Tribes, Chiefs, and Transhumance: A Comparative Institutional Analysis

Abstract

I. The Explanation for the Dominance of Transhumance Building on some descriptive surveys, Hans Binswanger, John McIntire, and Chris Udry have provided an articulate explanation for the prevalence of transhumance (long-distance herding activities) in arid and semi-arid regions (ASARs) not only in the animal husbandry sector itself but also over all other economic activities.' Their argument is basically as follows: ASARs are characterized by (a) poor land quality, (b) low population density and hence the relative scarcity of labor, (c) simple technology, and (d) extreme seasonality and year-to-year fluctuations in rainfall and production. These characteristics imply that (1) land is of low value and in surplus supply, (2) property rights in land do not exist, (3) transport and communications costs are sufficiently high so that they limit product markets to being small, local, volatile, and highly sensitive to the relatively frequent and severe supply shocks due to weather, (4) market failures exist in both credit and insurance markets, (5) foodstuffs are dominant in the consumption bundles of the local inhabitants, (6) resource accumulation generally takes the form of movable assets and especially livestock, and (7) since animal husbandry is less labor intensive than agriculture, it tends to dominate. Given (a) the availability of pasture land from the commons at no cost, (b) economies of scale in animal supervision, and, especially, (c) the very substantial risks of severe animal losses due to drought, the herds belonging to individual households must be relatively large to assure survival in the long run.2 Indeed, herd size is typically larger than would be expected on the basis of the average income that the herd generates. Because of extreme seasonality in water and pasture