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Accepted Paper:
Social Protection, Decentralization and State Infrastructural Power: the Productive Safety Net Programme and the Birth of (sub-)Kebele Administration in Ethiopia's Somali Pastoral Periphery
Getu Demeke Alene
(Wageningen University and Research)
Jessica Duncan
(Wageningen University)
Han van Dijk
(Wageningen University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net programme facilitates administrative decentralization and enhances state infrastructural power while intensifying/reconstituting state-society relations in Ethiopia's Somali pastoral periphery.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on analysis of fieldwork data on implementation of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia's Somali region, in this paper we argue that social protection programmes enhance administrative decentralization and hence state (infrastructural) power while reconfiguring state-society relations in the periphery. As the largest donor-funded social protection programme in sub-Sharan Africa, PSNP has been launched since 2005 to enable rural poor households improve their food security and lift them out of poverty. The (sub-)kebele administration - most local, decentralized state institution - has become key for PSNP implementation. However, (sub-)kebele administrations were not functional, if they were established at all, in the Somali periphery so that initially PSNP was implemented through clans. However, our paper shows that PSNP implementation, gradually, enables the establishment/consolidation of (sub-)kebele administrations in the Somali periphery by remobilizing PSNP fiscal resources, informally/unofficially, as key sources of financing (sub-)kebele administrations and incentivizing officials; raising competition, among different clan lineages, for political representation within the existing (sub-)kebele administrations or by establishing the new ones as political power in the (sub-)kebele is directly translated into better access to PSNP (and other state) resources; expanding infrastructures that enhance territorial reach of the state; and (re)using PSNP documentations, such as client cards, as administrative documents in making nomadic pastoralists visible/legible, governable subjects. Finally, we argue that such practices and effects, accompanied by diverse subtle practices, enhance state-building in the periphery by intensifying/reconstituting state-society relations beyond kinship-based network.
Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
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Accepted Paper:
Paper short abstract:
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on analysis of fieldwork data on implementation of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia's Somali region, in this paper we argue that social protection programmes enhance administrative decentralization and hence state (infrastructural) power while reconfiguring state-society relations in the periphery. As the largest donor-funded social protection programme in sub-Sharan Africa, PSNP has been launched since 2005 to enable rural poor households improve their food security and lift them out of poverty. The (sub-)kebele administration - most local, decentralized state institution - has become key for PSNP implementation. However, (sub-)kebele administrations were not functional, if they were established at all, in the Somali periphery so that initially PSNP was implemented through clans. However, our paper shows that PSNP implementation, gradually, enables the establishment/consolidation of (sub-)kebele administrations in the Somali periphery by remobilizing PSNP fiscal resources, informally/unofficially, as key sources of financing (sub-)kebele administrations and incentivizing officials; raising competition, among different clan lineages, for political representation within the existing (sub-)kebele administrations or by establishing the new ones as political power in the (sub-)kebele is directly translated into better access to PSNP (and other state) resources; expanding infrastructures that enhance territorial reach of the state; and (re)using PSNP documentations, such as client cards, as administrative documents in making nomadic pastoralists visible/legible, governable subjects. Finally, we argue that such practices and effects, accompanied by diverse subtle practices, enhance state-building in the periphery by intensifying/reconstituting state-society relations beyond kinship-based network.
States, Citizens and Social Protection in Africa
Session 1 Thursday 7 July, 2022, -