We often talk about state, property, and citizenship, as if they already exist in their final form. However, this project is investigating how different claims to political authority, to property, and to citizenship articulate and how they interact and are co-constitutive. For example, if someone claims property rights, s/he must lodge this claim with an institution in the hope of recognition. This is also an act of recognition of the institution’s authority. This may seem simple in well-consolidated societies, but in societies where there are many institutions that compete to be the politically most relevant, and where there are many competing rules and traditions of property that could be brought to bear, this question is highly relevant. Through a series of case studies, the research shows that in situations of institutional pluralism, it is claims to property and citizenship that prompt the exercise of public authority in political institutions, just as much as it is the institutions that impose certain rights on society.

This is important because it shows the inadequacy of a purely top-down approach to institutions. States are made as much from below by different popular demands.

For any kind of effective, just, and equitable policy intervention, this is important to keep this in mind, if we want to engage the institutions that actually exercise political authority and want to avoid useless engagement with vacuous formal institutions.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

After recruitment, the work of the research group consisted in the preparation and execution of the first rounds of fieldwork for each full-time member (post-docs and PhDs). Fundamentally, all projects explore the social contracts of recognition between claims to property and citizenship, on the one hand, and public authority, on the other. It was important for all researchers to find locations where it was not just the state that issues property and citizenship rights which re-confirm the authority of the state; all projects were looking for locations where people institute authority in local institutions which then exercise authority.

I parallel to the initial fieldwork, the group has held a series of workshops to discuss individual research design, research ethics, draft papers and publications. Especially, the group has held two summer-labs in 2017 and 2018, where ongoing work has been discussed in the group and with invited guests. The idea of inviting guests with whom we collaborate has been pursued a bit further. Hence, we have hosted Dr. Liliana Figueroa from Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia in Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, and Prof. Frederic le Marcis from the University of Lyon for 3-6 weeks. We further plan to host Dr. Muriel Côte from the University of Zurich for a month in the coming year.

The first achievement of the project has been to verify that the conceptual framework of the project had proved relevant in a range of very different contexts. In all the contexts, fieldwork has demonstrated that the questions of property rights and political identity interconnect in dynamic ways, and that neither property nor citizenship can be meaningfully understood in isolation. Instead, it must be understood as part of a specific social contract.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We have published a large number og publications dealing with different aspects of the research issue. It is too early to say how we progress beyond the state of the art, However, the first achievement of the project has been to verify that the conceptual framework of the project had proved relevant in a range of very different contexts. In all the contexts, fieldwork has demonstrated that the questions of property rights and political identity interconnect in dynamic ways, and that neither property nor citizenship can be meaningfully understood in isolation. Instead, it must be understood as part of a specific social contract.

The main issue to be investigated is how property rights and citizenship rights are connected to public authority as a social contract, in places where statutory government is not the only significant political institution. While consolidated states exhibit a pattern where rights flow from state institutions, so to say, in weak or polycentric states, the pattern of social contracts between rights and authority is different. Here people’s demands for land rights and political rights are addressed not just to statutory institutions but to all kinds of power holders. These demands institute power in the institutions. We examine how political power consolidates through demands for authorization of claims.

This is important for society because it may reveal a fundamental pattern of constitution of power, and it may allow us a more serious examination of what is often referred to as ‘weak states’.

The overall objective is to establish an analytical repertoire that allows us to capture the constitution of social contracts even in situation where they are ephemeral, tentative and provisory.

Eviction Day, Photo Serikat Petani Indonesia.