Understanding Governance Dilemma from Institutional Disparity

An Investigation into the Informal Floating Food Supply System in Metropolitan Dhaka

Abstract

Theoretically, it has been argued that institutions are critical to the effective management of cities and the delivery of efficient urban services and infrastructure. The challenges are increasingly complex and integrated particularly for metropolitan areas that include multiple jurisdictions. However, unlike many other constraints underlying institutional and governance issues stand out majority of the metropolitan governance problem raises from existing institutional paradoxes. To grasp the institutional paradoxes scenario, we consider the Informal Floating Food Supply System (IFFSS) of Dhaka as case study. Vending fresh vegetables in Dhaka is an old tradition and integral part of Dhaka’s food culture. However, the study discloses, the urban management law describes the IFFSS as illegal, obsolete and disorderly on the other hand, in the absence of a lead organisation there is no rational evaluation how to formally acknowledge IFFSS within their institutional directives. Hence, the IFFSS’s governance in Dhaka is not only connected to food supply organisation, it is further connected to distinct sectors, namely transport, environment, urban management that have no direct role to play but impact significantly on the performance of the IFFSS. Thus, institutional polycentricity creates a political dilemma that lies at the heart of the IFFSS’s governance. Hence, it navigates through delicate local governance regimes where the actors within the IFFSS are not sharing the same frame and with conflicting interactions, many new points of uncertainty are uncovered, resulting from the IFFSS’s governance system being more fragile and exposed to risk.