Paper short abstract:

Accountability is a prime justification for decentralising forest management in Burkina Faso but it is rarely examined in practice. The paper examines the contradictions that arises in everyday forest governance for local elected leaders in an 'aid regime' an under the conditions of legal pluralism.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the contradictions that arise in an attempt to analyse local relations of accountability in decentralised forest governance in North Burkina Faso. Accountability is presented in classic decentralization policy as an unproblematic outcome of democratic frameworks. Empirical studies however show that local elected leaders are rarely able or willing to respond to citizens' demands. While normative approaches often conclude that this is a manifestation of elite capture, others emphasise the multiplicity of overlapping logics and are more concerned with how relations between local leaders and citizens operate. The study takes this latter approach to analyse a conflict that arose in an attempt by a UK-based NGO to inscribe local rules for forest access into formal law. At the heart of the conflict is the struggle by forest users' representatives to legitimise control over forest land by contesting national forestry law that regiments the distribution of forest revenues. Their attempt is admonished by local elected leaders on the grounds that their demands mismatch the project's terms of references. The paper examines the contradictory strategies through which leaders attempt to recover public authority as a result. It concludes by questioning what local relations of accountability are possible in a liberal democracy where the law is unacceptable.