Local Solutions to Structural Issues: The Fetishization of Custom in Rural Development Interventions in Côte d'Ivoire

ABSTRACT This paper explores the paradox of seeking local solutions in rural development when conflicts result from structural transformations of the agrarian economy driven by national political choices. Since the 1990s, participatory approaches inspired by neo‐institutionalist theories of local governance have encouraged development actors to view customary institutions as endogenous resources for regulating rural relations. Drawing on observations of participatory workshops and interviews conducted across four NGO interventions in Côte d'Ivoire between December 2021 and October 2024, the article shows that the weakening of customary arrangements results not from their endogenous decline but from long‐term political and economic transformations. In this context, participatory workshops frequently rely on customary fictions that simplify local social orders and obscure the historical conditions under which customary systems were produced and transformed. Rather than restoring ancestral norms, they provide arenas through which local actors renegotiate and legitimize neo‐customary claims. The article argues that the limits of participatory governance stem from a fetishization of custom that disconnects customary institutions from the broader processes in which they are embedded.