A tripartite normative interaction in land registration: inheritance and land information updating

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A TRIPARTITE NORMATIVE INTERACTION IN LAND REGISTRATION: INHERITANCE AND LAND

INFORMATION UPDATING

ZAID ABUBAKARI*_{; CHRISTINE RICHTER; JAAP}

ZEVENBERGEN

Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, the Netherlands, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE

Enschede, the Netherlands

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Setting the Scene

Zevenbergen, 2002 • Facilitation of property market activity

• Protection of property right holders • Spatial and economic planning

• Reduces cost of registration and litigation

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Focuses on the organisation itself

Registration and non-registration

• Procedural complexity • Long transaction times • High transaction Cost • Corruption

Land rights are produced and reproduced through social processes. Therefore, it is important for us to also into the social arena to see how it influences registration and non-registration.

Narrow perspective

This perspective focuses on the bureaucratic arena and does not take into account other normative arenas that influence registration

Often discussed issues

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The Broader Perspective

In this study we expand the perspective of registration and non-registration beyond the frontiers of the administrative processes within the land registration organisation

We examine registration and non-registration across three normative arenas namely; • Bureaucratic arena

• Social arena • Practical arena

Social arena Official arena

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Study Areas

Legend Legend

We focused on real property inheritance which is a major source of property ownership and is also regulated by socio-cultural practices

The study covers two regions of Ghana known for their matrilineal and patrilineal inheritance practices.

We looked at how these practices reflect in rural and urban contexts and also across centralized and

decentralized land

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Findings

Official norms:

• Transaction cost (also draws from the judiciary)

• Long transaction times (also draws from practical norms) • Procedural complexity (also draws from practical norms)

How does each norm influence the registration and non-registration?

Social norms:

• Rural context (non-registration)

• Shared knowledge and family network provide security

• Local structures for enforcement and compliance

• Urban context (strategic registration) •Contested claims among successors

•Complex property sharing schemes among successors

•Availability of quasi-ownership documents •Successors move between the family

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Practical norms:

• Within the bureaucratic arena

• Serve as means to negotiate official norms • Adds to overall cost

• Facilitates registration • Within the Social arena

• Forum shopping between family legitimacy and formal registration depending on the nature of claims (whether competing or complementary)

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Conclusion

There is no single set of obstacles to registration, instead, the obstacles cut across different normative arenas. Therefore, attempts to handle the

problem of non-registration should be tailored at the crossroads of social, practical and official arenas. We have to move away from the

formal/informal, customary/statutory binaries because they blur out the “in-betweens” that give additional insights of the real dynamics of registration.

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