Rural Sociology of Village Bylaw Amendment Signature Thresholds and Women's Cooperative Membership Exit in Senegalese Rural Communities: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Petition Requirements

Village bylaw amendment procedures in Senegalese rural communities typically require a minimum number of signatures before a petition can be debated in the village assembly. The framework integrates institutional rules, collective action costs, and gendered voice mechanisms to propose that thresholds create discontinuities in exit behaviour: women whose grievances fall just below the threshold face higher collective action costs and may exit rather than petition, while those just above may succeed in amending bylaws. The paper specifies a regression discontinuity design that would exploit the threshold as an instrument for petition success, using petition-level data on signature counts, amendment outcomes, and subsequent membership status. No empirical data are analysed here; the contribution is conceptual and methodological. The framework identifies three mechanisms—threshold-induced discouragement, gendered petitioning costs, and cooperative exit as a substitute for voice—and derives testable propositions about the direction and heterogeneity of threshold effects. It also discusses the ethical and practical challenges of implementing such a design in rural Senegalese settings. Signature thresholds, often adopted to protect consensus, may inadvertently suppress women's collective voice and accelerate cooperative exit, with implications for rural development policy and cooperative governance.