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ZeFKo Zeitschrift für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung , Seite 44 - 71

1. Introduction -- 2. Humanitarian NGOs and their identity(ies) in the light of recent and ongoing changes -- 3. Humanitarian NGOs' responses to insecurity -- 4. Epistemic communities and the institutionalization, professionalization and standardization of humanitarian NGO security management -- 5. From experience-based trust to identity-based trust -- 6. Conclusion.

Although UN Security Council Resolution 1325 calls for increased participation of women in all stages of a peace process, the number of women who participate in formal peace negotiations is still very limited. In order to augment their number, UN Women and other international organizations have published a series of policy reports in which they argue that women's participation increases the success of peace negotiations and leads to more inclusive peace agreements. However, based on an analysis of relevant policy reports and interviews with women and men involved in peace negotiations, I argue that the policy reports do not lead to women's empowerment. Instead, they contribute to women's marginalization in peace negotiations, because they entrap women between conflicting expectations. The type of behaviour that international advocates of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda expect of women when they participate in peace negotiations limits the women's room for manoeuvre—at best. At worst, this type of behaviour prevents women from participating in the negotiations, because it is dismissed by domestic (male) negotiators. But if women who participate in peace negotiations violate the behavioural script proposed by the policy reports, they are considered as not acting in line with the WPS agenda. Hence, no matter how women behave when they sit at the negotiation table, they either lose the support of international or national gatekeepers.

This article is concerned with conceptualizing those actors who seek to undo the collective normative standard that has already been achieved. I call these actors norm saboteurs. Unlike norm entrepreneurs, who promote a new norm, or norm antipreneurs, who resist a new norm, saboteurs seek to obstruct the implementation of an already accepted norm. They not only oppose a norm, but also seek to prevent others from maintaining the normative status quo, i.e., from implementing a norm. In order to do so, saboteurs can apply a variety of strategies, relying on persuasion, blocking or obfuscation. The analysis shows that norms assumed to be the most robust—those having achieved a taken-for-granted quality—can actually lack resilience. Actors that follow widely accepted norms might even be sanctioned by saboteurs for upholding the normative status quo.

The current debate on populism is mainly concerned with populist parties and movements. Less is written about populist leadership. Yet, political scientists need to pay more attention to populist leadership, especially in order to understand how populism functions in the absence of a populist party. In situations in which a political leader adopts a populist way of exercising political power without the backing of what is considered a populist party, populism is often reduced to a particular style of acting and speaking of that particular politician. By formulating a theory-based concept of political leadership based on the literature of celebrity politicians—the superhero—I show that populist leadership is not limited to a particular style, but also allows to explain particular policy choices. The concept of the superhero goes beyond that of charismatic leadership, because it explains how the leader's exceptionality is performed and how this performance can be analyzed.

AbstractThis article is concerned with conceptualizing those actors who seek to undo the collective normative standard that has already been achieved. I call these actors norm saboteurs. Unlike norm entrepreneurs, who promote a new norm, or norm antipreneurs, who resist a new norm, saboteurs seek to obstruct the implementation of an already accepted norm. They not only oppose a norm, but also seek to prevent others from maintaining the normative status quo, i.e., from implementing a norm. In order to do so, saboteurs can apply a variety of strategies, relying on persuasion, blocking or obfuscation. The analysis shows that norms assumed to be the most robust—those having achieved a taken-for-granted quality—can actually lack resilience. Actors that follow widely accepted norms might even be sanctioned by saboteurs for upholding the normative status quo.

Given his extensive use of Twitter, the ways in which Donald Trump uses this platform are subject to a number of scholarly analyses. These generally attribute the success of Trump's tweets to the ways in which he uses the features Twitter offers. Adopting a perspective of political marketing, I regard Donald Trump as a political product that is marketed through political branding. Drawing on the literature on celebrity politicians and based on a sample of 1469 tweets that were posted by Donald Trump's personal Twitter account @realDonaldTrump between March 2016 and April 2017, I argue that Donald Trump's image marketing strategy produces a new brand that distinguishes Donald Trump from his competitors and predecessors: the superhero anti-politician celebrity. The analysis furthermore shows that in contrast to the assumption formulated in the literature on celebrity politicians, this brand does not contribute to reinvigorating democracy, because it is based on contempt of the existing political system.

AbstractHumanitarian aid agencies that deliver assistance in complex emergencies increasingly face violent incidents that not only put the humanitarians' lives at risk but also jeopardize the delivery of life‐saving aid, thus affecting those parts of populations in need that are already the most vulnerable. In response, numerous humanitarian aid agencies have introduced professional security risk management systems. However, these systems are not implemented to the full extent in every humanitarian organization. I conducted 29 interviews with and a survey among 54 representatives from European and U.S. humanitarian not‐for‐profit non‐governmental organizations to study the implementation of security risk management systems within aid agencies. Combining an organizational perspective with findings from the International Relations literature on norms allows to understand security risk management in terms of ideas and values, which in turn makes it possible to study how security risk management systems are perceived and appropriated within the organizations in order to identify internal organizational barriers to the implementation of relevant policies, procedures, and structures as well as the different ways in which these concerns are addressed by those who are responsible for the implementation of security risk management.

Not-for-profit non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are often considered norm entrepreneurs, or norm carriers, that contribute to the spread of norms such as those prohibiting torture or violence against women - for example, in the context of transnational advocacy networks (TANs). However, their role as norm takers is rarely studied even though it deserves attention. Whether NGOs implement norms-either by carrying out related projects themselves or by monitoring norm compliance by other actors - or whether they promote norms and translate them for other actors, they must first internalize these norms themselves. In order to be considered internalized, norms must be "so widely accepted that they…achieve a 'taken-for-granted' quality that makes conformance with the norm almost automatic" (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 904). Norm internalization can be studied in terms of translation, assuming that new norms "have to fight their way into institutional thinking" whereby "[i]nitially reluctant actors are persuaded to incorporate the novel ideas into their mental world-views" (Elgström 2000, 458). Studying norm internalization within NGOs is a worthwhile and important endeavor.