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Treating the ‘state’ as a finished product gets in the way of understanding it. The state is always in the making. This article, which acts as the Introduction to a special issue, argues that political authority is (re-)produced through the process of successfully defining and enforcing rights to community membership and rights of access to important resources. Claims to rights prompt the exercise of authority. Struggles over property and citizenship are therefore as much about the scope and constitution of political authority as they are about access to resources and membership of a political community. The ability to entitle and disenfranchise people with regard to property, and to establish the conditions under which they hold property — together with the ability to define who belongs and who does not, and to establish and uphold rank, privilege and social servitude in its many forms — is constitutive of state power. Thus this essay argues that various moments of rupture (following periods of conflict, of colonial domination, of socialist, liberal, or authoritarian regimes, et cetera) allow us to see that rights do not simply flow from authority but also constitute it. Authority and rights are conceptually tied together by recognition. This article demonstrates how contracts of recognition unfold. It proposes an approach to the systematic investigation of the constitution of authority through the social production of property and citizenship as the recognition of claims to resources and membership. It thereby develops a way to study concrete dynamics of authority or state formation. Treating the ‘state’ as a finished product gets in the way of understanding it. The state is always in the making. This article, which acts as the Introduction to a special issue, argues that political authority is (re-)produced through the process of successfully defining and enforcing rights to community membership and rights of access to important resources. Claims to rights prompt the exercise of authority. Struggles over property and citizenship are therefore as much about the scope and constitution of political authority as they are about access to resources and membership of a political community. The ability to entitle and disenfranchise people with regard to property, and to establish the conditions under which they hold property — together with the ability to define who belongs and who does not, and to establish and uphold rank, privilege and social servitude in its many forms — is constitutive of state power. Thus this essay argues that various moments of rupture (following periods of conflict, of colonial domination, of socialist, liberal, or authoritarian regimes, et cetera) allow us to see that rights do not simply flow from authority but also constitute it. Authority and rights are conceptually tied together by recognition. This article demonstrates how contracts of recognition unfold. It proposes an approach to the systematic investigation of the constitution of authority through the social production of property and citizenship as the recognition of claims to resources and membership. It thereby develops a way to study concrete dynamics of authority or state formation.

Recent land occupations by peasant movements in Indonesia have done more than challenge the existing ownership of plantations and forests. They have restructured local property and authority relations by stimulating a strategic critique of public authority and governance practice within the peasant movement. ‘Plantation’ and ‘forest’ are structured under different legal regimes and institutional arrangements, which offer varied opportunities for occupation and subsequent legalization of smallholder land control. Different strategies of occupation and interaction with plantation and forest companies have therefore been pursued. However, legalization of land occupations has remained rudimentary, and possession has not been recognized as property by government institutions. Two cases of occupation history demonstrate in detail how claims to citizenship and property have been opposed, ignored and denied by statutory institutions. Furthermore, they demonstrate how land-occupying farmers have attempted to become ‘visible’ to and recognized by government institutions, and how — while waiting for this to happen — the peasant movement experiences a sovereign moment.

In the course of political struggle in northern Ghana, the classification of land and resources has shifted between the two ‘master categories’ of public and private. Despite the fact that master categories may be wholly inadequate in accounting for the actual complexity of property objects, social units and rights, they are not divorced from the agency of people who have something at stake. Laws, rules and by-laws are referred to as important markers and fashion the local political struggles over the rights to and control over resources. This article offers a general account of conflicts and the recategorization of resources in the property system of small-scale irrigation. It examines the logics and positioning of the different stakeholders, and discusses how different levels of public policy have provided opportunities for such changes. A case study presents the opportunity to examine the details of a particular controversy demonstrating the social and political powers involved in the recategorization of property.

In this introduction we argue that access and property regarding natural resources are intimately bound up with the exercise of power and authority. The process of seeking authorizations for property claims also has the effect of granting authority to the authorizing politico-legal institution. In consequence, struggles over natural resources in an institutionally pluralist context are processes of everyday state formation. Through the discussion of this theoretical proposition we point to legitimizing practices, territoriality and violence as offering particular insights into the recursively constituted relations between struggles over access and property regarding natural resources, contestations about power and authority, and state formation.

1. Twilight Institutions - An Introduction: Christian Lund (International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 2. Twilight Institutions. Public Authority And Local Politics In Africa: Christian Lund (International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 3. The Politics Of Vigilance In South-Eastern Nigeria: David Pratten (Oxford University). 4. Reordering Society. Vigilantism And Sovereign Expressions In Port Elizabeth's Townships: Lars Buur (Danish Institute for International Studies and Research Associate, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg South Africa). 5. Negotiating Authority - Between Unhcr And 'The People': Simon Turner (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen). 6. "It Was Satan That Took The People": The Making Of Public Authority In Burkina Faso: Sten Hagberg (Uppsala University). 7. Dealing With The Local State. The Informal Privatization Of Street-Level Bureaucracies In Senegal: Giorgio Blundo (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Marseille). 8. Decentralization, Local Taxation And Citizenship In Senegal: Kristine Juul (Institute of Geography and International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 9. Contested Sources Of Authority. Re-Claiming State Sovereignty By Formalizing Traditional Authority In Mozambique: Lars Buur (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen) and Helene Maria Kyed (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen and International Development Studies, Roskilde University). 10. Statemaking And The Politics Of The Frontier In Central Benin: Pierre-Yves Le Meur (Groupe de recherche et d'echanges technologiques, Paris and IRD, Montpellier). 11. Decentralization, the state and conflicts over local boundaries in North-Western Ghana: Carola Lentz (Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz). 12. Strong Bar, Weak State? Lawyers, Liberalism And State Formation In Zambia: Jeremy Gould (University of Helsinki).