Focusing on the condition of public authority in Africa, Twilight Institutions investigates how, when confronted with state failure, public institutions attempt to gain authority; operating in the twilight between state and society, between public and private.

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• Approaches public authority ‘from below’, exploring a variety of concrete encounters between forms of public authority and the more or less mundane practices of ordinary people

Christian Lund is Professor in International Development Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark. He has conducted specialized research on socio-legal processes of conflict and their relationship to policy and politics, institutional arrangements of property, and natural resources management. He has gained extensive field experience while working in Niger, Ghana, Bur¬kina Faso, Mali, and Senegal. He is the author of Law, Power and Politics in Niger - Land Struggles and the Rural Code, 1998, and the co-editor of Negotiating Property in Africa, 2002.