Paper short abstract:

New models are emerging in which rural co-operative institutions are linked with efforts to build co-operation across value chains. Mainstream approaches prioritise institutional design yet others emphasise the salience of power relationships. How can we understand the dynamics of co-operation?

Paper long abstract:

How do individuals and groups co-operate to build institutions in rural development? What role is played by existing social and economic relations, and how do they become redefined or transformed into new institutional norms? These are the key questions I am grappling with in my PhD research, which explores co-operative institutional development in north India, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, including wider efforts to build co-operation across national and international value chains. Through 12 months of fieldwork I have been working with farmer producer companies (FPCs), introduced recently in India as co-operative/company hybrids, and their supporting non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to understand the dynamics of co-operation in these market-focused bodies, as well as between them and an array of other development stakeholders.

Mainstream approaches often assume that community institutions are amenable to design (North, 1991; Ostrom, 1990) and create a formal/informal binary, in which the 'rules-in-use' and governance procedures (formal), as well as levels of social capital (informal), can be 'designed' to 'get institutions right', reduce 'transaction costs' and promote 'good governance' (World Bank, 2017). Critical approaches emphasise the importance of existing social and economic context, power relations and the unpredictability of institutional development (Cleaver, 2012; Mosse, 2006). My research explores the development of collective farmer organisations in north India, and the interplay with existing institutional norms and social context. I extend this analysis as NGOs work with donors and large supply chain actors to establish new co-operative institutional forms to integrate FPCs within value chains.