pitfalls of externally initiated collective action

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Pitfalls of Externally Initiated Collective Action: A Case Study

from South Africa

BJORN VOLLAN *

Leibniz Center for Marine Tropical Ecology (ZMT), Bremen, Germany

Summary. Namaqualand government officials face a strong obligation to empower formerly disadvantaged communities bydelegating tasks or devolving power. Theoretically, the external agents capitalize on existing network structures, norms, and trust rela-tions within a village in order to stimulate collective action. In practice, single purpose committees are often set up in communities withhigh unemployment and where people have no resources for successful collective action. This study aggregates household level data andcombines it with a community level survey to provide evidence that a high number of externally initiated committees have a negativeeffect on aggregated trust and reciprocity within a community. This is caused by a stronger lack of downward accountability and trans-parency as well as coordination problems leading to unclear leadership. Further, a comparison between the old and new commonsshows that because communities have different histories and thus different social cohesion and fundraising willingness, their relativeadvantages in the devolution process differ. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Key words South Africa, Namaqualand, public service delivery, community participation, single purpose committee, building socialcapital

1. INTRODUCTION

In many communities all over the world people work to-gether to provide goods and services that are not providedby their government. They build and maintain roads, religiousbuildings and community halls, operate nursery schools, firecontrol groups and neighborhood patrols, and establish rulesfor maintaining and managing public goods and collectivelyowned natural resources. Since the 1980s many transitionaland developing countries around the world have started to

decentralize and devolve power to elected councils, allowingto share responsibility for maintaining public services suchas schools and health clinics with their local or central govern-ment. 1 An often mentioned benefit is to decrease corruptionand increase management efficiency as central governmentdoes not possess the relevant local knowledge (Bardhan &Mookherjee, 2005). On top of this a second wave of decen-tralization starting in the mid-1990s has taken place resultingin a large number of single-purpose committees responsible formaintenance and management (womens self-help groups,water user committees, development committees, parent-tea-cher committees, health committees, forest management com-mittees, and many more) in Asia, Africa, and Latin Americaas has been described by Manor (2004). Recent evidence fromrandomized field experiments questions the efficiency of com-

munity based management. Kremer, Leino, Miguel, andZwane (2008) found that contracting private maintenance ser-vice for spring protection may be the better alternative thansimilar funded committee-based management schemes. It hasfrequently been argued that a communitys social capital iscrucial to its success in providing and maintaining publicgoods and services (Alesina & La Ferrara, 2000; Bowles &Gintis, 2002).

This article analyzes a broader perspective of single purposeuser committees. There is a belief widely held by developmentpractitioners and some theorists that grass-root participationand interaction between people increases the stock of socialcapital in a community and thereby boosts economicdevelopment and empowerment (Evans, 1996; Warner,

2001). In principle, single purpose committees are a platform

for communication and repeated interaction where partieshave to follow their commitments and thus, it is likely thatcommittees can indeed increase trust or social capital. If car-ried out correctly, establishing committees might also forceexternal government bodies to engage in more genuine dialogand participatory approaches within health, school, infrastruc-tural services, and management of natural resources.Researchers have thus emphasized that villagers should havemultiple channels to outside organizations that enable themto engage in dialog with governments or NGOs (Uphoff,

1993, p. 619), probably because multiple channels increaseinteraction and thus stimulate social capital.The view of building social capital is also reflected in South

Africas White Paper on Local Government (Republic ofSouth Africa, 1998), which claims that developmental localgovernment is characterized by [. . .] building social capitalthrough providing community leadership and vision, andseeking to empower marginalized and excluded groups withinthe community. This emphasis has been even more pro-nounced since the implementation of the Batho Pele (peoplefirst) initiative for public service delivery. Only very recentevidence convincingly shows how social capital can be builtthrough external structures. Feigenberg, Field, and Pande(2010) provide experimental evidence that mandatory meet-ings between microfinance clients generated persistent changes

in clients social ties, improved informal risk-sharing, and

* I greatly appreciate the financial support (Commission No. 01 LC 002-

4A) by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the

support of the BIOTA Southern Africa Project (Biodiversity Monitoring

Transect Analysis). I received valuable comments from three anonymous

referees, Nicky Allsopp, Rick Rohde, Timm Hoffman, Michael Kirk,

Evelyn Korn, Bernd Hayo, Sebastian Prediger participants of the

Buchenbach Workshop on Evolutionary Economics 2005, participants

of the IASCP Conference 2006, and participants at the PLAAS seminar

June, 2006. I thank Millie Saul for research assistance in the field, Lizande

Kellerman for translation, and Di Kilpert for editing the manuscript. All

remaining errors are of course mine. Final revision accepted: August 12,

2011.

World Development Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 758770, 2012 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

0305-750X/$ - see front matter

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reduced default. Attanasio, Pellerano, and Reyes (2009) showthat social capital was possibly built through a two-yearconditional cash transfer program Familias en Accion whichinvolves social activities such as attending meetings andcourses or simply visiting a health center. Besides Petro(2001) focusing on the role of local elites in Russia, scantattention has been paid to the necessary circumstances for

building social capital. This case study aims at opening up thisblack box. What happens where initial human and social cap-ital is very low, as in formerly disadvantaged communities orwhere local authorities delegate from obligation rather thanfrom conviction? Does regular social contact between commu-nity members through an increase in the delegation of tasks orthe devolution of power to communities necessarily lead to anincrease in social capital?

Where social capital is created from the outside, by decen-tralization or by obliging people to participate, conflict canarise. As highlighted in Ostrom (2000) social capital is hardto construct through external interventions. When nationaland regional governments take over full responsibilities forlarge realms of human activities, they limit other efforts to en-ter these fields. Ostrom (2000) advocates external empower-

ment but clearly sees the constraints. Public bureaucraciesoften follow their own agendas (maximizing influence,expanding budgets, and increasing number of subordinates)which may not generate the intended results unless officialsare strongly motivated to facilitate the growth and empower-ment of others. Only a few authors have argued that delega-tion may have negative effects. Manor (2004) refers to adamaging second wave of decentralization with destructiveconflicts over financial resources that lead to fragmented vil-lage participation and committees becoming parallel struc-tures to elected local government that undermine efficiencyand accountability of the first wave of the decentralizationprocess. Latif (2002) characterizes single purpose committeesas less accountable to the population than to the outside orga-

nization, thus more instrumental and more prone to elite cap-ture.The paper presents a case study from Namaqualand (North-

ern Cape Province, South Africa) where villages with only 300households reported having on average nine committees. Theaim of this article is at least twofold. On the one hand Ianalyze the policy relevant issue of devolution and offer analternative view on local institutions and especially committeesthat contradict assumptions of many practitioners. The SouthAfrican government uses a blueprint for creating new local,single purpose, sector specific institutions and committees be-sides the existing local governance structure (ward committee).I analyze the effect these external interventions have on coop-erative behavior since it is known that external interventionsthat change underlying incentive structures to cooperate might

crowd out intrinsic motivation to cooperate (Bowles, 2008).2

The paper further outlines the way past cooperation in grazingmanagement influences what elements are most needed in thedevolution process from outside organizations (building socialcapital vs. financial help). On the other hand I draw from (andcontribute to) three distinct lines of literature that are much re-lated with each other. The purpose of this work is not to devel-op a new theoretical framework incorporating all distinctstrains of literature but rather to apply an existing frameworkmainly used for analyzing sustainable management of jointlyused natural resources (Poteete, Janssen, & Ostrom, 2010;Vollan & Ostrom, 2010) to decentralization policies in SouthAfrica. Following this approach broader contextual vari-ables such as decentralization policies and historical depen-dence might impact the levels of trust that other participants

are reciprocators, levels of cooperation and hence net benefitsfor the community. This relation is analyzed using standardquestions from the social capital literature.

2. BACKGROUND

(a) Study site

The largest ethnic group in the study site is the coloreds.The term colored refers to an ethnic group of mixed race peo-ple who often possess some sub-Saharan African ancestry butnot enough to be considered Black under the law of SouthAfrica. The Kamiesberg and Nama Khoi Municipalities inNamaqualand contain the three former colored reserves ofLeliefontein, Steinkopf, and Komaggas (see Figure 1). At 0.9people per square kilometer, the population density ofKamiesberg is extremely low for South Africa (3 for NamaKhoi Municipality). Of the 10,759 people in the KamiesbergMunicipality, approximately half live in Leliefontein commu-nal areahereafter referred to as the old commons (newcommons being land given to a community after apartheid

as described below). The Leliefontein communal area com-prises 10 villages with 5,223 inhabitants, or approximately1,500 households. Kharkams, the biggest settlement with1,291 inhabitants, is situated on the main road from CapeTown to Springbok (Statistics South Africa, 2001). The othervillages have on average 450 inhabitants. Only 13.2% of thepeople in the Leliefontein communal areas are employed and50% of the employed colored population in the Namakwa dis-trict has a monthly income below 800 South African rand (seeTable 3 in Appendix). 3 The high rate of unemploymentmeans that many people rely on state pensions, welfare grants,remittances from relatives working in nearby towns or coastaldiamond mines, or occasional salaries coming from infrastruc-ture construction work. According to Anseeuw (2000), 87% of

the 108 households of Leliefontein covered in his survey, re-ceive social transfers (for 37% of the families, these transfersare the main source of income). Villagers furthermore relyheavily on natural resources for fuel wood and grazing fortheir livestock in common property regimes. In some areasdry land crop farming is practiced.

The Kamiesberg Municipality is a local municipality(Category B) consisting of four wards and governed by a coun-cil based in the district capital Garies. The council approvespolicies and by-laws, has to pass a budget for the municipalityeach year, charge service fees, and must also decide on develop-ment plans and service delivery for their municipal area. Eachof the four wards directly elects a councilor. The other fourmembers are elected through a proportional representationballot, where voters vote for a party. The direct elected coun-

cilor of each ward is also the chairperson of the village wardcommittee. Other ward committee members (up to 10) areelected by the residents of the respective ward and their job isto represent the various interests in the community. The wardcommittees main tasks are to communicate and consult withthe community in respect of development and service plansand to play a role in developing local projects. The ward com-mittee has, however, no formal power to force the municipalcouncil to do anything. The externally initiated user groupsand single purpose committees do not relate to the elected localgovernment (council and ward committee) nor to existing cus-tomary organizations like clans or tribal groups (these do notexist in Namaqualand).

When it came to self-organization and service delivery, thecommons in the Namaqualand reserves were confronted with

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severe challenges in the past. Starting with colonial oppressionand the allocation of unproductive land to the colored com-munity, the situation worsened with the 1913 Land Act, whichmade it illegal for Africans to own or lease land outside the re-serves. The reserves became mainly a pool of migrant workersfor the coastal diamond mines. According to the Bantu Edu-cation Act of 1953, Africans were only to be educated to a de-gree which would give them the skills to serve their own peopleand perform laboring work for the whites and to preventurbanization by keeping the coloreds in the reserves. Duringthat time the maintenance of the infrastructure on the com-

mons was under the authority of the Department of ColoredRural Areas, which could overrule any decision of the localpeople and was mainly there to ensure that the economicdevelopment of these areas was in line with the interests ofwhite farmers (Rohde, Hoffman, & Cousins, 1999, p. 5). In1995, shortly after the abolition of apartheid, the newly electedSouth African government initiated municipal elections for theTransitional Local Councils (TLCs) and created municipalitiesin all rural areas. Since 1998, under the new Constitution, themunicipalities have played a key role in the provision of basicservices, in particular water, sanitation, refuse removal, elec-tricity, roads, public transport, town planning, and decisionsaround land use. However, the municipality together withthe responsible ministry often prefers to work with a new

established user committee (instead the elected ward commit-tee) where they can influence and control the composition anddecisions more easily. The sectoral approach taken by mostgovernments in southern Africa when establishing committeesmeans that a number of community workers represent variousdepartments and agencies in one area (Swanepoel, 1992, p.112). User committees play a key role in the aims of public ser-vice delivery. Most villages have permanent committees forcommon pasture, tourism, schools, welfare, and health as wellas committees for projects such as gardening, policing, orfunerals. The authority of the committee extends as far aschoosing the subcontractor for specific tasks, allocating locallabor, and monitoring performance. Depending on their stateof development, villages may have further committees to orga-nize basic infrastructure needs such as housing, electricity,

water, roads, fences, and sport facilities.

Since 1994, Namaqualand has been part of a broaderprocess of land redistribution in South Africa, in which thegovernment bought land from commercial farmers and trans-ferred it to rural communities. More than 275,000 ha of pri-vate farmland have been bought by government and addedas new commons, increasing the total communal area byabout 20% (Wisborg & Rohde, 2005). The new commonsare fenced-in farms with relatively good infrastructure, unlikethe old commons, which lack fences and have poor infrastruc-ture.

(b) Framework used in the analysis

Committees are means to solve collective action problems incommunities. Collective action problems occur in situations inwhich the uncoordinated action of individuals is less beneficialthan coordinated action. Olson (1965) argues that incentives incollective action lead individuals to act in a self-interested waythat interferes with the collective aim. Collective action prob-lems often arise in relation to public goods, which attract freeriders who do not contribute to production or conservation ofthe goods (i.e., do not cooperate). It would be best if every-body would contribute to collective action (i.e., cooperate),but each individual is usually better off to try to free-rideand let others provide the good. However, if all or most people

free-ride, the good is not provided. According to Ostrom(1998) trust, reciprocity, and the expectation that others willalso cooperate are three crucial components for explainingcooperation and successful collective action. Refinements ofthe relationships described in Ostrom (1998) resulted in thetheoretical framework proposed by Poteete et al. (2010). 4

The framework departs with learning and norm-adopting (incontrast to selfish rational) individuals who trust others whohave a reputation for being trustworthy (see Figure 2). Thedecisions made by individuals are affected by micro-situationalvariables and broader contextual variables. Examples ofmicro-situational variables include group size, communication,heterogeneity among participants, reputation, and timehorizons. Examples of broader context that might matter inthis study are policies at higher levels of organization (decen-

tralization policy, empowerment, and former apartheid).

Figure 1. Namaqualand andcolored reserves (gray shaded). The focus of the study is the area around Leliefontein. Map taken with permission of authorsfrom Wisborg and Rohde (2005).

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An increase in user committees tends to increase communi-cation and there is strong evidence that the possibility of com-munication increases the potential for successful collectiveaction (Sally, 1995). However, policies at the broader contextlevel might sometimes create situations that do interfere withthe positive effect of communication. In Section 4.3 I analyze,

aggregated for several villages, the

levels of trust that othersare reciprocators which is the crucial concept to explain suc-cessful collective action. I hypothesize that the levels of trustthat others are reciprocators is influenced by the public infra-structure providers need to interact with communities and theestablishment of committees to solve (potential) collective ac-tion problems. The resulting question is whether the benevo-lent third parties (the government and NGOs) help people tobuild trust, or whether they (unintentionally) destroy trust intheir aim to solve the collective action problem inherent inthe maintenance and management of public goods.

Because of differences in broader contextual variables, casestudies and field experiments are needed to test whether peoplein different contexts differ in the decisions they make. Forexample we do not know whether and how, more than

10 years after the end of apartheid, the dependency of theapartheid system affects learning and norm-adopting individ-uals. Shackleton, von Maltitz, and Evans (1998, p. 21) char-acterize South African communities as not having had a longtradition of cooperation. The importance of past cooperationfor learning and norm-adopting individuals in social dilem-mas is widely documented (Agrawal, 2003; Baland & Platteau,1996; Ostrom, 1990). Trust generates social obligations andthus induces others to trust as well. Cooperation increasesand potentially generates net benefits for the community.The increase in trust leads to an increase in the reputationfor being trustworthy, such that successful interactions in turnreinforce trust (Ostrom, 1998, p. 12). In Figure 2 the achieve-ment of net benefits from cooperation feed backs on the

norm adopting individual.

Besides the dependency that isa hangover from apartheid, past cooperation in the villagesmight also play a major role for successful decentralization,devolution, and delegation today as discussed in Sections 4.4and 4.5.

Applying a behavioral approach in the local context of theNamaqualand implies the measurement of trust, reciprocity,and the expectation that others are trustworthy. While recentstudies increasingly make use of field lab experiments tomeasure these latent variables (Vollan & Ostrom, 2010) earlierwork uses survey questions. In this paper I use standard surveyquestions from social capital literature (Narayan & Cassidy,2001) and refer to Norman Uphoffs useful categorization ofsocial capital into two types: structural and cognitive (Uphoff,1993). According to Uphoff and Wijayaratna (2000), structural

social capital facilitates mutually beneficial collective action

and consists of groups, organizations, and networks that canbe created from outside, whereas cognitive social capital pre-disposes people toward mutually beneficial collective actionand is comprised of social norms and values that affect the effi-ciency of structural social capital. The mechanism throughwhich the cognitive elements of social capital reinforce each

other and predispose people to cooperate is precisely describedin Ostroms behavioral approach to the rational choice theoryof collective action (1998). If people trust each other and expectothers to cooperate, they are more likely to contribute to col-lective action, form groups, and participate in meetings, andthis makes it easier to delegate tasks or devolve power to thelocal level. Instead of using the umbrella term social capitalor referring to a specific definition of social capital, I mostly re-fer directly to trust, reciprocity, networks, and membership inan organization, where applicable.

3. METHODS

To assess household level social capital, participation in col-

lective action and participation in village meetings, 151 struc-tured interviews were conducted in the Namaqualand area ofSouth Africa from August to November 2004. The householdsurvey was carried out in 10 villages in two Municipalities (se-ven villages in Kamiesberg and three in Nama Khoi). Thestudy encompasses three former colored reserves: Leliefonteinarea in the Kamiesberg Municipality and Kommaggas andSteinkopf in the Nama Khoi Municipality. Since we did nothave a list of all the households in a village it was not possibleto draw a representative random sample. Within the villagesthe enumerator(s) started at two different locations in the vil-lages and approached every 10th house on the right hand sideof a street (to prevent peer- or neighborhood effects). Respon-dents were the head of the household or their spouse (depen-

dent on the availability of the person). The enumerators inthe villages were trained and selected following recommenda-tions from local organizations. The aim was to complete 20surveys within each village. 5 However, in three villages (Kheis,Klipfontein, and Bulletrap) the response rate was lower thanexpected or data were missing from the questionnaires, sothe questionnaires from these villages were used only forhousehold level analysis (Section 4.4) but not in the analysisbased on aggregation at village level (Section 4.3). To makethe case study context as homogeneous as possible in Section4.3 the focus is only on the villages in the Kamiesberg Munic-ipality (n = 79). The logit regression in 4.3 and 4.4 makes useof a testing-down procedure at 10% nominal significance level(see Hendry, 1993) to increase estimation efficiency by reduc-ing the number of variables in the model.

Figure 2. Framework with the core relationship of co-operation based on Poteete et al. (2010). The main influences analyzed in this paper are how broadercontextual variables influence trust and reciprocity.

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In addition to the household survey, a standardized semi-structured community level survey was used to assess the num-ber of projects, associations, and committees through focusgroup discussion with village leaders and committee members.The focus group interviews were conducted in 20 villages ofthe Kamiesberg and Nama Khoi Municipality (all villageswith majority colored population). Table 3 in Appendix shows

socio-demographic information from the household surveyaggregated by village (upper panel) and basic informationfrom the community questionnaire (lower panel) on the num-ber of active committees and meetings with municipalities andother organizations for the same villages. Each section of theresults draws on slightly different samples or combination ofdata sources and will be re-introduced in the beginning of eachresult section. The analysis presented here is based on correla-tions from a cross-sectional household and community surveywhich cannot provide robust causal interpretations (seeDurlauf, 2002). I control for most obvious omitted variables,but I do not claim to make robust causal inference, and arguefor the plausibility of certain causal interpretations.

4. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

(a) A rationale for establishing single purpose committees

Participation in committees is voluntary and often unpaidbut participation increases if significant individual benefitscan be expected. On the date of the interviews, villagers ofTweerivier (with approximately 300 inhabitants) named up to13 committees that they thought existed in their village. In an-swer to the question How do you solve a problem in the com-munity? 33% of the villagers in Tweerivier and Spoegriviersaid they contacted an outside organization. Figure 3 givesan idea of the relation between the unemployment rate andthe number of committees per 100 persons. The indicated rela-

tion suggests that the establishment of external committeesmay be motivated by peoples need and their unemploymentor simply because more people have time to serve the commit-tees when unemployment is high. The correlation coefficient

between the number of committees per 100 inhabitants andthe unemployment rate is 0.72. Regression results betweenthe number of committees per 100 inhabitants and the unem-ployment rate have an adjusted R2 of 52%, with the unemploy-ment rate being significant at the 1% level. It seems plausiblethat high unemployment precedes and causes the high numberof committees since the unemployment level has not changed

dramatically in Namaqualand in the past 1520 years and mostcommittees were established in the last 510 years.So, why might unemployment cause establishment of com-

mittees? The high unemployment and the end of apartheidalso changed many peoples attitudes, making them expectcompensation from government (i.e., some kind of monetarybenefit from projects or short-term employment possibilities),and this in turn obliged the external establishers of a project toprovide some kind of revenue to the community if possible.Not surprisingly, Anseeuw (2000, p. 48) found that 39.5% ofthe interviewed households earned their income from occa-sional wages, compared to only 28.7% from regular salaries.Given that both unpaid and paid occasional work is distrib-uted via committees, for many people committees are incomeopportunities. The expected monetary revenue from occa-

sional jobs is higher when the committee is meant to provideor maintain a public infrastructure (housing and other infra-structure projects) as compared with committees that aremeant to manage a common-pool resource or provide a socialservice (education, health, welfare, security, funeral, orcommunity garden). But also the latter might offer direct orindirect benefits for the committee members (e.g., status, influ-ence in decision-making, short-term employment contracts).While communities mostly need employment, donors oftenrequire bottom-up processes (this increases legitimacy andpopularity of the donor) without considering the usefulnessof the committee for the implementation process. Unfortu-nately, government employees often have no experience andsee no benefit in bottom-up process (which might be correct

for some projects). Often it might be more efficient to deliverservices without establishing a user committee. On the otherextreme, there are even situations showing that decentraliza-tion dictated top-down may be misused by the state to get

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Figure 3. Unemployment and the creation of committees. Notes: (a) unemployment and population data from official data (Statistics South Africa). (b)Number of external committees assessed with community level questionnaire. (c) The figure contains all villages from Kamiesberg Municipality (additionally

Bulletrap, Carolusberg, Bergsig from Nama Khoi Municipality).

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rid of obligations in times of tight budgets (Ngaido & Kirk,2000).

Communities with higher unemployment and greater needmight be less demanding in the negotiation process of establish-ing committees (asking less power to enforce and monitor theprovider and agree to a pseudo democratic selection of lead-ers). Communities with higher unemployment might also more

likely establish committees in the hope that sooner or later theywill generate some benefits to the members. Thus, from thisperspective it might be easier for external agents to work withcommunities with higher unemployment. It might also be thatdonors feel a greater need and thus tend to set-up their projectin areas of high unemployment. As a result, the high expecta-tions of the local population, is confronted with single purposecommittees that are often implemented without offering occa-sional jobs, without devolving adequate resources and powerand with a pseudo democratic selection of leaders.

(b) Principal component analysis

Factor analysis is a multivariate statistical technique for iso-

lating common factors in order to get a small set of uncorre-lated variables from a large set of variables (most of whichare correlated to each other). Here, the aim was to combinevariables, with an objective basis for selecting items, which de-scribe a certain dimensions of social capital. Since the datacomes from standard questionnaire items and there exists awide range of theory on social capital and its dimensions thefactor analysis uses already existing factor labeling where pos-sible. Specifically, the procedure was based on Narayan andCassidy (2001) who validated their items for a heterogeneoussample in Ghana and Uganda. I also use the complete house-hold survey (n = 215) including the observations from south-ern Namibia (n = 64) to build the factors. All scales in thesurvey were examined and recoded where necessary to achieveconsistency in direction: that is, the higher the value for any

given question the greater is social capital. The reduction intofactors was done using Categorical Principal ComponentsAnalysis. First, a group of variables was chosen that has beenproposed by Narayan and Cassidy (2001) to belong to two dif-ferent factors. The confirmations of the factors lead to theomission of certain variables or the creation of additional fac-tors. As a rough rule of thumb, variables that had loadings be-low 0.5 on one of the factors were omitted. The variablescomprised to one factor are quite highly correlated with oneanother, with all correlation coefficients significant at a 0.05 le-vel or better. Thus, the factors have a high Cronbach a indicat-ing a high reliability. Additionally the content of the factorsare comprised with a set of meaningful variables allowing anaming of the factors in the way proposed by Narayan and

Cassidy (2001) or others (see Table 1). The table containsthe rotated factor loadings, which are the correlations betweenthe variable and the factor. High loadings on a common factorindicate reliability and that the items measure a common con-ceptual property. The factors were transformed into an indexfor different quartiles or quintiles to ease interpretation.

Altogether seven factors were derived. The first two factors,civic engagement and satisfied with rules, are directlyinfluenced by the delegation or devolution process. Networkresources and social cohesion, are related to Lins (2001)concept of social capital that emphasizes the resources onecan get from ones network. Fundraising willingness cap-tures peoples willingness to provide public goods in the com-munity. Trust in local institutions and Trust in newinstitutions are measures for stability, legitimacy, and partic-

ipation in certain organizations, and fundraising willingness

captures peoples likelihood to contribute financially to a pub-lic good.

(c) Do single purpose committees build social capital in theNamaqualand?

In this section I examine the preconditions for collective

actiontrust in community members and reciprocityandlook at how their presence or absence is influenced by the ex-tent to which outside structure has been implemented. If weaccept that social capital can be built from the outside, weshould then observe that villages with a large number of struc-tural components (i.e., committees) should possess or havebuilt up a higher stock of trust and reciprocity.

Using the sample for the four villages of comparable size inthe Kamiesberg Municipality (n = 79) 6 and a logit model totest the effect of many committees (more than 10) and elimi-nating the jointly nonsignificant variables (Hendry, 1993),we obtain the marginal effects (dy/dx) in (Eqn. (1)). All sevenfactors derived in Section 4.2 as well as the theoretical impor-tant variables reciprocity, trust, voluntary, and paid collectiveaction are included in the testing-down process. Since there is

a negative and significant correlation between trust in commu-nity members and committee membership (0.14; p < 0.1)and a possible relation between unemployment and committeemembership (see Section 4.1), I control for being a member ofa committee and being unemployed even though the coeffi-cients are insignificant in the multivariate setting 7:

PMany Village Committees 1

0:12Committee member 0:20Unemployed

0:10Unpaid Collective work

0:10Community Trust 0:15Reciprocity

0:14Satisfied with rules 1

No of obs.: 79; Pseudo R2 = 0.29.Note: (a) The symbols ***, **, and * indicate significance at

the 1%, 5%, and 10% level, respectively. (b) The displayed fig-ures are the marginal effects calculated at the mean (not thecoefficients).

The regression control approach shows that lack of aggre-gated trust and reciprocity goes together with a high numberof committees. While trust is measured on a scale from 1 to4, reciprocity is an additive index constructed from givingand returning favors to neighbors and borrowing and lendingmoney to friends. In case a person both gives and receives fa-vors from her neighbors she obtains the maximum score of 2,if she neither gives nor receives favors her score is 1, and if sheeither gives or receives a favor her score is 0. The same logic is

applied to borrowing and lending money such that the indexvaries between 0 and 4. Furthermore, Eqn. (1) shows the lowersatisfaction with local rules and procedures and a higherdegree of voluntary collective action, measured by days of un-paid collective action in villages with many externally createdcommittees.

These findings make sense when further observations are ta-ken into account. Firstly, since Ostroms behavioral approachhas high internal validity, spurious correlation is unlikely. Thevariables trust and belief that others are trustworthy arehighly correlated at the individual level (0.36; n = 151;p < .01) and reciprocity captures an additional effect thatpeople are conditionally cooperative (i.e., only cooperate whenothers do so). Secondly, the finding that where there are morecommittees there is more voluntary collective action is

expected. Surprisingly, although not significant in the

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multivariate setting, there are more people employed in occa-sional work in the village with fewer committees (v2 = 4.3;n = 79; p < .05). This means that villages with more commit-tees generate less direct benefits but more voluntary work andthat monetary benefit from participation is not harmful to so-cial capital and might even increase or build social capitalwhile voluntary work does not lead to higher social capital.The above results suggest that there could be more social ser-vice committees (higher likelihood of voluntary work) and less

public infrastructure committees (higher likelihood of occa-sional work) in the villages with many committees and thusthat the purpose of the committee and not the number of com-mittees drives the result. The four villages do not differ muchin terms of infrastructure projects. 8 The village Tweerivier isclosest to the main road and some houses already had electric-ity (20%). There was also an on-going sanitation and housingproject at the time of the survey in Tweerivier. Spoegrivier andPaulshoek also had a housing, sanitation, and electrificationproject while Soebatsfontein only had a housing project. Themain difference between the villages is that Spoegrivier andTweerivier developed single purpose committees for sanitationand electricity while these tasks are integrated in the wardcommittee in Paulshoek (or do not exist as in Soebatsfontein).

However, there are also more social service committees inSpoegrivier and Tweerivier which makes it impossible todisentangle the importance of the purpose of the committeefor the influence on trust and reciprocity.

The lower level of trust and reciprocity in villages with manycommittees is likely driven by a mix of unfulfilled expectations,stronger lacking of downward accountability and transpar-ency, and a poor coordination between the village organiza-tions. For example in villages with many committees peopledo go less often to meetings (v2 = 3.6; n = 79; p < 0.1)although there are more meetings scheduled. 9 In Tweerivier(a village with 13 committees) most respondents said there istoo little communication during meetings as well as too littlecommunication by the committees to the village about thecontent of the meetings. This interferes with the good practices

for monitoring, reporting, ownership, and accountability that

are essential for functioning committee work. Committeemeetings are held in isolation and the rest of the village is una-ware of what goes on in the meetings and thus is skepticalabout the committees. It could also be possible that the effectof lower trust and reciprocity in villages with many commit-tees is driven by one or two committees that were establishedwithout the necessary dialog and training in the villages withmany committees. However, if this were the case one wouldnot expect to see overall trust and reciprocity within the village

to decrease but rather a decline of trust toward specific com-mittees. Both factors trust in new institutions and trustin local institutions are not affected. Furthermore, govern-ments use blueprints for establishing committees in theNamaqualand such that it is unlikely to assume that the estab-lishment of committees differed across villages. Thus, it seemsplausible to assume that it is the number of committees andnot the approach of establishing them that leads to lower trustand reciprocity in this case study.

The lacking accountability, transparency, and coordinationmight also lead to unclear leadership and rumors that the lead-ers are dishonest. For example people in Spoegrivier (a villagewith 14 committees) responded to the open-ended questionWhat are the problems in the village? that they are given

no information about meetings, and that there are politicaldifferences and unclear leadership. A consequence might bethat groups will not solve their conflicts but instead formnew committees. 10 Whether elite capture is a problem in theNamaqualand and whether it is stronger in villages with manycommittees is unclear. Selection of leaders by donors and gov-ernment organizations are never done by secret voting in theNamaqualand. A member of a committee which is grantedmoney, particularly a chairperson, is in a strategic positionwhere the temptation to be untrustworthy can be very strong.Often this is even the perceived right of leaders who devotedconsiderable energies to the setting-up of the local organiza-tion and interacting with the public infrastructure provider.But even trustworthy committee leaders can act in favor tocertain people in their village by hiring them as workers or

subcontractors for the relevant tasks. Often the selection of

Table 1. Factors loadings derived from the household survey on social capital (n = 215)

Factor (Cronbach a) Variables included Factor loading

Civic engagement (a = .81) Participation in local meetings .913Involved in decision-making .875Informed about local things .851Participation in municipal meetings .653

Satisfied with rules (a = .53) Rules flexible to peoples needs .815

Happy with decisions in meetings .744Rules flexible to natures needs .590

Network resources (a = .70) Borrow money from somebody .931Lend somebody money .925Somebody to ask for money .520Somebody to watch for the children .483

Social cohesion (a = .61) Did favor to neighbor .871Received a favor from neighbor .784Number of friends .611Attend community ceremonies .524

Fundraising willingness (a = .44) Participate without benefiting .792Fee for collective maintenance .731Belief that others contribute money .633

Trust in local institutions (a = .75) Trust in political parties .996Trust in municipal officials .946

Trust in committees .869Trust in new institutions (a = .67) Trust in researcher .831

Trust in NGOs .709Trust in landbank .683

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the committee is influenced toward the more educated peoplesince they make it easier to collaborate with. Taking the wholesample, there is indeed a significantly higher level of educationfor committee members than noncommittee members(t = 2.34; n = 151; p = 0.02) and committee members are sig-nificantly younger with 42 years compared to 47 years(t = 2.24; n = 151; p = 0.03), there are more people that gain

their income from occasional work in committees (v2

= 3.84;n = 151; p = 0.05) and there is no difference in gender or in-come. The more educated and younger people are often the lo-cal elites and we know that local elites are capable of turningthe institutions and opportunities created through decentral-ization to their own advantage (Platteau & Gaspart, 2003;Ribot, Agrawal, & Larson, 2006). Another indication of elitecapture might be a high number of functions for a few people.Thirty percentage of committee members are in more than onecommittee in the Namaqualand and the correlation betweenmembership in committees and being member of farmer asso-ciation, a co-operative union or a political party is very high(0.4; n = 151; p = 0.01). Moreover, committee members werealso much more likely to have a responsibility such as fundraising, organizing events or doing administrative work in

associations, unions and political parties (0.4; n = 151;p = 0.01). While one might expect that younger more edu-cated people dominate the committees it remains unclearwhether this indicates elite capture. There is no data on ac-tual embezzling of funds. The composition of young and edu-cated people could also indicate that local people take thecommittees serious and elect people that have the importantbridging function of social capital or that there is a limitedwillingness of others to spend their time on a committee.

(d) The need for a context-dependent devolution process inNamaqualand

To analyze the effect of past cooperation for devolution, I

compare Soebatsfontein, the one village in the KamiesbergMunicipality that had no village commons and thus less pos-sibility for past cooperation until it received common landafter apartheid (new commons), with the other villages fromthe former colored rural reserves in Leliefontein, Steinkopfand Komaggas that have owned land and cooperated witheach other but were dependent on outside help for mainte-nance and management (old commons). 11

The differences between the new commons and the old com-mons are presented in (Eqn. (2)). I apply a logit regressionmodel (Eqn. (2)) including all villages (also from Nama KhoiMunicipality and with a dummy variable that takes the valueof 1 for the new commons as dependent variable. Only fund-raising willingness and social cohesion remain in the modelafter eliminating the jointly nonsignificant variables (the initial

model uses the same variables and factors as in Eqn. (1)).Gjertsen and Barrett (2004, p. 329) argue that fundraisingwillingness and community cohesion are important deter-minants for the optimal management strategy of natural re-sources (self-governance, co-management, state governed).Consequently, the old commons and the new commons eachhave different advantages which highlight the context depen-dence for devolution. The remainder of this section discussesthe importance of these two factors in the Namaqualand.

PNew Commons 1 0:07Fundraising willingness

0:10Social cohesion 2

No of obs.: 151; Pseudo R2 = 0.09.

Note: (a) The symbols ***, **, and * indicate significance atthe 1%, 5%, and 10% level, respectively. (b) The displayed fig-ures are the marginal effects calculated at the mean (not thecoefficients).

Social cohesiona factor comprised of the number offriends, the frequency of doing a favor for a neighbor andthe frequency of attending community ceremoniesis signifi-

cantly higher in the old commons. Natural resource use in theold commons, such as collective herding strategies or theinformal allocation of grazing land, has facilitated cooperativeagreements between the villagers (Allsopp, Laurent,Debeaudoin, & Samuels, 2007). Gjertsen and Barrett (2004)claim that a low level of village cohesion is an identifier forrelative higher government efficiency. Management, monitor-ing, and enforcement tasks cannot as easily be transferred ifmultiple interests exist in the community. A further indicatorof the multiple interests is that according to the householdsurvey Soebatsfontein has a much higher Gini coefficient(0.61) than villages from the old commons: Paulhoek (0.49),Spoegrivier (0.48), or Tweerivier (0.43). In contrast to theold commons, in the new commons, where there were no pastcooperative agreements about resource access to rely on, there

was no pressure to learn collective behavior and to develop acommon vision of their community. The lower village cohe-sion (and higher heterogeneity in the livelihood strategies)may be a factor that makes it difficult for Soebatsfontein touse and participate in the new village institutions effectively.Consequently, committee members report that they meet onlyirregularly (v2 = 6.5; p < .01). In the old commons an envi-ronment of togetherness was a vehicle for social learning. Inparticular the inherent conflicts over resource use and thusthe presence of mechanisms of punishment and reward seemto be crucial in a context of social learning (Van den Bergh& Stagl, 2003, p. 296).

Eqn. (2) further shows that past dependency still restrictsthe willingness to contribute money to the community (fund-

raising willingness) in the old commons. This result is inde-pendent from income since in the old commons ofLeliefontein (avg. 1373 ZAR; std. dev. 1072) and in thenew commons (avg. 1268 ZAR; std. dev. 1150) average in-come in the sample is not statistically different (t = 0.50;n = 151; p = 0.61). A lower willingness to contribute moneyto the community without getting ones own direct rewardsdiminishes the communitys ability to repair minor damageby themselves and increases their reliance on outside entities.Many people are also not paying for municipal service deliv-eries, because they think services should be delivered for freeas was done in the past. A good example is that most peoplein the old commons refuse to pay grazing fees that would beused by the land use committee to maintain infrastructuresuch as wind pumps. Since the communities are unable to

raise enough cash, the overburdened municipality remainsresponsible for the repairs, although it tries to delegate theresponsibility back to the communities. During apartheidthe communities were not allowed to repair infrastructureon their own but had to report damages to the council,who would then eventually send somebody to do the repair.Thus the communities in the old commons were never askedto recover the costs but always had to rely on externalagency for help. On the new commons in Soebatsfontein,on the other hand, farmers were employed by commercialfarmers and trained to repair infrastructure. Today thesesemi-commercial farmers see it as part of their job to repairdamage on their own and do not as often report it to themunicipality.

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(e) Context-dependent preferences and institutional choice

This section analyzes peoples institutional choices in the oldand the new commons. I draw on the voting results from com-mon-pool resource experiments carried out in late 2005 inboth the old and new commons (Vollan, 2008). In these exper-iments groups of five people were confronted with a social di-lemma situation where the social optimum could be reached ifall five group members kept a low number of livestock, whilekeeping as many livestock units as possible was the dominantstrategy for each participant. After 10 rounds people couldvote secretly for a communication rule, an enabling externalreward or a restrictive external penalty rule to be implemented

for another 10 rounds.Table 2 shows the summary statistics of the experiment andthe respective voting results. Taking into account the lack ofsocial cohesion which impedes monitoring in the new com-mons, we see that people in the new commons indeed preferexternal monitoring and rule enforcement, while people inthe old commons that have higher social cohesion stronglyprefer traditional ways of solving problems through face-to-face communication and deliberation. The participants triedto build up trust through communication since their experi-ences with outside interventions were negative. The character-izations suggest that communication within groups is stronglyprevalent among the majority of people in the old commons ofNamaqualand. People in the new commons who favor exter-nal rule enforcement also have a higher degree of trust in

the police (v2 = 8.3; n = 151; p < .01) and judiciary (v2 =6.9; n = 151; p < .01) or the factor new institution (v2 =3.1; n = 151; p < .1). When asked who makes the decisionsfor their area, all of them named the municipality, while inthe old commons of Leliefontein respondents named variouslythe community, committees, and the municipality. This re-flects to some degree a lower trust in the problem solvingcapacity of the community in the new commons. Summingup there is a remarkable parallel in the analysis of the strengthand weaknesses of the communities and the aggregated votingresults. Both analyses suggest a greater demand for site-spe-cific interventions with external assistance in creating socialcapital in the areas without a history of past cooperation.

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The well-established literature has observed the links be-tween social capital and natural resource management (Pretty& Ward, 2001, p. 220), between social capital and provision ofpublic goods (Alesina & La Ferrara, 2000), and between socialcapital and development (Knack & Keefer, 1997). Here I high-light the interdependence of social capital and decentralizationand especially between social capital and delegation or devolu-tion. This case study from Namaqualand confirms the impor-tance of the relationship between the community and thepublic infrastructure provider and argues that it is criticalfor effecting cooperation. It is a relationship driven mainly

by the obligation placed on the officials to consult and involvethe communities. Reality in Namaqualand is following a ra-tional choice approach of bureaucracies. The easiest way tofulfill the obligation of a bottom-up process is to appointa single purpose committee in the community that is easierto control and work with than the elected ward committee.While the facilitation process mostly follows a blueprint proce-dure, the efficiency of each specific committee was not ex-plored in detail. There is anecdotal evidence from usercommittees pointing toward insufficient management supportfrom the outside organizations, unclear or too little delegationof tasks and decision-making power, insufficient financial re-sources as well as embezzling of money by leaders.

On the basis of a household and community survey in a for-mer colored reserve of Namaqualand, I observe that unem-ployment is a major driver for having a high number of usercommittees in a village. Most likely, a high unemployment invillages also weakens the negotiation power of the communitytoward the infrastructure provider such that villages with highunemployment might end up with a high number of commit-tees that are also dysfunctional (insufficient decision-makingpower and resources). Besides the committee specific problemsthere are also community wide effects. When controlling forunemployment there remains a significantly lower level ofnorms of trust and reciprocity in villages with a high numberof committees. This suggests that in villages with many com-mittees the trust-generating function of the committees(i.e., platform for communication and repeated interaction

where parties follow their commitments) does not work as in-tended. With a higher number of committees transparencyand coordination is (almost automatically) decreasing. Moreindependent units need to coordinate their efforts, more meet-ings are needed, and often this results in unclear leadership.Also elite capture might increase due to the lack of transpar-ency and accountability. Platteau and Gaspart (2003) arguethat a high number of community-based development aid pro-

jects increases the pressure to establish partnerships with com-munities quickly, and elite capture becomes more likely.

Another point made in the case study is that (monetary)benefits people derive from the user committee is a precondi-tion for building social capital, given the high unemploymentand assuming that these committees are often initiated without

appropriate participation, dialog, and training. This finding isin line with the studies of Attanasio et al. (2009) andFeigenberg et al. (2010), which found that social capital, wasgenerated via meetings but in relation to cash transfers orcredit supply. While bringing paid jobs to the communitieshad no negative effects on social capital of the respondentsin this sample, one can imagine possible ones. For example,paying people for collective tasks could raise expectations ofexternally driven bought participation instead of encouragingself-mobilized voluntary collective action. And with the focuson short-term incentives it could be harder to persuadecommunities to engage in creating long-term benefits (e.g.,from conservation). If the monetary benefits do not material-ize moral-based institutions such as trust and reciprocity are

Table 2. Summary statistics of participants in the common-pool resource experiment and voting result

Region n Mean age Mean years of formaleducation

% Male % at Work Mean monthlyincome

% Votecommunication

% Votepenalty

Old commons Leliefontein 115 39 9,0 48 51 884,72 50 11New acquired commons 45 36 8,0 44 51 953,20 31 33



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likely to be eroded. Thus, there are negative externalitiesbetween outside initiated paid collective action and self-governance.

The Namaqualand case study presented here suggests thatdevolution and delegation of tasks might be harmful tocommunities because of spillover effects from one domain toanother. The negative externalities from devolution might be

heaviest for communities that rely to a large degree on coop-eration between users, as is the case for people living in theold commons of Namaqualand. However, the example ofthe old and new commons shows how social context and his-tory have created differences that are still influencing the man-agement of devolution processes today. It turns out that socialcohesion is much higher in the old commons, where peoplelearned to cooperate over time. However, past dependency stillnegatively affects the fundraising willingness in the old com-mons. The difference between the old and new commons alsoshows up in the way they choose different institutional solu-tions to problems in a social dilemma experiment. Both anal-yses suggest a greater demand for external assistance increating social capital in the areas without a history of pastcooperation. Simply implementing blueprints for delegation

through single purpose committees is not effective, since differ-ent communities have different skills and resources and delega-tion and devolution requires site specificity and a high degreeof social contextual understanding from the implementing orfacilitating organization.

The findings presented in this paper should not be under-stood as criticism of devolution per se but rather of uncoor-dinated devolution following blueprints for committeeestablishment. It strongly depends on the attitudes of thoseinstituting and facilitating the committees whether socialcapital might be build or not. According to Tyler (2002)leaders who create the right attitudes and values achievecooperation in groups easier than leaders who rely on incen-tive based instruments. However, external agents implement-

ing structural social capital should understand under whatconditions social structures generate beneficial outcomesfor the society as a whole, not only for those people theyare working with. The role of committees for society atlarge has to be looked at with greater concern, and inte-grated approaches with consistent policy measures of devo-lution, decentralization, and poverty reduction should beintensified. Approaches that convey one coordinated villageagenda do exist and have been used by the Desert Research

Foundation (DRFN) in Namibia with great success. Forexample, their Forum for Integrated Resource Management(FIRM) focuses on sectoral cooperation instead of sectoralcompetition in the communities. All stakeholders andpartners in development sit on one platform at the requestof one focal community and address the issues raised bythat community (Kruger, 2003, p. 15).

In the South African context only a strengthenedward com-mittees could serve as such a platform. The single-purposecommittees in its current form destabilize the ward committeeas they work unobserved and are detached from the control ofthe official structure (the ward committee or the municipalcouncil) (see also Manor, 2004). Manor (2011) highlights thepossibility of municipal committees that are organized arounda central elected body and subcommittees (education, health,etc.). Although the coordination problem is not completelysolved in the latter model, the responsibilities are clear andthe municipal committee might develop a stronger sense ofcommunity. In contrast to hierarchical solutions of publicadministration is the view that decentralization should bethe emergent result of a polycentric, competitive process(Ostrom, Tiebout, & Warren, 1960). In a polycentric

system municipal tasks are divided at different levels and mul-tiple, formally independent decision-making centers overlap,compete, and cooperate with each other. Whether the currentsituation in the Namaqualand represents a (beneficial) poly-centric situation is difficult to judge. There are overlappingstructures and competing organizations since many single pur-pose committees already existed prior to the establishment ofthe ward committees in 200102. However, the ward commit-tee has no formal decision-making power or responsibility.Consequently, some councilors do not take the ward commit-tee seriously and do not show up to scheduled meetings. In theNamaqualand, one necessity for a functioning polycentric sys-tem is to devolve decision-making power to the ward (andother) committees. Only if committees have the power to take

decisions, they can form efficient partnerships with service pro-viders, ministries, and NGOs and thus can decide which insti-tutional arrangement is best suited for a specific task. Thiswould be an investment in the future: there would be transac-tion costs at the start, but these would decrease once local gov-ernance was consolidated. Most likely, this would also resultin a stronger enforcement of rules in the committees makingcommittee members more accountable, both to the commu-nity and to the government, for the actions they take.

NOTES

1. Sixty three of 75 developing and transitional countries with more than5 million inhabitants claim to transfer power to local governments (Ribot,

2004). Decentralization is the relocation of administrative functions awayfrom a central location, and devolution the relocation of power away froma central location. Power can be equated with the capacity or authority tocontribute to decision-making (Meinzen-Dick, Di Gregorio, & Dohrn,2008). The terms devolution and delegation are very similar and bothapply to single purpose committees. However, in the case of delegationone remains responsible for ensuring that the person to whom one hasdelegated a task can and does perform it.

2. This effect has been reported in naturally occurring field settings(Frey,Oberholzer-Gee, & Eichenberger, 1996; Gneezy & Rustichini, 2000 ;Titmuss, 1970) and in experimental field laboratories (Cardenas,Stranlund, & Willis, 2000; Vollan, 2008).

3. Equivalent to 126 USD at the average exchange rate of 1 ZAR =0.158 USD for 2005.

4. Ostroms claim for a more realistic behavioral theory of human actionis based on her initial work defining design principles for sustainablecommon-pool resource management (Ostrom, 1990, 2007). Amongattributes of resource users that increase the likelihood for successfulcollective action she mentions past cooperation, trust, and social capital.

5. In Steinkopf the largest settlement 30 households were surveyed. InSoebatsfontein (the only village that has not owned land before) we aimedto have a complete census of all households.

6. The villages Kheis and Klipfontein were not included since thenumbers of interviews in the village were too small to aggregate.



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Kharkams was excluded as being too large and close to the main road withdifferent livelihood strategies available for the inhabitants.

7. As there is no correlation between trust and unemployment (0.06;p = 0.4) and reciprocity and unemployment (0.02; p = 0.8) onhousehold level the above analysis is not biased (i.e., lower trust andreciprocity due to higher unemployment).

8. Theprovisionwith basic infrastructureis lowin allvillages.For examplefrom the 497 residents of Paulshoek, 23% had piped water in the yard, 19%had brick houses, 13% a pit latrine and 4% had a telephone in their house.

9. The question was: To how many village meetings did you go in thelast 12 months?

10. Such behavior was observed for example in Komaggas, where aseparate Komaggas citizens association was formed in addition to theelected ward committee. In Komaggas, 92% of respondents said thecommunity made the decisions in the area, but 84% said they were neverinvolved when decisions were made. In addition, Cousins (1996, p. 16)describes the factional politics that arise with the establishment of rivalcommittees in Namaqualand.

11. The commons it has today (15,069 ha) was sold from the miningcompany De Beers to the municipality of Kamiesberg and given toSoebatsfontein in March 2000 and up to 15 families started farming.

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APPENDIX A

See Tables 3 and 4.

APPENDIX B. SUPPLEMENTARY DATA

Supplementary data associated with this article can befound, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.09.016.

Table 3. Upper table: overview of the household data aggregated on village level. Lower table: community level data of the villages included in the householdsurvey: their number of committees and reported meetings with officials and in the community according to a community level survey

Village Official data Household survey

Municipality Size N Men (%) Age Years in village Income Employed (%)

Kharkams Kamiesberg 1291 15 47 51.5 41.7 1138 13Kheis Kamiesberg 448 4 100 50,7 48.5 655 0Klipfontein Kamiesberg 466 5 60 39.2 34.2 1706 40Paulshoek Kamiesberg 497 19 32 42.2 34.3 935 11Soebatsfontein Kamiesberg 246 35 40 45.8 33 1268 22Spoegrivier Kamiesberg 460 13 38 47.7 42.7 1047 23Tweerivier Kamiesberg 207 12 25 43.7 26.9 765 8Bulletrap Nama Khoi 357 8 100 51.6 17.3 1698 50Komaggas Nama Khoi 3314 13 38 47.6 35.6 1817 46Steinkopf Nama Khoi 7256 27 81 44.7 28.7 1976 63

Average 1454 15.1 51 46.1 33.4 1349 30Community level survey

Number ofcommittees

Number of groupsand associations

Meetings ofward committee

Meetings withmunicipality

Meetingswith NGOs

Kharkams Kamiesberg 1291 9 10 15 2 5

Kheis Kamiesberg 448 9 5 12 2 2Klipfontein Kamiesberg 466 10 6 5 4 4Paulshoek Kamiesberg 497 7 4 24 4 5Soebatsfontein Kamiesberg 246 7 4 4 2 1Spoegrivier Kamiesberg 460 14 7 12 2 5Tweerivier Kamiesberg 207 13 5 12 4 0Bulletrap Nama Khoi 357 6 4 2 2 0Komaggas Nama Khoi 3314 5 7 12 2 2Steinkopf Nama Khoi 7256 9 20 12 4 6

Average 1454 8.9 7.2 11 2.8 3

Notes: (a) Age, years living in village and education measured in years.(b) Percentages relate to the total number of interviewed people in the household survey.(c) Monthly income includes remittances, part-time jobs, and permanent income as stated by the interviewee.

http://www.statssa.gov.za/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.09.016http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.09.016http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.09.016http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.09.016http://www.statssa.gov.za/


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Table 4. Summary statistics of the social capital survey (n = 151, see Supplementary appendix for questionnaire)

Minimum Maximum Mean Standard deviation

Socio demographicAge 19 93 46.15 14.30Gender (female = 1) 0 1 .49 .50Household size 1 11 4.67 2.10Education in years 0 12 6.85 3.26

Local attachmentYears living in village 1 93 33.42 18.89Other place to stay 1 2 1.19 .39

OccupationUnemployed 0 1 .21 .41Pensioner 0 1 .33 .47Permanently employed 0 1 .30 .45Farmer 0 1 .15 .36

Economic situationIndividual income (month) 0 4080 1349.4 1087.8

Collective action and trustGroup member 0 2 .34 .58Committee member 0 3 .36 .67

Regional organization 0 3 .30 .57Days unpaid collective action 0 4 .57 1.19Days paid collective action 0 4 .52 1.29Community trust 1 4 2.57 1.12Reciprocity 0 4 2.91 0.86

Factors (percentiles)Civic engagement 1 4 2.56 1.19Satisfied with rules 1 4 2.49 1.05Network resources 1 4 2.45 1.17Social cohesion 1 4 2.70 1.14Fundraising willingness 1 4 2.12 1.01Trust local institutions 0 4 2.33 1.22Trust new institutions 0 4 2.40 1.14

Notes: (a) Age, education, and years living in village are measured in years.

(b) Female, other place to stay, occupation variables, are categorical variables.(c) Monthly income includes remittances, part-time jobs, and permanent income as stated by the interviewee.(d) Membership in organization: the number of different organizations the respondent belongs to.(e) Community trust is measured as 1 = nobody, 2 = few, 3 = many, 4 = most.(f) Reciprocity is an additive index (see description in text).(g) Collective work is measured on a scale from 0 = 0 days, 1 = 1 day, 2 = 24 days, 3 = 58 days, 4 = more than 8 days.


pitfalls of externally initiated collective action

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