Can Customary Authority Reduce Risks of Corruption and Local Capture?  

David Jackson and Jennifer Murtazashvili

Governments and development agencies are increasingly working with communities to supply public goods and services, but recent evidence suggests that this community-driven development (CDD) is beset by corrupt practices, such as embezzlement and nepotism, and subject to manipulation of processes to benefit private interests. How can development practitioners ensure more resilience against risks of corruption and capture in community-driven development?

We suggest that development practitioners consider an alternative organisation often present in communities where development projects take place: customary authority. In the past several decades, scholars and development practitioners had assumed that customary authority was withering away and was no longer an important force in local politics. Yet in recent years, a new generation of scholarship examining the developing world, from sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan, illustrates the resilience of customary governance in the face of divergent forces such as violent conflict, democratization, economic development, and migration.

In this blog, based on a more extensive U4 Issue paper, we want to explain how and under which conditions customary authority can be more resistant to corruption and capture than alternative social actors, such as NGOs or Community-Based Organisations.

How can the customary authority make Community Driven Development less corrupt?

First, they can provide voice and representation. By sidestepping or ignoring customary authorities and building parallel development councils, CDD projects may negate or dilute important voices inside the community, leading to corruption and capture. This ignores the fact that customary authorities have long been trusted with the role of ‘brokering’ citizens’ interests. Within a CDD project, this can ensure that community interests are channelled to the locus of decision-making. Customary authorities have important monitoring abilities – chiefs in Malawi have put this to use to ensure that the implementation of an agricultural subsidisation programme benefited the local community, for example. Since customary leaders are already playing a positive role in changing norms on other issues, another role customary authority can play is that of persuading citizens of the negative effects of corruption.

New approaches to integrity-building at the local level should take these roles seriously, not least because customary authorities operate with long-term time horizons, which fundamentally improve the incentives of citizens to confront local elites and fight for their own interests, as well as to enter into credible long-term arrangements. Short-term horizons, by contrast, incentivise individuals to extract all the rents that they can from a project during its tenure. Another comparative advantage is that customary authority is often highly trusted and regarded as highly legitimate.

Critical conditions for working with customary authorities – analytical framework

It is important to clarify that in many situations, customary authority would not be a desirable partner, as it can be part of the corruption problem – as well as a source of illiberal norms that can threaten stability and limit the participation of women and young people. The question of whether to involve customary authority in a programme is an empirical question (see here for practical indicators). We suggest customary organisations that are autonomous and self-governing, possess internal constraints on decision makers, have inclusive decision-making procedures, and possess the ability to monitor and enforce rules are more to likely to be resilient from corruption. Absent these characteristics, they may be a source of capture. Practitioners should therefore consider whether customary authority in a specific context has:

1. A relatively autonomous space in which to operate, free from heavy-handed interference or co-optation by governments or other external actors

Organisations that are autonomous and independent from third-party influence will be better positioned to serve the needs of their constituents, as we have seen in the autonomous province of Somaliland, where customary authority plays a formal role in Somaliland, but its internal rules are determined from within and not by third parties.

When customary authorities lose this autonomy, we expect them to lose some of their capacity to govern in an accountable way. The autonomy of customary organisations is undermined when the state seeks to co-opt such authority by, for example, offering salaries, honoraria, land tenure rights, loans, and other financial incentives, mostly to customary leaders. Such state intrusion into customary matters is often a relic of colonial rule. In South Africa, government intervention in customary relations has led to a deepening mistrust between customary leaders and citizens.

2. Constraints on the authority and power of key decision makers and leaders

Just as in the formal sphere, customary authority is less likely to be corrupt when it is held in check by the rules, often unwritten, that shape how customary authority behaves. There are many different kinds of constraints that can limit the authority of local leaders. Community-imposed limits on length of service of individual leaders are a particularly important example. Customary leaders can also be constrained by the threat of removal if they do not perform their duties responsibly. Another kind of constraint is when there are multiple customary actors in the same space who can check the power of an individual leader. For example, customary organisations in rural Afghanistan are not monolithic but consist of customary councils, village-appointed leaders, and religious leaders that provides a separation of powers at the local level.

These accountability mechanisms cannot be assumed; in some situations, customary authorities behave as ‘despots’ or as if they ‘own the people’ because they have no internal constraints on their authority.

3. Broadly inclusive decision-making structures that have ways to consider the roles of women and minority voices

As with any political organisation – formal or informal – when decision-making processes within customary organisations are inclusive, they yield greater transparency. Norms underpinning customary authority therefore matter; they can be inclusive or exclusive. Attitudes towards gender are particularly important. Though some customary leaders are women, this is not common – and customary authorities often exclude women. Norms of customary governance sometimes also exclude significant segments of the population, such as young people and minorities.

Yet, some forms can offer inclusivity. Traditional arrangements, usos, in Mexico have been shown to facilitate enhanced forms of participation in local politics. Municipalities that are governed by usos are more likely to hold open council meetings featuring citizen participation in decision making that can reduce capture and corruption and increase public good provision.

4. The ability to enforce rules and sanction those who violate rules that community members have agreed upon

To provide public goods, such as accountability, customary organisations need the ability to enforce rules that community members have agreed upon and sanction those who have violated them. Some forms of customary authority exhibit an ability to sanction violation of rules in relation to natural resource management, leading to better outcomes.

Although enforcement is often necessary for rules to matter, development practitioners must be wary of the kinds of punishments supported by customary authorities. Customary norms in this area are often in violation of human rights and other international norms, and punishments meted out by these authorities have given them a reputation as not complying with human rights norms. But not all customary authorities use harsh sanctions – some have a set of graduated sanctions to punish those who violate agreed-upon rules.

So, what should donors and practitioners do?

Gather information on customary authority

Donors should be willing to collect diverse perspectives regarding opportunities for partnership with customary leaders. But donors need to be cautious in how they elicit information about customary authority. With the persistence of aid programmes around the world, individuals engaging with donors are conditioned to a kind of desirability bias, often telling them what they think the donors want to hear.

Come to terms with ‘incoherence’ and be wary of formalisation

Though accountability and transparency should be encouraged, standardised log frames or templates for relations with customary authorities are unlikely to provide the flexibility required to cope with diversity. When customary authority is governed well, it is usually because it is legitimate and accountable to citizens. Historically, indirect rule by colonial powers illustrates this point. Through stipends, benefits, and promises of political support, external control fundamentally altered political accountability structures within customary organisations. Donors today should avoid repeating these errors by entering communities with promises of public goods and offers of support for customary leaders who agree to implement their latest community-based development project.

Jennifer Murtazashvili is associate professor of public administration and director of the International Development Program at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

David Jackson takes the lead on U4’s ‘Informal Contexts of Corruption’ theme.