1. ZAID ABUBAKARI*; CHRISTINE RICHTER; JAAP ZEVENBERGEN
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

2. Setting the Scene Need to update land registers
Facilitation of property market activity
Protection of property right holders
Spatial and economic planning
Reduces cost of registration and litigation
Zevenbergen, 2002

3. Registration and non-registration
Often discussed issues
Procedural complexity
Long transaction times
High transaction Cost
Corruption
Focuses on the organisation itself
Narrow perspective
This perspective focuses on the bureaucratic arena and does not take into account other normative arenas that influence registration
MEANWHILE
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.

4. 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
Practical arena

5. Study Areas
We focused on real property inheritance which is a major source of property ownership and is also regulated by socio-cultural practices
Legend
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 governance structures

6. Findings
How does each norm influence the registration and non-registration?
Official norms:
Transaction cost (also draws from the judiciary)
Long transaction times (also draws from practical norms)
Procedural complexity (also draws from practical norms)
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 legitimacy and formal registration

7. Findings Cont.…. 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)

8. 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.

9. Thank You