Building civil society through partnership: lessons from a case study of the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee

Civil society is seen increasingly as a necessary element of sustainable human development. Some Northern NGOs hope to contribute to the development of civil society by partnering with Southern NGOs. However, recent scholarship shows that such partnerships are frequently dominated by the Northern NGO, thus inhibiting the establishment of vibrant, locally owned and locally managed civil society organisations. This paper explores some of the practical reasons for this imbalance and suggests strategies for working within what Alan Fowler calls ‘authentic partnerships’. Such partnerships prevent the domination of Northern NGOs and thus help foster a climate more amenable to the growth of civil society. Suggested strategies for promoting authentic partnerships address funding, working relationships, phase-out, advocacy, and evaluation of the partnership itself. The paper draws on a case study of the partnership work of the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC), a North American faith-based NGO.     

Perceived human rights and support for new democracies: lessons from Mexico

Political elites in emerging democracies are likely to promise improvements on human rights. From an empirical perspective, however, emerging democracies tend to perform rather poorly in this domain. Given this tension between elite rhetoric and performance, it is important to examine the extent to which citizens in emerging democracies evaluate democracy and new democratic leaders' performance on the bases of their perceptions of respect for human rights. This topic remains largely unexplored and conventional wisdom suggests that economic satisfaction, not human rights concerns, drives individuals' support for democracy. We aim to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the extent to which specific and diffuse political support is related to individuals' perceptions of respect for human rights in the context of an emerging democracy. Taking advantage of two representative survey data sets from Mexico from 2003 and 2010, our empirical findings suggest that citizens are more likely to support their president, their government and democratization when they believe that human rights are respected. By examining the relationship between democracy and human rights protections at the individual level, our research is a pioneering effort to better explain the interaction between the prospects of democratic consolidation and perceptions of human rights.     

Regulating business impacts on human rights in Southeast Asia - lessons from the EU

The mid-June endorsement by the United Nations Human Rights Council of a new set of Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights has been welcomed as the authoritative global standard for corporations to respect human rights. The Guiding Principles are the culmination of a 6-year UN-commissioned study by Professor John Ruggie, which concludes that companies should carry out human rights due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how they address their adverse human rights impacts. Drawing on related regulation in Europe, this article considers how best to implement the Guiding Principles in Southeast Asia.     

Universities,NGOs, and civil society sustainability: preliminary lessons from Ecuador

The context for NGOs in the Global South – delegitimising discourse, restrictive policies, and decreasing international funding – leads to major concerns about the sustainability of organised civil society. As a result, NGOs are exploring new means to contribute to social development. This article explores developing university–NGO collaborations through the case of Ecuador. It contributes to development research on two fronts. First, it examines the role of the university in the South and their collaborations with NGOs. Second, it situates university–NGO collaborations within concerns about civil society sustainability. The article presents lessons learnt by Ecuadorian NGOs.     

Researching rendition and torture in the War on Terror: lessons from a human rights organisation

This article describes some of the main methods and challenges of researching rendition and torture in the war on terror by a Muslim human rights organisation in the United Kingdom. It describes some of the main lessons learned from the past few years of such investigations and reflects on how such lessons might offer insights to academic research in the area.     

Methodological problems in negotiation research

SUMMARY

Despite a decade or two of researching negotiation, little more is known about it than before. Since the research methods available in communication science are varied and powerful and there is no lack of information or crucial data, the major impediments to progress must be the inability to formulate the most pertinent questions and to construct the most useful integration of information. Comprehension of negotiation depends on the methods used to accumulate this knowledge, that is observation and theory building. As in the case of other human behavioural research methodology, negotiation methodology has problems concerning theoretical assumptions providing the frame for theory development, the theories forming the basis for the selection or development of research methods and the methods determining the data observed. Methodological problems unique to negotiation research are the complexity of the phenomenon, the multi-disciplinarity, the lack of time resulting from the crisis-nature of negotiation and the present lack of methods to measure relationships between variables.     

Three ethical issues in negotiation

Conclusion The overall choice of how to negotiate, whether to emphasize moves that create value or claim it, has implications beyond single encounters. The dynamic that leads individual bargainers to poor agreements, impasses, and conflict spirals also has a larger social counterpart. Without choices that keep creative actions from being driven out, this larger social game tends toward an equilibrium in which everyone claims, engages constantly in behavior that distorts information, and worse.Most people are willing to sacrifice something to avoid such outcomes, and to improve the way people relate to each other in negotiation and beyond. The wider echos of ethical choices made in negotiation can be forces for positive change. Each person must decide if individual risks are worth general improvement, even if such improvement seems small, uncertain, and not likely to be visible. Yet a widespread choice to disregard ethics in negotiation would mark a long step down the road to a more cynical, Hobbesian world. David A. Lax is Assistant Professor at the Harvard Business School, 301 Morgan Hall, Boston, Mass. 02163.James K. Sebenius, on leave as Associate Professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, is associated with Peterson Jacobs, a merchant bank in New York. They are the co-authors ofThe Manager as Negotiator (New York: The Free Press, forthcoming).This article is adapted from a section in the authors' forthcoming book,The Manager as Negotiator (New York: Free Press, 1986). The authors are particularly indebted to Howard Raiffa and to the discussion of ethics in his bookThe Art and Science of Negotiation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).     

Children's rights in a risk society: the case of schooling in Japan

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ongoing discourse on children's rights and related attitudes towards individualisation and risk in contemporary Japan's education system. The paper is also interested in how this discourse is translated into concrete change. The concepts of ‘children's rights’ and ‘risk society’ both have their origins in Western conceptions of the relationship between the individual and society, and the place of children and young people in that society. This paper explores the way that these concepts have been transformed by their adoption into domestic Japanese discourse on education reform. After a discussion of how the classical liberal concepts of positive and negative human rights can be applied to the specific case of children's rights, the discussion moves on to show how this debate has developed in Japan since the 1980s. Then the paradigm of the ‘Risk Society’ is introduced and the concepts of ‘positive risks’ and ‘negative risks’ are explored, first with reference to schooling in Western countries and then in relation to Japan. Finally, the relationship between risk, rights and neoliberalism is discussed, and it is shown how Western notions of individualisation have met strong resistance from various actors on both sides of the political spectrum. In the case of the Japanese education system, the shift of responsibility from state bureaucracies to individuals and private-sector organisations that is predicted by Risk Society theory has only partially taken place.     

Prospects of peace negotiation in Papua

The Papuan conflict resembles the conflict in Aceh. Also some of the models of conflict resolution can undoubtedly be imported for Papua from Aceh. However, the existence of large migrant groups, the lack of a coherent organization of the rebel side, and the more extreme nature of economic grievances in Papua than in Aceh, give the conflict problem in Papua its own characteristics. This article speculates about how much Papua could learn from its own past and how much lessons it could emulate from other areas to establish its own mechanisms of peace negotiation.     

State control of civil society organizations: the case of Turkey

Over the past few decades there has been a great deal of interest in the academic literature on the relationship between civil society organizations (CSOs) and the state, and the impact of state power on CSOs in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. Yet, despite this interest, very few detailed empirical explorations of these issues have been conducted to date. Of the detailed empirical work that does exist, none has focused on state–CSO relations in a democratic context in the MENA. This paper contributes to filling this gap by examining these relations and their implications in the Turkish context. More specifically, this paper explores the democratizing role of independent women’s organizations in Turkey and the ways in which the state has sought to exert power over and control these organizations. The methodology consists of a series of 38 in-depth interviews with both registered and unregistered women’s organizations from across the seven administrative regions of Turkey. The findings show that while CSOs do challenge the state in some regards, the state is by far the more powerful actor and very effective at moderating and de-radicalizing civil society. The state does this by controlling the areas in which CSOs can operate and be effective, and through the use of repressive measures. The results show that thease measures have the effect of tempering the demands of CSOs and reducing their capacity to challenge and counterbalance state power.     

Beyond contestation: conceptualizing negotiation in democracy promotion

ABSTRACT

This article presents an analytical framework that guides the contributions to this special issue and, in general terms, aims at enabling a systematic investigation of processes of negotiation in the international promotion of democracy. It first briefly introduces the rationale for studying democracy promotion negotiation, offers a definition, and locates the general approach within the academic literature, bringing together different strands of research, namely studies of negotiation in international relations as well as research on democratization and democracy promotion. The larger part of the article then discusses key concepts, analytical distinctions and theoretical propositions along the lines of the three research questions that are identified in the introduction to this special issue. More specifically, the article (1) offers a typology that facilitates a systematic empirical analysis of the issues that are discussed in democracy promotion negotiations; (2) takes initial steps towards a causal theory of democracy promotion negotiation by identifying and discussing a set of parameters that can be expected to shape such negotiations; and (3) introduces key distinctions and dimensions that help guide empirical research on the output and outcome of negotiations in democracy promotion.     

Community responses to vulnerable children in rural Zimbabwe: lessons from a partnership case study

This article explores a CBO–INGO partnership addressing vulnerable children’s needs in rural Zimbabwe. It engages with the global policy consensus that communities are crucial to addressing vulnerable children’s needs, alongside questions regarding community existence and definition among the poor. Inhabitants identified a community which was ascertained by a local and community framework. Partnership emerged as possible in the presence of interdependence and when power inequalities are acknowledged as chronically problematic. The INGO’s risk-taking, flexibility, and long-term perspective enabled it to go some way in implementing aspects of the partnership, and its emphasis on partner capacity building emerged as desirable.     

Historic Decline of LDP Politics in Japan

Japan＇s ruling Liberal Democratic Party （LDP） suffered a crushing defeat in the August 30th general election to the House of Representatives. This was due to a change in election rules, the decline of LDP＇s traditional bases of support, and the long-standing internal problems. If the LDP now fails to respond to these changed realities, it will further lose credibility with the Japanese people.     

Civilian self-defense militias in civil war

To mitigate the costs associated with suppressing rebellion, states may rely on civilian self-defense militias to protect their territory from rebel groups. However, this decision is also costly, given that these self-defense groups may undermine control of its territory. This raises the question: why do governments cultivate self-defense militias when doing so risks that these militias will undermine their territorial control? Using a game theoretic model, we argue that states take this risk in order to prevent rebels from co-opting local populations, which in turn may shift power away from the government and toward the rebels. Governments strategically use civilian militias to raise the price rebels must pay for civilian cooperation, prevent rebels from harnessing a territory’s resources, and/or to deter rebels from challenging government control in key areas. Empirically, the model suggests states are likely to support the formation of self-defense militias in territory that may moderately improve the power of rebel groups, but not in areas that are either less valuable or areas that are critical to the government’s survival. These hypotheses are tested using data from the Colombian civil war from 1996 to 2008.