Institutional Bricolage and Commoning in Community-Driven Development Projects in Brazilian Agrarian Settlements

This article applies theories of commoning and institutional bricolage to analyze how agrarian settlements in Northeastern Brazil navigated a World Bank community-driven development (CDD) project focused on infrastructure and productive activities. This project evolved out of a successful Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) occupation of state offices that secured access to rural development funds, resulting in an unusual partnership where the MST selected recipient settlements and partnered with state agencies for implementation under standard CDD guidelines. Using mixed methods across eight settlements, including 62 interviews, a household survey (n = 93), and site visits, I analyze how communities with robust governance and collective work institutions developed through commoning practices navigated the CDD project framework. Settlers acted as bricoleurs (Cleaver, 2012) to adapt settlement institutions to support CDD project governance and collective work. These actions are analyzed through de Koning’s three processes of institutional bricolage (2011): alteration (minimal compliance with bureaucratic requirements while maintaining existing governance), aggregation (repurposing settlement institutions to manage projects), and articulation (resisting external sanctions that conflicted with local norms). While settlement institutions enabled project implementation, they proved insufficient for addressing technical and marketing challenges. Even in settlements with strong collective organization, where CDD had the best chance of success, project effectiveness depended on existing commoning practices rather than CDD’s institutional framework, representing a fundamental misalignment between the external agency and the settlements.