Coping with institutional uncertainty: Contested local public spaces and power in rural Benin

Pierre-Yves Le Meur

Africa Spectrum, 1999, vol. 34, issue 2, 187-211

Abstract: Whereas the democratic renewal in Benin is generally seen as a success story, the situation at the local level seems to be much more elusive. Boundaries between state and society, public and private spheres, economy and politics are blurred and the local state often appears unable to "administer the law" and regulate public affairs. Institutional pluralism, contested legitimacies and fragmented local arenas tend to prevail. Nevertheless, the flourishing of the associational sector and the origi-nal processes of production and allocation of public resources highlight individual and collective strategies that aim at dealing with - and decreasing the level of - institutional uncer-tainty. Emerg-ing local public spaces on the basis of the redefinition of social roles and identities might counter-act tendencies that are at work towards the diffusion of violence as a prevailing political resource in rural Benin.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gig:afjour:v:34:y:1999:i:2:p:187-211

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.giga-hamburg.de/afrika-spectrum

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Africa Spectrum from Institute of African Affairs, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andreas Mehler ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).