# 1.2 Opportunity Structure

As demonstrated by the earlier examples from India and Benin, an actor’s opportunity structure is shaped by the presence and operation of formal and informal institutions, or rules of the game. These include the laws, regulatory frameworks, and norms governing people’s behavior.<sup>10</sup> The presence and operation of the formal and informal laws, regulations, norms, and customs determine whether individuals and groups have access to assets, and whether these people can use the assets to achieve desired outcomes.<sup>11</sup> As with assets, there is likely to be interaction among different types of institutions. In India, for example, the 1992 constitutional amendments reserving seats for women representatives has, in many places, been less than entirely successful because social norms that govern women’s public behavior undermine women’s capacity to operate as political leaders.<sup>12</sup> Changes in legislation, such as these constitutional amendments and subsequent State Acts, often pre-date changes in practice.

## **Box 2.  Relationship Between Formal and Informal Institutions**

Most rural people in Ethiopia continue to apply customary laws to their economic and social relationships. This is most apparent, and perhaps most damaging, in the ways in which customary conflict resolution mechanisms and the civil courts are legally integrated. While in theory this integration was meant to enable citizens to retain their ethnic and religious identities, in practice it has reinforced damaging attitudes and customs toward women. Article 34(7) of the Constitution reserves the option to adjudicate disputes related to personal matters in accordance with religious or customary laws, rather than under the civil code, if the parties to the disputes agree. In practice, personal disputes, particularly between men and women, are frequently directed to traditional adjudication mechanisms by the choice of men, without the consent of women. In Muslim areas, if a husband goes to the _Sharia_ court first to institute divorce proceedings, then the wife often does not have recourse to the civil court (World Bank 2004 draft). Focus group discussions among Orthodox Christians in Addis Ketama also note that if there is a conflict between husband and wife, the case is first handled by a traditional court. They note that even if one goes directly to formal courts, the case would be passed to traditional courts (Legovini 2004).

Testimony from a 32-year-old, well educated, head of the _kebele_ women’s association shows how damaging this situation can be for women: “My husband does not give me enough money for household expenses. ... He gets drunk every night and disturbs our peace. One day I had had enough and told him to leave the house, which I own. Surprisingly, the community leaders said I should leave the house. ... At the end, I had no choice but to continue living with him” (Legovini 2004). This was a repeated theme, even in many cases from men: traditional courts are the first recourse, and they generally favor men.

_Source:_ Kurey and Alsop, forthcoming.

10 Note that this study clearly differentiates between institutions and organizations. Where referenced, organizations are defined as groups of individuals, bound by a common purpose, involving a defined set of authority relations and dedicated to achieving objectives within particular rules of the game (derived from North 1990, and Uphoff 1986).

11 In addition to the authors listed in footnote 4, the institutional nature of power and agency is also recognized in the work of Freire (1973) and Fals Borda (1988). This conceptualization also fits with the World Bank’s _Empowerment Sourcebook_ , which states that powerlessness is embedded in the nature of institutional relations.

12 However, without the force of the constitution, women would have experienced a much longer and harder fight to enter and operate effectively in the political arena.

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