Power,REDD+ and reforming forest governance in Indonesia

Abstract

This paper analyses the various power relations that shape forest policy and governance reform in Indonesia. It applies Foucault’s theories on power to several key initiatives introduced as part of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). By analysing both the operation and the effects of power relations the paper accounts for how competing actors influence major policy change, and the impact different policies have on governing multiple forest users. Sovereign and disciplinary power underpins government attempts to implement new regulatory, planning and enforcement functions across the forest estate. Policy instruments such as the concession moratorium create securitised territorial zones that enable sustainable forest practices to operate. By contrast, forest management units operate through inclusive strategies that discipline forest users into responsible managers, whilst enforcement excludes those who contravene the law. Productive power and resistance explain efforts by government and non-government actors to progress or limit REDD+. Productive power operates through the multiple activities that generate new knowledge on incentivising carbon, and by engaging new subjects in carbon projects. Community resistance draws on discourses and localised subjectivities focussed on forest dependency and rights, whereas industry networks have been adept at positioning REDD+ as a threat to national development.     

Will REDD+ Safeguards Mitigate Corruption? Qualitative Evidence from Southeast Asia

High levels of faith and finance are being invested in REDD+ as a promising global climate change mitigation policy. Since its inception in 2007, corruption has been viewed as a potential impediment to the achievement of REDD+ goals, partly motivating ‘safeguards’ rolled out as part of national REDD+ readiness activities. We compare corruption mitigation measures adopted as part of REDD+ safeguards, drawing on qualitative case evidence from three Southeast Asian countries that have recently piloted the scheme: Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. We find that while REDD+ safeguards adopt a conventional principal-agent approach to tackling corruption in the schemes, our case evidence confirms our theoretical expectation that REDD+ corruption risks are perceived to arise not only from principal-agent type problems: they are also linked to embedded pro-corruption social norms. This implies that REDD+ safeguards are likely to be at best partially effective against corruption, and at worst will not mitigate corruption at all.     

The Gender Gap in African Political Participation: Testing Theories of Individual and Contextual Determinants

Abstract

This article aims to test whether existing theories of what factors underlie the gender gap in political participation apply in an African context. Empirical estimations drawing on recent data covering over 27,000 respondents across 20 African emerging democracies suggest that whereas several of the investigated factors – structural differences in individual resource endowments and employment, and cultural differences based in religious affiliations – are found to be important determinants of participation, they explain only a very modest share of the observed gender gaps. Suggestive evidence instead points to the role of clientelism, restricted civil liberties, economic development and gender norms.     

Financial Factors and Manufacturing Exports: Firm-Level Evidence From Egypt

This paper focuses on the effects of financial factors on manufacturing firms’ export participation in a panel of Egyptian manufacturing firms over the 2003–2008 period. Our main results show that financial constraints reduce export participation of Egyptian firms, while financial liquidity improves it. Moreover, financial constraints have a negative impact on alternative measures of export activity, namely, export intensity and the time the firm takes before starting to export. Consequently, adding to the scarce literature on developing countries, our results support an important impact of financial factors on Egyptian firms’ participation in international trade.     

Policies of Gender Equality in Ethiopia: The Transformative Perspective

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the question of why does an African country that had more women queens and empresses throughout its history practically than any other African country have the oldest known women queens in Africa, and purports to be committed to gender equality end up undermining its own objectives. The article shows that the focus on integrationist paradigm, an approach which focuses on the participation of women in the existing development paradigm, undermined the transformative nature of gender policy because it does not conceptualize gender parity as an end by itself, but as an instrument for economic progress. Consequently, progress towards gender parity remains to be little-by-little despite the strong political commitment to gender equality. The article concludes that the transformative nature of gender policy has been endangered by emphasis on macroeconomic outcomes, macro-level conceptualization of gender issues, and the limited role of civil society in influencing policy decisions.     

NGOs as Incubator of Participative Democracy in South Korea: Political,Voluntary, and Policy Participation

Abstract

This article is designed to examine the roles of Non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in South Korea as an incubator of participative democracy and to review the evolution of their relationship with governments. The study is comprised of four parts. First, related literature on NGOs will be examined from three different perspectives: state‐civil society perspective, voluntary social service perspective, and policy perspective. Second, this essay will survey emerging roles of NGOs in promoting organized citizen participation in the three areas: political participation, voluntary social service participation, and policy participation. Third, recent governments' institutional efforts to support NGOs will be reviewed briefly. Finally, this paper will conclude with the implications for the future of government‐NGOs relationship in policy‐making processes.     

The effect of human versus automated interaction on willingness to participate in government programs: The role of representation

Increased reliance on automated systems in government raises important questions about the impact of these systems on program participation. We look at the relationship between an automated application process and program participation through a representation lens. From a representative bureaucracy perspective, we examine whether gender representation increases participation intentions compared with interacting with an automated system. We also consider a political dimension of representation, investigating whether interacting with an automated system increases participation intentions among those whose policy preferences do not align with program goals. While we do not see differences based on gender representation in our survey experiment, we do find evidence that an automated system leads to greater willingness to participate among those whose policy preferences do not align with the program. These results provide insight into when automated systems may influence participation, suggesting a potential positive role among those who are not politically favorable toward a program.     

Political participation and municipal population size: A meta-study

Do municipal amalgamations enforce or do they weaken (local) political participation? This is an important question considering a worldwide tendency for municipalities to merge. This question will be answered using a mixed-method approach based on a literature overview (meta-study) in general and additional quantitative (turnout figures, election studies) and qualitative (interviews) data regarding the situation in The Netherlands in particular. Political participation is consistently measured using indicators that measure behaviour (especially turnout figures) instead of perceptions and opinions such as trust or internal and external political efficacy. Local political participation seems to decrease with an increase in municipal population size.     

His,Hers, or Ours: Impacts of a Training and Asset Transfer Programme on Intra-Household Decision-Making in Zambia

This paper studies the effects of a multifaceted asset transfer programme on the decision-making dynamics of smallholder households. Constructing separate indexes of participation in household decision-making for adult females and males, and using difference-in-differences to assess the impact of livestock transfer and training, we find evidence that these interventions increased the share of decisions in which individuals participated, regardless of gender. Increases in decision-making participation by both men and women are driven by an increase in joint decision-making within the household on the extensive margin. Decisions made jointly by men and women increased by 16 per cent across all household activities, with statistically significant declines in independent decision-making by men and women. Findings are encouraging given the evidence of welfare gains associated both with increases in participation in decision-making by women as well as increased cooperation within households.     

Gender and E-Participation in Local Governance: Citizen E-Participation Values and Social Ties

Drawing on motivation theories and social network literature, this research analyzes the relationship between each gender’s perceived intrinsic and instrumental value of participation and the strength of offline social ties and active e-participation in a local governance setting. Based on E-Participation Survey data collected from the members of an e-participation program run by local government in South Korea, the study finds that male participants who perceive greater instrumental value of e-participation are more likely to use e-participation actively. On the other hand, women who perceive a greater intrinsic value of e-participation are more likely to be active users. Female respondents were also more likely to use e-participation when they were connected to offline social groups through weak rather than strong ties, presumably because they use e-participation as a supplementary channel to their social networks. There was no significant relationship between male respondents’ social ties and their active e-participation.     

Shifting the Risk: New Employment Patterns, Informalization, and Women's Work

The paper argues that the processes of informalization of jobs observed during the past decades have affected both high and low income countries. Starting at the micro level of the firm, the emphasis is on how economic restructuring and globalization have generated the growth of informal activities—resulting in the vicious circle of poverty and economic insecurity for an important proportion of the population. The second part of the paper analyzes the growth of women's participation in informal activities, emphasizing that there are contradictory forces at work regarding women's employment. Despite a stubborn persistence of gender discrimination and obstacles to women's advancement, progress has taken place on several fronts, such as in the education field and in the absorption of female labor in many production processes. The paper concludes by pointing out that poverty eradication programs must emphasize the need to generate decent jobs without which these programs will continue to be ineffective. In addition, re-distributive mechanisms and different forms of social protection are needed to counteract the forces and policies generating economic insecurity.     

Evaluating participatory development: tyranny,power and (re)politicisation

Ever since participation entered mainstream development discourse, critics have attacked it as form of political control. If development is indeed an ‘anti‐politics machine’ ( Ferguson, 1994 Ferguson J (1994) The Anti‐politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press)  [Google Scholar] ), the claim is that participation provides a remarkably efficient means of greasing its wheels. But do participatory practices and discourse necessarily represent the de‐politicisation of development? This paper aims to provide an answer in two distinct ways. First, it examines the ‘de‐politicisation’ critique, arguing that, while participation may indeed be a form of ‘subjection’, its consequences are not predetermined and its subjects are never completely controlled. Second, it investigates participatory development's ability to open up new spaces for political action, arguing that celebrations of ‘individual liberation’ and critiques of ‘subjection to the system’ both over‐simplify participation's power effects. To re‐politicise participation, empowerment must be re‐imagined as an open‐end and ongoing process of engagement with political struggles at a range of spatial scales.     

Participation and independence of consumers in a health systems agency

Health Systems Agencies (HSAs) were mandated to include representation of the community, broadly conceived. The implicit intention of the law was to include consumers as important and co-equal participants with providers in health planning. This paper is an examination of consumer participation in one ESA. Contrary to expectations derived from the literature, citizens in this HSA exercised independent judgment regarding the major issue to confront them. We conclude his was a function of the following: talents and skills of the consumer members; natural interest in health care policy by consumer board members, sympathetic and supportive provider board members; and the homogenous character of the population in the region served.     

Municipality size,political efficacy and political participation: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

It is an old adage that local government is a training ground for democracy. Its human scale means that political amateurs can contribute effectively and meaningfully to the politics of a state. But in a political climate seemingly driven to consolidate local government into ever larger units, can a not so local local government still elicit an efficacious and participatory citizenry? This paper explores the effect of municipality population size on two important aspects of democratic culture: political efficacy and political participation. Via a two-part systematic review, the paper examines how extant empirical literature bears on the relationship between size and both of these aspects, hypothesising that political efficacy plays a mediating role between size and participation. The findings are unequivocal: citizens of smaller municipalities feel a greater sense of political efficacy and participate to a greater degree in local politics.     

Indigenous voices and the making of the post-2015 development agenda: the recurring tyranny of participation

This paper explores recent efforts to ensure the participation of indigenous peoples in the making of the post-2015 development agenda. It is based on an examination of the UN’s global consultation process, conducted between July 2012 and July 2013. Using discursive analysis of consultation findings and reports, we argue that the UN’s approach to participatory development represents a pretence rather than an actual shift in power from development experts to the intended beneficiaries of development. Therefore the post-2015 consultation process aptly illustrates the recurring tyranny of participation, this time at a global level, as the UN maintains control over global development goals. Recognising that it would be unjust to ignore the ability of marginalised groups to challenge the UN’s dominant narratives of development, we suggest that there is still time for indigenous voices to be heard in the build-up to the post-mdg era through ‘invited’ and ‘uninvited’ forms of participation.     

The ambiguity of participation: a qualified defence of participatory development

This paper examines some of the critiques addressed to participatory development by critics such as Cooke and Kothari. It argues that criticisms of participation's theoretical coherence and of its lapse into a routinised praxis largely arise from an unavoidable ambiguity that is inherent in the concept of participation, this being the means/end ambiguity. Participation must function as a means because any development project must produce some outputs (therefore participation is seen as a means to achieve such outputs), but it must also function as an end inasmuch as empowerment is viewed as a necessary outcome. This ambiguity becomes contradictory when emphasis is laid on participation as a means at the expense of participation as an end. The article proposes ways of re‐emphasising the element of empowerment so that participation may function as an emancipatory strategy.     

Beneficiary Participation in Non-Governmental Development Organisations: A Case Study in Vietnam

Beneficiary participation in development projects has been an important topic of debate during the last decades. In the empirical research on the matter beneficiaries themselves are seldom, if ever, asked about their perceptions of participatory mechanisms in place. We present such a (case) study on the Vietnamese local office of a European non-governmental development organisation, also probing into other stakeholders’ perceptions (46 interviews in total). Our observations allow us to refine some aspects of the extant theoretical insights on beneficiary participation and representation, as well as to formulate some recommendations for organisations aiming at increasing beneficiary participation in their decision-making.     

The relevance of basic needs for political and economic development

This article addresses the “basic needs’ approach to development policy from the perspectives of the political and economic development literature. The central questions concern the compatibility of a basic needs approach with political and economic development and the impact of development on population welfare. Will a basic needs approach weaken or strengthn the processes of legitimation and state consolidation in developing systems? What impact will it have on participation and democracy? What will be the impact of such an approach upon attempts to industrialize and diversify production? While there are no definitive responses to these concerns the literature suggests that the approach has real potential value both for improving “human capital” and strengthening economic development, and for developing locally based political institutions.     

Managing civil society: democratisation and the environmental movement in a Russian region

The stalling of civil society development within the Russian Federation and its attendant causes have been a focus of academic study since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Alongside the emergence of a fragmented and chronically under-funded community of advocacy groups, the literature points to a rejection of democratic structures by the Russian populace and an absence of active civil engagement. Consequently, the international community has sought to bolster the growth and development of the Russian third sector by funding projects and organisations with a view to increasing public participation.Utilising research undertaken in Samara oblast of the Russian Federation, this paper examines the role played by overseas donor agencies within the Samara Environmental Movement (SEM). In examining both the quality and quantity of donor assistance received, it reveals a number of dysfunctions arising from this aid, and in particular, a lack of contextualisation and mis-direction of the assistance offered vis-à-vis citizen participation, alongside other behavioural impacts of donor funding within the SEM itself.