Suchergebnisse

AbstractUsing ethnographic research from Pakistan, this paper argues that social accountability programmes that overlook the role of intermediaries in clientelistic states risk undermining the wider democratising projects they seek to support. It proposes a theory of 'isomorphic activism' that describes how these public authorities appropriate others' opportunities to participate in politics and, in the process, undermine democratic norms. Isomorphic activism is shown to be more likely when programmes are based on ideals of civil society that render activism a technical exercise, depoliticise it and blind donors to power inequalities. The challenges the paper highlights are important given calls for development programmes to change by whom and how politics is done, whilst granting local ownership to participants and demonstrating value for money. They should also be of interest to those concerned by the spread of reductive views of civil society activism within donor organisations.

AbstractDrawing upon research across multiple countries, the papers in this special issue explore how public authority dynamics affect development and humanitarian practices and processes. Some focus on places commonly labelled as in crisis or understood to be subject to multiple overlapping crises, where responses to epidemics, persistent conflict and migrations are in progress. Others examine how public authority dynamics affect the everyday governance of development in outwardly more stable contexts. The seven empirical papers are complimented by a conceptual framework for analysing how power permeates the foundations of public authority dynamics. Viewed together, they illuminate why exclusions, coercion and violence are often used by those claiming the legitimacy to govern, and how grasping what this may mean for well‐intended interventions or reform efforts remains a challenge for practitioners. However, they also point towards a pressing need for outsiders to recognise their own roles in constructing and legitimising, sometimes harmful, forms of public authority in the places they work. And they suggest the first step is to confront a reluctance to acknowledge public authority dynamics in their official depictions of programmes' progress, learnings and impacts.

AbstractThis article examines how former Protection of Civilian site (PoCs) residents are staying safe and protecting themselves after the United Nations Mission in South Sudan's (UNMISS) handing over of the PoCs to the Revitalised‐Transitional Government of National Unity (R‐TGoNU). Using key informant interviews, questionnaires, and observations, we establish that those still residing in the PoCs do so with less humanitarian assistance, increased insecurity, and few authorities they can rely upon or turn to for protection. In response, it is shown how camp residents have developed their own safety and protection strategies at the cost of their ability to pursue livelihoods, move freely outside of the camps, and publicly express their identities. Although broadly stable, this situation is unsustainable and risks the safety of camp residents and the wider ongoing peace process. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for humanitarians and R‐TGoNU policymakers interested in their welfare.

This paper reframes the security and development debate through fresh theoretical lenses, which view security as highly contested both in the realm of politics and in the realm of ideas.[i] For some analysts security concerns political power, including the use of organised force to establish and maintain social orders and to protect them from external and internal threats. For others it is about how individuals and communities are protected (or protect themselves) from violence, abuse of power and other existential risks. We integrate both approaches whilst placing our focus on the deep tensions between them. Combining them is especially apposite in the hybrid political orders of conflict-torn regions in the developing world – where the state and its monopoly of violence are contested and diverse state and non-state security actors coexist, collaborate or compete. We ask what security in these hybrid contexts looks like from below, that is from the perspective of "end users", be these citizens of states, members of local communities or those who are marginalised and insecure. What are their own vernacular understandings of security, and how do these understandings link to wider conceptions of citizen and of human security? Even when security and insecurity are experienced and decided locally, they are at the same time determined nationally and globally. It is at the interfaces between local agency, state power and global order that the most politically salient and analytically challenging issues tend to arise. To analyse these interfaces we focus on three interconnecting political spaces, each characterised by their own forms of hybridity, in which security is negotiated with end-users: (i) "unsecured borderlands" where state authority is suspended or violently challenged by alternative claimants to power or providers of security, including non-state armed groups; (ii) "contested Leviathans", that is state security structures whose authority and capacity to deliver security are weak, disputed or compromised by special interests; and (iii) "securitised policy spaces" in which international actors collaborate to ensure peace and fulfil their responsibility to protect vulnerable end-users in unsecured regions. In making these distinctions we argue that similar analytical lenses can be turned upon international actors in securitised policy spaces as well as upon state and non-state security actors. The concluding section argues that such a reframing of the security and development debate demands not just new modes of analysis but also fresh approaches to research designed both to provide insights into the vernacular understandings, coping strategies and potential agency of end-users and to uncover the informal networks, alliances and covert strategies of the multiple actors determining their security in hybrid political orders.

This paper reframes the security and development debate through fresh theoretical lenses, which view security as highly contested both in the realm of politics and in the realm of ideas.[i] For some analysts security concerns political power, including the use of organised force to establish and maintain social orders and to protect them from external and internal threats. For others it is about how individuals and communities are protected (or protect themselves) from violence, abuse of power and other existential risks. We integrate both approaches whilst placing our focus on the deep tensions between them. Combining them is especially apposite in the hybrid political orders of conflict-torn regions in the developing world – where the state and its monopoly of violence are contested and diverse state and non-state security actors coexist, collaborate or compete. We ask what security in these hybrid contexts looks like from below, that is from the perspective of "end users", be these citizens of states, members of local communities or those who are marginalised and insecure. What are their own vernacular understandings of security, and how do these understandings link to wider conceptions of citizen and of human security? Even when security and insecurity are experienced and decided locally, they are at the same time determined nationally and globally. It is at the interfaces between local agency, state power and global order that the most politically salient and analytically challenging issues tend to arise. To analyse these interfaces we focus on three interconnecting political spaces, each characterised by their own forms of hybridity, in which security is negotiated with end-users: (i) "unsecured borderlands" where state authority is suspended or violently challenged by alternative claimants to power or providers of security, including non-state armed groups; (ii) "contested Leviathans", that is state security structures whose authority and capacity to deliver security are weak, disputed or compromised by special interests; and (iii) "securitised policy spaces" in which international actors collaborate to ensure peace and fulfil their responsibility to protect vulnerable end-users in unsecured regions. In making these distinctions we argue that similar analytical lenses can be turned upon international actors in securitised policy spaces as well as upon state and non-state security actors. The concluding section argues that such a reframing of the security and development debate demands not just new modes of analysis but also fresh approaches to research designed both to provide insights into the vernacular understandings, coping strategies and potential agency of end-users and to uncover the informal networks, alliances and covert strategies of the multiple actors determining their security in hybrid political orders.

This paper reframes the security and development debate through fresh theoretical lenses, which view security as highly contested both in the realm of politics and in the realm of ideas.[i] For some analysts security concerns political power, including the use of organised force to establish and maintain social orders and to protect them from external and internal threats. For others it is about how individuals and communities are protected (or protect themselves) from violence, abuse of power and other existential risks. We integrate both approaches whilst placing our focus on the deep tensions between them. Combining them is especially apposite in the hybrid political orders of conflict-torn regions in the developing world – where the state and its monopoly of violence are contested and diverse state and non-state security actors coexist, collaborate or compete.We ask what security in these hybrid contexts looks like from below, that is from the perspective of "end users", be these citizens of states, members of local communities or those who are marginalised and insecure. What are their own vernacular understandings of security, and how do these understandings link to wider conceptions of citizen and of human security? Even when security and insecurity are experienced and decided locally, they are at the same time determined nationally and globally. It is at the interfaces between local agency, state power and global order that the most politically salient and analytically challenging issues tend to arise.To analyse these interfaces we focus on three interconnecting political spaces, each characterised by their own forms of hybridity, in which security is negotiated with end-users: (i) "unsecured borderlands" where state authority is suspended or violently challenged by alternative claimants to power or providers of security, including non-state armed groups; (ii) "contested Leviathans", that is state security structures whose authority and capacity to deliver security are weak, disputed or compromised by special interests; and (iii) "securitised policy spaces" in which international actors collaborate to ensure peace and fulfil their responsibility to protect vulnerable end-users in unsecured regions. In making these distinctions we argue that similar analytical lenses can be turned upon international actors in securitised policy spaces as well as upon state and non-state security actors.The concluding section argues that such a reframing of the security and development debate demands not just new modes of analysis but also fresh approaches to research designed both to provide insights into the vernacular understandings, coping strategies and potential agency of end-users and to uncover the informal networks, alliances and covert strategies of the multiple actors determining their security in hybrid political orders.[i] This paper builds upon a systematic literature search undertaken by the Justice and Security Research Programme (JSRP) at the London School of Economics (LSE) funded by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). The search itself and its main findings are discussed in Luckham and Kirk (2012) and Luckham and Kirk (2013).

AbstractMany contemporary humanitarian organisations derive their legitimacy from their claims to protect civilians. Yet, what these organisations do in its name includes a diverse and contested range of activities that are often far from what global publics and affected populations understand as constituting protection. As others have argued, this detracts from honest discussions about when and how humanitarians are well placed to keep civilians safe from violence and threats. To begin to address this gap, we review what three well‐known humanitarian organisations publicly say they have done to protect strangers across three violent protracted crises. We capture how they portray their activities, the logics they attribute to them and what is left unsaid. Our findings suggest that humanitarians must, once again, collaborate over a shared protection framework that better signals what others can expect from them. We also identify an emerging convergence around the notion that peer‐to‐peer denunciations, conflict resolution, supporting self‐protection and community protection strategies and improving state‐society relations can be important forms of protection activity. There is, therefore, a need for a public stocktake over what can, cannot, should and should not be done to protect civilians in such contexts.

AbstractProtection is not simply something done or delivered to people by states, humanitarian organisations and armed peacekeepers. Instead, a growing literature has begun to examine the self‐protection strategies of people and communities in protracted violent crises. Its authors suggest that nuanced understandings of how people retain a measure of agency in the face of violence is an important first step for those seeking to reduce their levels of threat and vulnerability. We use interview data from communities in Bor and Ler, South Sudan, long affected by conflict, to show how attention to the relationship between public authority and the safety of strangers can reveal the skills, resources and conditions under which protection is successfully provided. This also helps to re‐root 'protection' in local vernaculars that more closely resemble its everyday use among South Sudanese and offers entry points for humanitarian interventions with more realistic prospects of positive outcomes for communities sceptical of humanitarians' broken promises to protect.

Discussions on African responses to Covid-19 have focused on the state and its international backers. Far less is known about a wider range of public authorities, including chiefs, humanitarians, criminal gangs, and armed groups. This paper investigates how the pandemic provided opportunities for claims to and contests over power in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan. Ethnographic research is used to contend that local forms of public authority can be akin to miniature sovereigns, able to interpret dictates, policies, and advice as required. Alongside coping with existing complex protracted emergencies, many try to advance their own agendas and secure benefits. Those they seek to govern, though, do not passively accept the new normal, instead often challenging those in positions of influence. This paper assesses which of these actions and reactions will have lasting effects on local notions of statehood and argues for a public authorities lens in times of crisis.

Discussions on African responses to Covid‐19 have focused on the state and its international backers. Far less is known about a wider range of public authorities, including chiefs, humanitarians, criminal gangs, and armed groups. This paper investigates how the pandemic provided opportunities for claims to and contests over power in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan. Ethnographic research is used to contend that local forms of public authority can be akin to miniature sovereigns, able to interpret dictates, policies, and advice as required. Alongside coping with existing complex protracted emergencies, many try to advance their own agendas and secure benefits. Those they seek to govern, though, do not passively accept the new normal, instead often challenging those in positions of influence. This paper assesses which of these actions and reactions will have lasting effects on local notions of statehood and argues for a public authorities lens in times of crisis.