Drawing upon ‘governance diaries,’ a method which used repeated interviews with a set of households and intermediaries in three countries—Mozambique, Myanmar and Pakistan—to understand how marginalised groups meet their daily governance needs, we argue that local governance networks constitute a form of public authority. The networks we examine encompass a range of local actors (state and non-state), who help develop and enforce rules and ensure social coordination. We highlight the role of intermediaries who constitute the first point of contact for people seeking to resolve various issues. We show how these intermediaries and their networks are specific to each context, not just at a national level, but down to a granular local level. Decision-making and the exercise of power moves around within the networks, blurring formal/informal boundaries. We conclude that in these contexts of fragility, public authority is embedded in and exercised through local governance networks.
Policy Implications
- Careful, ongoing, mapping of who holds what power in the plurality of local governance networks should be a first step in any governance-related intervention or policy change—our findings suggest that in places experiencing ongoing conflict these networks look and operate quite differently, even within the same national context.
- Understanding the centrality of the intermediaries that connect people with different authorities in the network, or often take on some public authority themselves, is key to understanding how people access public services and goods—and these intermediaries could make or break new policies or initiatives.
- The diversity but also fluidity and rapid change of local governance networks means policy or programme actions in such contexts should be expected to have unpredictable or uncertain outcomes, increasing the need to carefully observe changes taking place.
- There are important tensions to be navigated in these complex contexts—in particular the importance of local governance networks in much of public life does not mean that they are necessarily inclusive or using a rights-based framework, and this has particular implications for women.
Photo by Tony Wu