Dynamics of state-society relations in Ethiopia: paradoxes of community empowerment and participation in irrigation management

ABSTRACT

This article examines processes by which development project implementations afford the state the appearance of being a separate structure. By exploring the implementation of an important state development project in North-western Ethiopia, the Koga Irrigation and Watershed Management (KIWM) scheme, it shows why and how the project plan does not correspond to the real life of the scheme. The article unpacks assumptions that policymakers and development practitioners make about the a priori existence of a community and state distinction, and the ways in which they arrange them as functionally differentiated entities. It also shows how the project’s community-driven participatory approach, wherein local people were involved in managing the scheme, produces the effect of ghettoising practices of abuse as community issues. The article contributes to recent ethnographic studies of state-society relations and contends that these studies could gain important insights by exploring development project implementation practices as an entry point into the study of the processes that give the state the appearance of a material reality.

KEYWORDS:

• State
• society
• irrigation
• participation
• Ethiopia

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Graham Harrison and Joanne Tomkinson for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this manuscript. I also thank JEAS anonymous reviewers and editors for their comments and insightful suggestions which led to an improved manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Daniel Mulugeta http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8999-2090

Notes

1. Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State”; Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect”; Hansen and Stepputat, States of Imagination; Migdal, State in Society.

2. Abbink, “Discomfiture of Democracy?”; Lefort, “Powers—Mengist—and Peasants.”

3. Lefort, “Free Market Economy, ‘Developmental State’”; Vaughan, “Revolutionary Democratic State Building”; Planel, “A View of a Bureaucratic Developmental State.”

4. Vaughan and Tronvoll, The Culture of Power.

5. Scott, Seeing Like a State; Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect.”

6. Gupta, “Blurred Boundaries”; Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect”; Bliesemann de Guevara, “Introduction: Statebuilding and State Formation.”

7. Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect,” 89.

8. This departs from the common understanding of state formation as a top-down expansion of centralised control by the army, bureaucracy and capital. See Bliesemann de Guevara, Introduction: Statebuilding and State Formation for a critical discussion of these debates.

9. de Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa.

10. Fantu, Cramer, and Arkebe, Handbook of the Ethiopian Economy.

11. Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect,” 77.

12. In a public speech at the Millennium Hall in Addis Ababa during his first anniversary in April 2019, current Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed announced irrigation would be one of top priorities for government spending to deal with the problem of rural unemployment.

13. Bliesemann de Guevara, Introduction: Statebuilding and State Formation.

14. In this article I use the term practice to draw attention to activities associated with the various aspects of the project implementation process: planning, design, construction, institutionalisation and usage pattern. See, for example, Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice.

15. Lund, “Twilight Institutions.”

16. Escobar, Encountering Development; Scott, Weapons of the Weak.

17. Hall, “Cultural Identity.”

18. Long, Development Sociology.

19. Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine, 256.

20. Ferguson (1994) used the concept of ‘depoliticisation’ to refer to the suspension of politics and the practice of reducing poverty to a technical problem in Lesotho. I use the term depoliticisation to draw attention to the ways development obscures local repressive class and gender structures operating at micro-level and the ways in which it deflects attention away from existing power inequalities within the kebele population.

21. Kebele is the lowest administrative unit in Ethiopia and typically has a population of between 5,000 and 10,000 people.

22. The sources of documentary analysis of project texts are government documents such as training manuals, water users association (WUA) documents, project guidelines and field reports by the project consultant Mott MacDonald (MMD) which I have studied during my fieldwork.

23. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.

24. Long, Development Sociology.

25. AfDB, Koga Irrigation and Watershed Management Project, i.

26. Interview, PMU officer#13, woreda town, October 2014.

27. Interview, senior PMU officer#14, woreda town, October 2014.

28. Interview, senior Amhara bureau of water resources official#15, Bahir Dar, October 2014.

29. MMD, Koga Irrigation Project, 2005a, 4.

30. Ibid., 27.

31. Interview, senior PMU officer#14, woreda town, October 2014.

32. Interview, senior Amhara bureau of water resources official#15, Bahir Dar, November 2014.

33. Interview, senior Amhara bureau of water resources official#15, Bahir Dar, November 2014.

34. Williamson, “So Near and Yet So Far”; Vaughan and Tronvoll, The Culture of Power; Smit et al., “The Political Morphology of Drainage.”

35. Lematawi buden are typically led by cadre farmers who serve as a liaison between the team and the kebele administration, ensure the attendance of members and exact fines on absentees (50 birr in Degga).

36. The character of the Ethiopian state has been changing rapidly as a result of the ongoing political reforms that were initiated since April 2018. Notwithstanding these transformations, in a recent conversation with some of my informants in Degga I found that party/state structures such as development teams are still operational, and model farmers still largely control both kebele institutions and access to important resources such as agricultural inputs. Although the changes seems to have created party political disillusionment, I found no evidence whatsoever of the disbandment of party and state structures. The only point that can be argued with any degree of confidence is that that reform is less likely to result in substantive class and gender equality at the local level in the near future.

37. Interview, senior PMU officer#14, October 2014.

38. Lund, “Twilight Institutions.”

39. Woreda is an administrative unit similar to district and is found above kebele.

40. Interview, woreda administrator, November 2014.

41. Agrawal, “Community-in-conservation.”

42. This is because Degga is 100% Orthodox Christian kebele.

43. Field notes, September – December 2014.

44. Interview, middle-aged farmer#16, October 2014.

45. Interview, middle-aged woman#17, October 2014.

46. Interview, middle-aged trader-cum-farmer#18, October 2014.

47. Interview, young farmer#19, November 2014.

48. Interview, middle-aged farmer#20, November 2014.

49. AfDB, Koga Irrigation and Watershed Management Project, 8.

50. Gebre, Getachew, and McCartney, Stakeholder Analysis.

51. Woreda is an administrative unit similar to district and is found above kebele.

52. Farmers who were completely displaced because of the construction of the reservoir were compensated financially and with land for loss of farm plots, houses, trees, and for the estimated value of the crop produce for three consecutive years. However, those farmers who ceded up to 20% of their land for canal construction did not receive any compensation. Most of them volunteered to do so in view of the benefits they expected from the project after completion.

53. Mayrl and Quinn, “Defining the State from Within.”

54. Interview, senior PMU officer#14, October 2014.

55. Ibid.

56. MoWR, Koga Irrigation.

57. Ibid.

58. Interview, head of the WUA#24, Degga, November 2014.

59. Interview, senior PMU officer#14, November 2014.

60. There was nothing new or unique about this form of arrangement. On the contrary, it is a typical way of arranging an irrigation management system and is used all over the world. But the formation of the WUA, in the context of this study, is significant insofar as it offers insight into how the boundary between state and society is produced and reaffirmed.

61. MMD, Koga Irrigation Project, 2005b.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. Gupta, Postcolonial Developments.

65. MMD, Koga Irrigation Project, 2005a, 4.

66. Interview, middle-aged farmer#25, Degga, October 2014.

67. Interview, middle-aged farmer#16, Degga, October 2014.

68. Interview, elderly man#26, Degga, October 2014.

69. Lefort, “Powers—Mengist—and Peasants.”

70. Interview, middle-aged farmer#27, Degga, October 2014.

71. Interview, middle-aged farmer#28, Degga, October 2014.

72. My informants often referred to the state, government officials, and powerful people as mengist. However, they made distinctions between a corrupt local bureaucracy and an impartial central state. The popular discursive construction of impartial central state is very much associated with paternalistic care and expectations of providence, munificence and reciprocity.

73. Interview, middle-aged farmer#25, Degga, October 2014.

74. Interview, middle-aged farmer#29, Degga, October 2014.

75. Interview, elderly man#30, Degga, October 2014.

76. Interview, young man#31, Degga, October 2014.

77. Interview, middle-aged farmer#29, Degga, October 2014.

78. Interview, middle-aged farmer#25, Degga, October 2014.

79. Interview, elderly farmer#30, Degga, October 2014.

80. Gupta, Postcolonial Developments, 11.

81. Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect.”

82. See also Smit et al., “The Political Morphology of Drainage” for similar discussion.

83. The Revised Amhara National Regional State. Rural Land Administration and Use. No.252/2017. The previous proclamation (No. 133/2006) permitted land rent out for up to 25 years for any type of production. The shortening of the maximum period for crop production to 10 years and the formalisation of rental transactions may protect vulnerable group members who are unable to cultivate their land for a variety of reasons.

84. Interviews with two DAs (DA#5 and DA#8), Degga, November 2014; interview, middle-aged woman#32, November 2014.

85. Interview, DA#7, Degga, November 2014.

86. Ibid.

87. Interview, middle-aged farmer#33, Degga, November 2014.

88. Interview, middle-aged farmer#29, November 2014.

89. Interview, widowed woman#34, November 2014.

90. Interview, middle-aged farmer#35, November 2014.

91. Interview, middle-aged farmer#20, November 2014.

92. Interview, young farmer#19, November 2014.

93. Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine.