The Dualism of Contemporary Traditional Governance and the State

• Author: Florian G. Kern,Katharina Holzinger,Daniela Kromrey
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912916648013
• Date: 01 September 2016
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

2016, Vol. 69(3) 469 –481

© 2016 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912916648013

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Article

Introduction

In many states, ethnic groups organize collective decision

making, service provision, and jurisdiction according to

traditional rules of governance. Traditional governance

entails, for example, the selection of chiefs and elders, or

procedures for decision making, dispute settlement, land

allocation, or inheritance. Contemporary traditional

forms of governance coexist with the political institutions

and laws of states. Traditional governance is a global phe-

nomenon. Of the 193 member states of the United

Nations, 103 recognize the existence of particular ethnic

groups in their constitution. Seventy of them grant special

cultural or political rights to these communities. Sixty-

one countries (as diverse as Ghana, India, Indonesia,

Mexico, Paraguay, and Tuvalu) explicitly recognize

forms of traditional governance and customary law

(authors’ data collection). Only in Europe, traditional

governance seems to be mostly absent.

The JuriGlobe World Legal Systems Research Group

(2016) estimates that 57 percent of the world’s population

lives in states where customary law and other forms of

law coincide. For the African continent, some scholars

have identified a veritable “resurgence” of traditional

governance from the 1990s onward (Englebert 2002a;

Herbst 2000; Muriaas 2011; Ubink 2008). While in some

states ethnic groups applying traditional governance con-

stitute minorities (in North America or Australia), else-

where, large shares of the population live under dual

governance (in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, or

South Asia). The coexistence of traditional governance

institutions ranges from federal arrangements with siz-

able autonomy of the traditional polity (in North America)

to indigenous rights (in South America) and parliamen-

tary Houses of Chiefs (in Ghana or Namibia).

As the traditional–state dualism is especially wide-

spread in regions ridden by internal conflict, delayed

democratization, and stalled development (Sub-Saharan

Africa and some areas of South Asia), investigating these

dynamics systematically seems imperative. Yet despite

the considerable size of the phenomenon of “dual gover-

nance,” its functions and its consequences are not yet suf-

ficiently understood. How significant is traditional

governance today, and how does it vary across countries?

Under which conditions do traditional institutions

648013PRQXXX10.1177/1065912916648013Political Research QuarterlyHolzinger et al.

research-article2016

1University of Konstanz, Germany

2University of Essex, Colchester, UK

Corresponding Author:

Florian G. Kern, Department of Government, University of Essex,

Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK.

Email: fkern@essex.ac.uk

The Dualism of Contemporary Traditional

Governance and the State: Institutional

Setups and Political Consequences

Katharina Holzinger1, Florian G. Kern2, and Daniela Kromrey1

Abstract

In many parts of the world, people live in “dual polities”: they are governed by the state and organize collective

decision making within their ethnic community according to traditional rules. We examine the substantial body of

works on the traditional–state dualism, focusing on the internal organization of traditional polities, their interaction

with the state, and the political consequences of the dualism. We find the descriptions of the internal organization of

traditional polities scattered and lacking comparative perspective. The literature on the interaction provides a good

starting point for theorizing the strategic role of traditional leaders as intermediaries, but large potentials for inference

remain underexploited. Studies on the consequences of “dual polities” for democracy, conflict, and development are

promising in their explanatory endeavor, but they do not yet allow for robust conclusions. We therefore propose

an institutionalist research agenda addressing the need for theory and for systematic data collection and explanatory

approaches.

Keywords

traditional governance, polity dualism, democracy, internal conflict, development