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Book Review Peasants in Power : The political economy of development and genocide in Rwanda, by Philip Verwimp. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. xix + 276 pp. €105.99 (hardback). ISBN 978 9 40076 433 0.

Book Review Peasants in Power : The political economy of development and genocide in Rwanda, by Philip Verwimp. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. xix + 276 pp. €105.99 (hardback). ISBN 978 9 40076 433 0.

This article focuses on the Rwandan peasantry to confirm how "views from below" can contribute to a better understanding of the "pro-poor" growth challenge. Based on micro-level evidence gathered in 2007, it examines local peasants' perceptions of the characteristics and degree of poverty for different socioeconomic categories (i.e., peasant groups). It looks at the various opportunities and constraints that influence the potential of these categories or groups for social mobility and their capacity to participate in growth strategies. Further, it considers how local peasants perceive specific policy measures in the Rwandan government's "pro-poor" rural strategies. Their insights could inspire Rwandan policymakers and supporting donors to redirect their efforts toward distribution-oriented growth strategies.

This article focuses on the Rwandan peasantry to confirm how "views from below" can contribute to a better understanding of the "pro-poor" growth challenge. Based on micro-level evidence gathered in 2007, it examines local peasants' perceptions of the characteristics and degree of poverty for different socioeconomic categories (i.e., peasant groups). It looks at the various opportunities and constraints that influence the potential of these categories or groups for social mobility and their capacity to participate in growth strategies. Further, it considers how local peasants perceive specific policy measures in the Rwandan government's "pro-poor" rural strategies. Their insights could inspire Rwandan policymakers and supporting donors to redirect their efforts toward distribution-oriented growth strategies.

Rwanda is a country with a troubled history. Its genocide in 1994, fifteen years ago, is still considered as one of the most shocking episodes of the twentieth century. Since then, however, Rwanda seems to be recovering well. Economic growth in the immediate post-war period was spectacular and remained considerable in the years thereafter (8,6% between 1996 and 2001). The Rwandan government elaborated a poverty reduction policy (PRSP), which was implemented between 2001 and 2006. Rwanda was widely applauded for the efficiency in the elaboration and execution of policy objectives, and could count on extensive financial engagements from the international community. Some even speak of a 'Rwandan Renaissance' to refer to this seemingly spectacular success. There is however also a bleaker picture next to the growth success. The poverty problem remains pressing, certainly in rural areas. Indeed, the percentage of people living below the national poverty line of 1.22$ (PPP, 2006 prices) decreased between 2001 and 2006, from 60.3% to 56.8%. But because of the impressive population growth, the absolute number of poor people increased. In the countryside, an additional half million people lived in poverty in 2006 in comparison to 2001. In this rural environment, the problem of land scarcity is enormous. The overall majority of the rural population has to survive with less than 1 hectare per family and limited possibilities to diversify their income sources beyond subsistence agriculture. In addition, there is a strong inequality. In 2001, the 20% richest consumed as much as the remaining 80% of the population. Since then, inequality has further been rising. Several research questions arise. *) How are the peasants, the overall majority of the Rwandan population surviving in this optimistic post-genocide economic growth climate? Are they able to profit from economic growth? *) How are they dealing with the problem of extreme resource scarcity? They have to deal with enormous hazards and uncertainties, to which they have to adapt their livelihood strategies through risk avoidance and diversification. Are they able to productively exploit their land, and how do they survive if their land holdings are not (no longer) sufficient to produce enough food? *) How does the Rwandan government capture the challenges in the fight against poverty? How do policy makers see their role in rural development, and which type of agricultural and land policy do they adopt? The PhD provides an answer to these questions. It provides a unique insight in how the process of rural change - including the role of rural policies in this process - impacts upon the differentiation and polarization in livelihood profiles in the context of rural Rwanda. It points to the danger of the current Rwandan development model, based on large-scale professionalised farming. Moreover, it elaborates an alternative more sustainable development model based on broad-based economic growth and brings forward technically feasible solutions that build upon the potential and capacity of the large majority of small-scale farmers. But it also reflects upon the current political economy context in which the division of power and wealth make this technically feasible alternative development model politically unrealistic. The PhD points to the crucial role of international donors to support structures that help the voices from below reach the surface, the voices of the Rwandan small-scale peasants. The diversity in focus, level and techniques adopted in the various papers of the PhD allows us to look at the overarching theme - faces of rural poverty - from very different angles. Indeed, as mentioned by Scoones et alii (1996: 10), "models of change that oversimplify, standardise and aggregate in order to ease computation can be highly misleading; instead a methodological pluralism that includes qualitative and quantitative methods is seen to be most appropriate for increasing our understanding of complex, diverse and risk-prone agricultural systems". Some of the chapters analyse macro-level tendencies; others look with a micro-lens at particular case studies. Parts of the PhD engage in a quantitative analysis of nationally representative data. Other parts draw conclusions from in-depth qualitative field research in particular local settings. Some chapters focus on policy makers' perspectives, others literally bring in the voices of the Rwandan peasants. We consider this variety of approaches both relevant and complementary for a comprehensive understanding of the process of rural change and polarization in livelihood profiles in the context of rural Rwanda. The first two chapters provide an analysis of the policy makers' perspective with regards to rural development. The first chapter is titled: "Striving for growth, bypassing the poor? A critical review of Rwanda's rural sector policies". It studies Rwanda's current rural policies, which aim to modernise and 'professionalise' the rural sector. The chapter points to the risk for currently formulated rural policy measures to be at the expense of the large mass of small-scale peasants. A second chapter, "Reengineering rural society: The visions and ambitions of Rwandan elites" illuminates a general trend of policy makers misplaced belief in the potential to socially engineer rural development. Based upon interviews conducted by the author in mid-2007, the chapter focuses upon three engineering ambitions: 1) policy makers aim to transform the agricultural sector into a professionalised motor for economic growth, with little place left for traditional smallholder agriculture; 2) policy makers have a vision on how to artificially upgrade the portrait of rural life by inserting 'modern' tools and concepts into the local realities, while hiding true poverty and inequality; 3) policy makers hope to transform Rwanda into a target-driven society from the highest up to the lowest level. The chapter takes the necessity of rural development and poverty reduction as the bench mark to point to the (potential) dangers, flaws and shortcomings of the reengineering mission of Rwandan policy makers. The next two chapters study the livelihoods of rural peasants on the basis of a quantitative approach. The third chapter, "Rural poverty and livelihood profiles in post-genocide Rwanda", identifies different livelihood profiles that prevail in the Rwandan rural post-conflict context. By means of exploratory tools such as principal component and cluster analysis, it combines variables that capture natural, physical, human, financial and social resources in combination with environmental factors to identify household groups with different livelihood profiles. The chapter also explores how household groups differ with regards to the intra-cluster incidence of poverty. Finally, for a subsample, it looks in detail at how the identified household clusters perceive changes in their living conditions between 2001 and 2004. The analysis allows identifying policies for poverty alleviation that take into account the different livelihood profiles and pathways in the rural setting. The fourth chapter focuses particularly upon the land resource, using a nationally representative database to analyse "the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity in rural Rwanda". Policies aiming for agricultural modernisation concentrate on promoting regional crop specialisation and monocropping. This chapter, however, identifies the strong inverse relationship between farm size and land productivity under the current land management system; also when taking into account farm fragmentation, crop diversification, frequency of multicropping and household size. In addition, increased farm fragmentation and a higher frequency of multicropping seem to have a positive (although modest) impact upon productivity. This seems to suggest that small-scale peasants' risk-cooping strategies not only protect them against risks but also pay off in terms of productivity. The chapter's findings are formulated at an aggregated meso level and are relevant for national rural policies. The final chapter, "Views from below on the pro-poor growth challenge: The case of rural Rwanda", is complementary to the previous two. It adopts a qualitative approach to focus on peasants' livelihoods and rural class differentiation at the micro-level. Based on field data from six case-study settings, we analyse local peasants' perceptions of the characteristics and degree of poverty for different locally-present socio-economic categories. This results in classifications that are based upon livelihood strategies (self-subsistent versus market-oriented peasants, agricultural and non-agricultural wage labour, …), and that relate much closer to local level dynamics (in comparison to the third and fourth chapter). We look at the opportunities and constraints of those categories, which are crucial determinants for their capacity to participate in growth strategies and for their social mobility potential. Further, we analyse how the peasant categories perceive specific policy measures included in the Rwandan government's 'pro-poor' agricultural strategies. Whereas the two quantitative chapters capture trends in rural livelihoods and land productivity at the macro level, and can claim representativity and external validity, they fail to capture local-level dynamics. The final chapter does provide insights into class (trans)formation processes at the local level, but can by no means claim validity beyond these local settings. Both approaches contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the process of rural change. The concluding chapter of the PhD is a reflection on the insights of the previous chapters with regards to the process of rural change and class (trans)formation in contemporary Rwanda. It looks at the causes, processes, mechanisms, contexts and symptoms of the rural differentiation process. It pleads for an alternative rural policy that promotes broad-based agricultural growth with a key role for small-scale peasants, in combination with an activation of the potential of (nearly) landless rural agents in the local off-farm sector. The technical feasibility and societal desirability of this solution for the Rwandan development problem has been proven in the previous chapters of the PhD. The final part of the concluding chapter however reflects upon the political feasibility of this technical solution, given the current political economy context. It points to the responsibility of donors to support mechanisms that allow bringing in the voices from below to the surface, the voices of the Rwandan small-scale peasants.