Property Security in the Midst of Insecurity: Wealth Defense, Violence, and Institutional Stasis in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Peyton, David Michael

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-fghg-m865

Work

Property Security in the Midst of Insecurity: Wealth Defense, Violence, and Institutional Stasis in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Public

Download PDF

Download All Files (.zip)

Economic growth in contexts of state weakness presents a puzzle. If the state’s provision of property rights is necessary for financial investment and related pro-growth behaviors, then why do we observe private investment and commercial transactions in settings where state institutions are far from reliable property guarantors? This study addresses this question by analyzing real estate markets in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s urban centers, where residents make land purchases and engage in a variety of economic activities in the absence of reliable property protections. Conventional theories of property rights have emphasized state capacity and credible commitments to explain levels of property security. This dissertation takes a different tack by shifting attention to the adaptive practices that owners deploy to uphold their property claims in the absence of effective state institutions. Adaptive practices—the de facto actions that people take to advance their economic interests in the absence of effective legal protections—compensate for state institutions that provide few constraints on behavior and that leave the options for acquiring and defending property relatively open. A focus on adaptive practices not only explains the possibility of ownership security in challenging environments, but also provides clues about why levels of property security vary among similarly situated property owners. The analytical framework for adaptive practices advanced in this study hinges on three components: 1) defensive coalition building, 2) private coercion, and 3) “papering-up.” First, property owners in weak states form defensive coalitions—informal associations of state and non-state actors that support their property claims—to increase the cost of expropriation for rival property claimants. Defensive coalition building effects ownership outcomes by converting dyadic land disputes into multisided ones. This study tests a variety of coalition building strategies and their relationship to property dispute outcomes. It finds that property owners who solicit assistance from defensive coalition members sequentially experience higher levels of ownership security. In this way, the when of coalition formation is as important as the who of their composition. Second, this study analyzes the relationship between private coercion and ownership outcomes. The econometric analysis finds that violence is positively related to increased levels of property security. The centrality of private coercion to tenure security is important to demonstrate empirically, since it shows how property rights in weak states possess security dilemma-like qualities—an owner who is unable and unwilling to use violent practices is vulnerable to those who are. This conundrum makes promoting nonviolent means of property defense an acute challenge for would-be reformers, since constraining private coercion may limit the very ownership security that policymakers seek to increase. Third, this dissertation argues that a key adaptive practice of property protection is “papering up,” or gathering land documents from a variety of public authorities to bolster an ownership claim. Seeking documents from notoriously predatory state officials may seem counterintuitive at first blush, but serves important practical and symbolic functions. Although citizens of weak states are frequently portrayed as victims of state predation (and often are victims of state predation), the analysis in this study shows how they are also capable of leveraging predatory public officials to advance their private interests. This dissertation argues that documents in weak states are not impersonal byproducts of bureaucracy, but rather, tangible markers of patron-client relationships. As property owners negotiate for and obtain documents, they insert themselves into broader patronage networks that enhance their ownership security. Equally important, property documents shape people’s subjective feelings about their ownership security by rooting their land claims in notions of legitimacy. Seemingly paradoxical, the value of documentation to legitimacy building is inversely related to the state’s institutional strength. In highly formalized states, documents are invoked in a juridical manner, but rarely to increase the social legitimacy of a claim. Conversely, documents in weakly institutionalized states retain low levels of juridical value but are critical to the social legitimacy of a property claim. This study uses qualitative and quantitative data to show how Congolese property owners use the physical artifacts of the state, like title documents, to anchor their ownership claims in notions of legitimate authority and procedure, even if chains of command and state procedures are ambiguous. A final contribution of this dissertation is to shed light on the durability of inefficient or “second best” institutions. Why are suboptimal institutional arrangements so difficult to change? This study shows how adaptive practices shape demand for legal institutions. On the one hand, states must “supply” reliable property rights institutions in order for citizens to make use of them. However, the mere provision of legal institutions is an insufficient condition for their development into robust and effective property protection mechanisms. Instead, citizens must exhibit “demand” for the state’s property protections to implant them as stable and enforceable rules. Adaptive practices that function with modest levels of efficiency are correlated with public apathy toward institutional development. This study uses survey data to show how adaptive practices are associated with decreased demand for reform measures that would build the state’s capacity to build its tenure institutions. In this way, adaptive practices serve as an important, though often overlooked, positive feedback mechanism for suboptimal institutional arrangements. The arguments advanced in this dissertation are based on original data gathered over 20 cumulative months in four Congolese urban centers—Beni, Bukavu, Butembo, and Goma. These data sources include 125 in-depth interviews with Congolese administrative officials, customary authorities, and ex-combatants; 30 focus groups with a cross-section of property owners; and an original survey of 1,700 households. A unique and unanticipated source of data were the more than 10,000 land sale documents accessed in Congolese property registries. These data sources allow the study to test a variety of competing hypotheses about the origins of secure ownership in a state setting such as Congo. It concludes that an appreciation of the adaptive practices that property owners deploy to uphold their ownership claims is not only important to understanding the possibility of economic development in unlikely places, but how reform measures will be perceived, embraced, or rejected by the populations that they seek to serve.

Creator