UNAMID and the Legitimation of Global-Regional Peacekeeping Cooperation: Partnership and Friction in UN-AU Relations

ABSTRACT

The ‘hybrid' United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was initially hailed as a model for peacekeeping cooperation between the UN and African regional organizations. However, UNAMID soon faced contestation from different stakeholders, and the UN and the AU have now essentially abandoned the hybrid approach. The article reconstructs how the mission’s deteriorating legitimacy relates to changing self-legitimation strategies by the two organizations. The UN and the AU pursued mutual legitimation when establishing UNAMID, but later mobilized historical narratives and diverging normative standards to promote competing authority claims. The article thus advances an understanding of inter-organizational relations as inherently political.     

Legitimacy and the Rise of NGOs: the Global and Local in South Asia

We extend sociological institutionalist theory and draw on evidence from South Asia to develop a research agenda for studying how nongovernmental organization (NGO) legitimacy plays out in national and local arenas. After first presenting a sociological institutionalist approach to nongovernmental organizing, we extend it into three areas: national laws governing international and domestic NGOs, growth in domestic NGOs, and the situated interactions among international organizations, nation-states, local organizations, and other actors. (1) International and domestic NGOs are governed by national laws, and we sketch the history of such laws in South Asia to hypothesize a pattern of legal change leading to the present social concern about accountability. (2) Sociological institutionalism suggests that domestic NGO growth is related to the presence of international NGOs and can be interpreted as the diffusion of formal organization. (3) We conceptualize the situated interactions of the plethora of actors as a meso realm at the interface of the global and local. The interrelations of these actors are marked by tensions and conflict. There are many permutations of how they coalesce, not always along a global—local cleavage, and there is a need to examine the full range of interactions. We explore some of these and it seems that actors use accountability strategically in their conflicts with others. The ‘uses of accountability’ in contesting legitimacy within such situations is proposed as a fruitful research direction.     

Representation beyond people: Lobbying access of umbrella associations to legislatures and the media

Lobbying access to policy discussions determines how political interests are voiced and potentially exert influence. This article addresses whether access to the national legislature and the media favors umbrella organizations, which represent interests of their member groups. It theorizes that the role of umbrellas goes beyond signaling a large individual membership or constituency of people, but that umbrellas are distinct in transmitting interests from other organizations. This function is expected to be valuable in exchanges with legislators who seek efficiency, input legitimacy, and policy implementation, but less valuable in the media arena. Using a new data set on lobbying by 286 groups on 12 issues in the United Kingdom and Germany, the article serves support for this theory: Umbrellas enjoy higher legislative access, but lower media access than groups without member organizations, irrespective of their individual membership or claimed constituency. The findings have implications for how we understand and study political representation.     

Negotiating Municipal Merger

This article contributes to organizational research by describing the format and space of negotiation arenas – temporary arenas with diverse social order characteristics. The article also contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of different logics of negotiation. We compare two cases from the Norwegian Local Government Reform. The empirical phenomena of a negotiation arena, where municipalities negotiate potential mergers, provides relevant knowledge. Results from the study show that, despite similar conditional factors, we find significant differences in how the municipalities approach and organize the process, how it evolves and how it ends. We argue that the motivation and design of the negotiation arena not only affect the dominating logic of negotiation through the processes, but also the foundation for any potential mergers. Logics of negotiation are related to the initial characteristics of the negotiation arena, but also become an important variable in the development of this negotiation arena. In this way, the article illustrates a two-way interaction between social order and logics of negotiation, and shows why negotiation arenas differ and change over time.     

A theoretical basis for participatory planning

Arguments are presented for the reconsideration of models which guide planning behavior and structure planning organizations. Hierarchical organizations are contrasted with reticular organizations and the latter are presented as necessary for effective citizen participation. Legitimacy is presented as a fundamental basis of justifying planning action and historical shifts in forms of legitimacy are noted. Participation, as a form of legitimacy, and several aspects of participatory planning are discussed in terms of recent systems thinking. It is argued that participatory planning increases the effectiveness and adaptivity of the planning process and contributes adaptivity and stability to the societal system. Further, it is argued that citizen participation is an essential element in making the planning process a learning system. This leads to a strengthening of the definition and role of communities in the urban system, and to an unexpected requirement of planners who would adopt a participatory planning process.     

Interest Group Access to the Bureaucracy,Parliament, and the Media

A key issue for interest groups and policymakers is the ways through which organized interests voice their interests and influence public policy. This article combines two perspectives on interest group representation to explain patterns of interest group access to different political arenas. From a resource exchange perspective, it argues that access to different political arenas is discrete as it is determined by the match between the supply and demands of interest groups and gatekeepers—politicians, bureaucrats, and reporters. From a partly competing perspective, it is argued that access is cumulative and converges around wealthy and professionalized groups. Based on a large‐scale investigation of group presence in Danish political arenas, the analyses show a pattern of privileged pluralism. This describes a system where multiple political arenas provide opportunities for multiple interests but where unequally distributed resources produce cumulative effects (i.e., the same groups have high levels of arena access).     

Institutional Legitimacy Building in a Context of Transition: The South African Land Claims Court

The success of societal transformation often depends on the legitimacy of the government institutions developed to mediate the transition. This article examines one case of institutional development and legitimacy building, the South African Land Claims Court. Formed in 1996 to help South Africa resolve land-claim concerns that surfaced as the nation transitioned to a postapartheid society, the court demonstrates the challenges of developing an institution in the context of large-scale societal transformation, reconciliation, and governmental legitimacy building. By tracing the evolution of the court and analyzing its first five years of activities, the article presents the challenges and opportunities of legitimacy building for entities working in transitional political and administrative settings.     

The effect of stakeholder culture on managers’ perceptions of stakeholder attributes in Australian not-for-profit organizations

We examine the relation between stakeholder culture and managers’ perceptions of stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency in Australian not-for-profit (NFP) organizations. Examination of this relation is important because managers’ perceptions of stakeholder attributes determine how stakeholder relationships are managed, which affects (positively or negatively) the ability of NFP organizations to fulfil their social mission. Data were collected through a survey of top managers of 478 NFP organizations. Our results show that the stakeholder cultures of altruist and instrumentalist, manifesting different moral values, differentially affect NFP managers’ perceptions of the three stakeholder attributes for clients and government. Specifically, an altruist stakeholder culture affects managers’ perception of client legitimacy, while an instrumentalist culture affects managers’ perception of government power. We also investigate the mediating effects of power and legitimacy on the relation between stakeholder cultures and urgency. We find that managers’ perceptions of power and legitimacy act as crucial cues for managers to perceive stakeholder urgency. Our study contributes to the stakeholder management literature and has important implications for managers of NFP organizations in managing stakeholder relationships in the contemporary environment.     

The home front: Internal organization of public affairs in Dutch subnational governments

Dutch subnational governments such as municipalities and provinces are increasingly compelled to express their interests in the national and European political arenas. Effectiveness in these arenas requires an optimal arrangement of Public Affairs (PA) activities in the subnational organization. Based on 41 in‐depth interviews with prolific PA professionals and practitioners in the Netherlands, this article provides an overview of initiatives that subnational government organizations have to develop in their own organization after their “discovery” of how useful PA may be, but before the moment they enter the arenas. According to the participants, the creation of individual, collective, and regional commitment regarding PA is the first initiative. Subsequently, conditional and instrumental terms should be fulfilled, so that PA will be used as a tool to model PA messages. Concluding from the interviews, human aspects and internal cooperation determine the sensemaking of PA in a subnational organization, but a lack of arena knowledge frustrates this process.     

Steering through Complexity: EU Environmental Regulation in the International Context

The nature of governance in the European Union (EU) and its member states is continuing to evolve as the EU develops. This paper focuses on the challenges to this governance process in the sector of environmental policy, and particularly the role of external organizations and states in providing alternate policy fora. The policy impact of these institutions and organizations leads to more actor participation in a way that EU players may not be able to anticipate or control since the EU is only one of several arenas involved. Both states and non-governmental actors actively seek to shift issues to arenas that provide them advantages. Consequently, developments in other arenas shape and are shaped by EU issues as actors pursue forum shopping. The paper presents two cases, the amendment of the Basel Convention to ban hazardous wastes export and the EU regulation of chemical risk, which demonstrate how external players can shape EU regulation.     

Overlapping publics and the negotiation of legitimacy in South African and Namibian sexual politics

ABSTRACT

This article explores how and why social movement organizations negotiate their presence in, and demands on, multiple public spheres. We analyse the strategies of two social movement organizations, Free Gender in Cape Town, South Africa, and Sister Namibia in Windhoek, Namibia. Free Gender elected to withdraw participation from a governmental task team convened to address the issue of homophobic violence, despite the opportunity this offered the organization to participate in national politics. Sister Namibia, by contrast, decided to maintain its public presence despite experiencing political homophobia from the ruling party, the South West African People’s Organisation. We contribute to the literature on public spheres and social movements by demonstrating the need to consider the overlapping nature of public spheres in South Africa and Namibia at the local, national, and transnational levels to account for activists’ strategic decisions.     

Network Structure and Perceived Legitimacy in Collaborative Wildlife Management

The widespread supposition that collaborative management designs enhance legitimacy must be examined empirically, and the rich diversity of different collaborative arrangements should be better acknowledged in this endeavor. This study adopts a social network perspective and examines three state‐initiated and interest‐based collaborative management arenas in Swedish wildlife management: wildlife conservation committees (WCCs). Is there a link between social network structures in collaborative management arenas and the perceived legitimacy of output by policy stakeholders? This puzzle is addressed through social network analysis combined with survey data and interviews. The empirical results confirm the notion that collaborative arenas consisting of high network closure with many bridging ties across organizational boundaries enjoy a higher level of support among stakeholders directly involved in management, as members of the committees, than networks with a more sparse structure do. This type of well‐integrated network structure seemingly increases stakeholders’ understanding of other actors’ perspectives through deliberation. Contrary to what was expected, though, the empirical analysis did not verify the effect of linking, or outreaching ties between the committee members and the organizations that they represent, on the organizations’ support of WCC decisions. Given the rapid rise of collaborative designs in public administrations, the topic elaborated in this paper is urgent and further research is encouraged.     

ORGANISATIONAL THEORY AND ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGE: THE CASE OF REGIONALISATION IN YOUTH AND COMMUNITY SERVICES

Abstract: Conventional accounts of administrative change have relied on an instrumental view of organisations. Based on the notion that administrative arrangements are designed to meet predefined goals, such accounts have been unable to deal adequately with the production of organisational arrangements or to analyse the entanglements of theory in those arrangements. A number of revisions to this orthodox view have been suggested which are based on viewing administrative structures as political arenas within which conflicts organised within wider society come to the fore. The adoption of a regional administrative structure by the New South Wales Department of Youth and Community Services highlights the dependence that administrative arrangements have upon the interests and ideas of key administrative actors and coalitions, and their contingent power to produce and maintain changes in those arrangements. The regional structure was based on ideas of community participation and had the avowed aim of allowing the public to have greater access to departmental affairs. Subsequently, ideas of ministerial accountability and organisational efficiency were used to define strictly the legitimate boundaries of that public participation. Such ideas provided covering fire for different groups in and around the department to obtain and consolidate positions of advantage.     

Ideas, innovations, and networks: a new policy model based on the evolution of knowledge

In this paper, we argue that a new policy model for science and technology is needed and must be evolutionary in nature. The paper proposes utilizing the idea innovation network theory as a framework for assessing sectoral innovation patterns and identifies six types, or “arenas,” of research that are linked to innovation within these networks. Following the idea innovation network theory, the paper argues that two societal trends, the fragmentation of markets and the growth of knowledge, are driving organizations toward greater functional differentiation. Successful innovation will occur when these differentiated organizations become closely linked within innovation networks that integrate the arenas of research. The paper argues that this framework has predictive power, in that it allows the identification of path-dependent blockages or gaps within idea innovation chains that prevent the emergence of effective innovation networks in different countries. Policy makers can play an important role by fostering the development of tightly coupled networks that include organizations involved in each of the types of research. The paper provides empirical support for the framework using a cross-national European study of the telecommunications and pharmaceutical industries.     

Contesting the ‘Active’ in active citizenship: youth activism in Cape Town,South Africa

ABSTRACT

In post-apartheid South Africa, efforts to encourage practices of citizenship and new citizens who will act in ways that support communities and the nation are promoted by government policies and networks of international organizations, civil society groups, and NGOs. In this paper, we analyse the pedagogy of citizenship that is common in these efforts and the role of ‘active citizenship’ within it. Relying on interviews with leaders of NGOs and activist groups and on participatory research with six organizations, we examine the ways in which different meanings and aspects of active citizenship are mobilized. Active citizenship is often dismissed depoliticizing citizenship and dampening dissent. The activists we interviewed and with whom we worked, however, challenge that critique. A central issue in our analysis are competing views as to whether active citizenship should be evaluated in terms of ‘effectiveness’ or ‘disruption.’ While some agents might incline toward effective and incremental change, many youth activists understand active citizenship as a tool that enables radical, disruptive acts capable of decolonizing South African society. Their use of active citizenship points to the need to avoid conflating citizenship with particular political goals and to not assume that active citizenship is necessarily and unequivocally enrolled in post-political consensus.     

E‐participation Opportunities and the Ambiguous Role of Corruption: A Model of Municipal Responsiveness to Sociopolitical Factors

Municipalities ostensibly scale the ladder of e‐participation improvement to gain legitimacy. However, research has not yet addressed how e‐participation initiatives are affected by serious legitimacy concerns such as corruption. One municipal response to corruption is to use e‐participation offerings as a remedial effort to gain citizen trust, but window‐dressing strategies might also be used. In this article, the authors attempt to make sense of this ambiguity by hypothesizing that the effects of perceived corruption on e‐participation offerings depend on the type of e‐participation as well as the level of local social capital and local public accountability demand. Analysis of data from 104 municipal websites in South Africa between 2013 and 2017 reveals support for two moderation mechanisms: (1) a positive remedial response to corruption in the presence of strong social capital and (2) a negative avoidance response to corruption in the presence of high demand for accountability.     

The in-between: Local civil society organizations and their community-based structures in South Kivu,the Democratic Republic of the Congo

This article examines the relationship between local civil society organizations and community-based structures in peacebuilding interventions in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It observes that elite led organizations in the provincial capital rely on information provided by the members of multiple community-based structures in order identify local needs which are addressed through their peacebuilding efforts. Further, it argues that the relationship between these two actors present both groups with the legitimacy to undertake peacebuilding activities at the community and provincial level. It argues that local civil society organizations rely on their relationship with community-based structures which they establish and support in order to develop locally grounded peacebuilding interventions and gain the legitimacy necessary to gain access to international funding and implement their programmes in targeted communities in South Kivu province.     

The Elite Politics of Media Advocacy in Human Rights

ABSTRACT

Advocacy nongovernmental organizations based in the North adopt digital tools to bypass repressive regimes, raise awareness amongst global publics, sustain grassroots activists in the South, and engage in political action. Social media was expected to offer innovative platforms for mobilizing participants to act on behalf of “distant others.” But the practices of some organizations signal that something else is at play. Rather than empower individuals, digital campaigns reify elite politics, using outsider strategies to support insider lobbying. Through communicative processes of mediatization, organizations pay homage to the existence of a movement, but only afford thin forms of participation. Using the framework of media advocacy to explore Human Rights Watch and the Enough! Project, we argue that social media becomes a top-down platform that exacerbates the elite design of organizations, enabling them to assert legitimacy for political actions, while disingenuously marketing themselves as democratic with bottom-up credibility.     

Civil Society after Democracy: The Evolution of Civic Activism in South Africa and Korea

The phase of democratic consolidation can significantly impact the motives, dynamics and objectives of civil society. Its internal roles, dynamics and power balances are significantly altered by the advent of democracy, due to shifting resources, political opportunities and a general reframing of goals and objectives. By adopting a definition of civil society as an ‘arena’ (which highlights the continuously evolving composition and leadership of civil society) and borrowing a number of theoretical dimensions from social movement theory (which underline the importance of resource mobilization, political opportunities and conceptual framing processes), the article shows that the advent of democracy has posed a number of challenges to civil society organizations in Korea and South Africa. Moreover, the consolidation of democracy has inevitably changed the nature of government–civil society relations. While in South Africa institutional politics reasserted itself in the first years of democracy, thereby sidelining organizations and movements concerned with public accountability and good governance (which have only recently resurfaced through the action of new social movements), in Korea corruption and lack of transparency immediately marred the dawn of democracy, providing civic movements with a fertile terrain to galvanize civic mobilizations vis-à-vis the lack of responsiveness of the political class.     

Re-Conceptualizing “Legitimacy” for Studying Electoral Politics in Rural China

This paper critically explores and evaluates the theoretical innovations in the conceptualization of Weber’s theory of legitimacy and its application to the study of Chinese politics. It argues that there is a need for a re-conceptualization of the concept in order to give due recognition to the process of legitimating power based on legal-rational principles in the current context. Thus this paper develops a theoretical framework on legitimacy by relating theory to practice in Chinese electoral participation and the local politics of legitimizing rural authority and improving governance at the grassroots level.