Problematising UN-local Civil Society Engagement in Peacebuilding: Towards Non-modern Epistemes Through Relationality

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to argue that the problematic engagement between United Nations peacebuilding and local civil society reveals an ontological tension between different forms of conceiving of actors and processes in peacebuilding contexts. Relationality is introduced as a potential analytical breakthrough. The article problematises UN static categorisations as failing to capture the complexity of local civil society and imposing a highly technical form of engagement. Unaware of these limitations, the UN seeks to instrumentalise local civil society to engage it in peacebuilding settings. This pattern is critically presented here as a totalising process through which the UN attempts to secure modernity.     

UN Peace Operations and Conflicting Legitimacies

ABSTRACT

Analyses of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping increasingly consider legitimacy a key factor for success, conceiving of it as a resource that operations should seek and use in the pursuit of their goals. However, these analyses rarely break down legitimacy by source. Because the UN is an organization with multiple identities and duties however, different legitimacy sources – in particular output and procedural legitimacy – and the UN’s corresponding legitimation practices come into conflict in the context of peacekeeping. Drawing on a range of examples and the specific case of the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), this article argues that looking at different legitimacy sources and linking them to the institutional identity of the UN is thus critical, and it shows how the UN’s contradictory legitimation practices can reduce overall legitimacy perceptions.     

Supporting Dictatorship and Promoting Human Rights? UN Technical Assistance to Egypt

Abstract

Does UN human rights technical assistance weaken or strengthen authoritarian dictatorship in Egypt? Drawing on interviews with UN, donor and domestic human rights non-governmental organization representatives conducted in Egypt in 2007 and 2010, this article focuses on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/Egypt's BENAA Human Rights Capacity Building Project. The UNDP partnered with the Egyptian government to train public officials in human rights protections and to facilitate elite socialization, a strategy recommended by social constructivism. Critics, however, assert that such technical assistance strengthens rather than weakens authoritarianism. This article explores conflicts between UN and state goals in implementing technical assistance projects, as well as competing assumptions about norm diffusion and internalization held by supporters and critics of the programme.     

Public Sector Organizations and Reputation Management: Five Problems

ABSTRACT

This article discusses five problems that most public organizations will face when adopting a popular, yet largely unexplored management concept: reputation management. The inherently political nature of public organizations constrains their reputation management strategies. Furthermore, they have trouble connecting with their stakeholders on an emotional level, standing out as unique and differentiated organizations, communicating as coherent bodies, and maintaining excellent reputations. In this article, we examine in depth the nature of these problems and seek to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the possibilities and limitations of reputation management in a public sector context.     

Kosovo: Statebuilding Utopia and Reality

ABSTRACT

Twenty years of international statebuilding have made little impact on the ‘stateness’ of Kosovo. This article puts this failure in the broader context of the shift from the liberal internationalist assumptions of the late 1990s to the pragmatic realism of today. It does this through the lenses of E H Carr’s classic work The Twenty Years’ Crisis, UN policy thinking on the problematic assumptions of international statebuilding and the diagnoses in David Lake’s 2016 book The Statebuilder’s Dilemma, which sets out three pragmatic alternatives. The article concludes that all three of these alternatives can be seen in practice in Kosovo.     

To Serve and Survey: French Gendarmes as International Police in Peacebuilding Missions in Bosnia and Kosovo

ABSTRACT

This article scrutinises everyday practices of French gendarmes who were sent as international police in UN and NATO missions in Bosnia and Kosovo. Drawing on qualitative material, it argues that their encounters on the ground largely shaped their practices. Rather than melting into the internationalised peacebuilding milieu, gendarmes endeavoured to serve and survey, that is, to establish relationships with civilian populations as a means to collect security-related intelligence for their national government. The sociology of peacebuilding encounters on the ground thus unveils Peaceland’s social divides and invites to take into account the historicity of the peacebuilders’ societies.     

Comment on “Does the Likely Demographics of Affordable Housing Justify NIMBYism?”

Abstract

Automated underwriting (AU) systems have become the tool of choice in mortgage lending decisions. While these systems provide significant benefits to mortgage originators and investors, questions have been raised about their impact on underserved populations. The questions focus on the relative accuracy of AU compared with manual underwriting and whether AU has increased the flow of mortgage credit to underserved consumers.

Using information from Freddie Mac's Loan Prospector AU service, we provide statistics useful in examining these issues. The data strongly support our view that AU provides substantial benefits to consumers, particularly those at the margin of the underwriting decision. We find evidence that AU systems more accurately predict default than manual underwriters do. We also find evidence that this increased accuracy results in higher borrower approval rates, especially for underserved applicants.     

Prevention From Afar: Gendering Resilience and Sustaining Hope in Post-UNMIL Liberia

ABSTRACT

This article argues that resilience programmes in conflict-affected areas of limited statehood could be understood as much as an effort to equip vulnerable populations with tools to mitigate the effects of poverty, discrimination, lack of opportunities and manage gender inequalities than as an opportunity for the international community to prolong their interventions, consolidate local partnerships and sustain hope. We demonstrate our argument through an examination of the implementation in post-UNMIL Liberia of the ‘Spotlight Initiative’, a new multi-year multi-million programme of the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) focused on the complete elimination of harmful practices and violence against women.     

Civic and Political Participation of Women and Youth in Turkey: An Examination of Perspectives of Public Authorities and NGOs

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present a review of the discourses of public authorities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on civic and political participation of youth and women in Turkey. Drawing on policy documents and elite interviews, this article explores the role of civil society organizations in promoting civic and political organizations in traditionally marginal groups. The article is primarily concerned with unpacking dominant discourses, as produced by public documents and official statements by both civil society organizations and policy-makers. The analysis will produce an overview of their general discursive orientations and the related legal changes and policy implementations. The article then looks at the impact of these discursive formulations to the issue of participation. What is important to note is that action plans and strategies are not always implemented in a manner that is in keeping with the original intentions of policy-makers. The review of public and civil society documents highlights serious differences in focus and coverage between the groups. It also highlights limited engagement with the actual issues of civic and political participation. While youth participation is paid limited attention, women participation is mostly associated with political representation in national and local political bodies.     

Promoting an Environmental Civil Society: Politics,Policy, and Russia's Post‐1991 Experience

In recent years the United Nations Environment Program, UN Conference on Environment and Development, and other international organizations have acknowledged the importance of civil society for engaging stakeholders in environmental change—especially at the local community level—and in promoting democracy. ¹ In Russia, efforts by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to promote reform since 1991 have aimed at achieving both objectives and face numerous political, legal, and attitudinal hurdles. This article examines these hurdles and the factors that facilitate development of an environmentally conscious civil society in Russia through analysis of the views of 100 representatives of environmental NGOs, news media, scientific community, corporations, and public agencies. We also investigate three abbreviated but illustrative vignettes that illuminate civil society impediments. Our thesis is that successful efforts to ensure adequate protection of Russia's environment require a strengthening of civil society.     

News Management and New Managerialism

Abstract

This article examines the public communication activities of “Quangos” (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organizations). These non-elected organizations fulfill diverse public functions-such as, providing services, advising policy makers, regulating other institutions, representing the interests of certain social and cultural groups, supporting private enterprise, and promoting pro-social values and practices.

Focusing mainly on news management strategies in the sector, the article shows that the popular image of quangos as highly introverted organizations needs revision, and that many place considerable emphasis on public communication issues. However, this recognition contextualises rather than invalidates concerns about accountability within this tier of government, as publicity activities in the sector are geared towards facilitating the external promotion of organizations' roles rather than scrutiny of their conduct.     

Community development intermediary systems in the United States: Origins,evolution, and functions

Abstract

Acting between the forceful capital market and the state, community development intermediaries are finding ways to assist resource‐poor community development organizations to increase production volume and to gain access to a wider capital and political market.

This article presents a brief historical review of how the intermediary system originated and how it has evolved into different large‐scale models since the 1960s. The philosophies and programs of three major intermediary organizations—the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, The Enterprise Foundation, and the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation—are considered. The article concludes by recognizing the contributions of intermediaries while raising issues with their accountability and future direction.     

Sex Trafficking: Trends,Challenges, and the Limitations of International Law

The passage of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children in 2000 marked the first global effort to address human trafficking in 50 years. Since the passage of the UN Protocol international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and individual states have devoted significant resources to eliminating human trafficking. This article critically examines the impact of these efforts with reference to the trends, political, and empirical challenges in data collection and the limitations of international law. I argue that current international law disproportionately addresses the criminal prosecution of traffickers at the expense of trafficking victims’ human rights, and has therefore not yet reached its full potential in the fight against human sex trafficking.     

The global promotion of gender equality—A propaganda approach

This paper proposes a new way of measuring progress in international politics, an approach that focuses on the symbolic and ideological work of international organizations. Although such a strategy is not entirely new to the study of International Relations, it has not been a common, accessible way of assessing how well international organizations work to effect change. The more famous methods have been legalistic—investigations of how international organizations have created new international law in the issue-areas under investigation¹—and bureaucratic—studies of how international organizations create machinery to deal with the problems². But in a world where domestic and international discourse is more mediated than ever before by television, radio, the Internet, newspapers, and other means of mass communication, the argument here is that propaganda is a third arena that must be taken into account when exploring the work of international organizations. The international organization in question here is the United Nations, and the issue-area examined is gender equality, a topic that is also variously described as “women's rights,” “women's issues”, or the “women's movement”. The paper explains first why the topic of the UN and women's rights is important, I then examine the propaganda role of the UN in the struggle for gender equality, and the paper concludes with a critical analysis of the UN's propaganda work in relation to this issue.     

Does Membership in Civil Society Organizations Foster Social Integration? The Case of Danish Voluntary Sport Organizations

ABSTRACT

Voluntary organizations are generally perceived as important arenas in which social integration can be fostered. There is, however, no consensus on the meaning of such integration, and the empirical evidence for the claim is lacking. This article studies social integration within voluntary sport organizations, which make up a significant element of civil society in most Western societies. The article provides a theoretical framework well suited for the study of social integration, which differentiates members according to their levels of social interaction and emotional bonding across four community types: Strong, pragmatic, mediated, and weak. When applying this framework to the case of Danish sport organizations, the distribution of members among the four community types indicates that, although sport organizations are important arenas for the development of social integration, there is also a large minority of members who do not experience social integration. This article shows that both individual characteristics linked to members and organizational characteristics linked to sport organizations exert significant influence on the level and nature of social integration. Jointly, the results demonstrate that there are grounds to reassess the general conception that sport organizations are important arenas in which social integration can be fostered.     

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan: Impartiality in New UN Peace Operations

Abstract

Set within the complex contemporary context of international interventions, UN peacekeeping operations have now evolved into peace operations. The emergence of the concepts of human security and the responsibility to protect have raised expectations that UN peace operations should deal with both macro and micro level insecurity in conflict and post-conflict situations, especially in the case of failed or collapsed states. Reflecting this development, the question of an appropriate framework in which to conceptualize peace operations has also been debated. This essay considers a conceptualization of UN peace operations from a conflict resolution perspective and analyses the case of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), using a framework of conflict transformation. It argues that the impartiality of UN operations has been reconceived in terms of the values of ‘human security’ and the ‘responsibility to protect’, making it vital to explicitly articulate the meaning and implications of ‘value-based’ impartiality.     

Sport,civil society and social integration: The case of Norwegian voluntary sport organizations

Abstract

Voluntary sport organizations make up the largest part of voluntary sector in many countries. Yet, in light of the renewed social and political interest in civil society, we do not know very much about how sport organizations operate and function. Accordingly, this article addresses the question of how voluntary sport organizations contribute to social integration through differences in community structures. First a theoretical framework making it possible to distinguish between various forms of community structures—strong, weak, mediated and pragmatic communities—is developed. Then, the first empirical part describes how members in sport organizations belong to such various forms of communities. Next, the article explains differences in social integration through social background, variation in participation in sports and various recruitment channels. Finally, the article explores how differences in community structures matters for the experience of sport activity, for organizational democracy and social capital (trust and political interests).     

Early Innovation Adoption: Effects of Performance-Based Motivation and Organizational Characteristics

Abstract

Early adopters of innovation play a critical role in the successful spread of the innovation by legitimizing the adoption of the innovation and/or providing evidence of its effectiveness. This article explores why some organizations adopt innovations before than others by focusing on determinants of early innovation adoption. Analysis reveals that there is a U-shaped influence of organizational performance on early innovation adoption. Most organizations are encouraged to be early adopters by their poor performance, but some organizations with very high performance tend to be innovation-friendly. Other organizational characteristics such as organizational size and pro-innovation bias also have positive impacts on early innovation adoption. These findings have practical implications about strategies for successfully diffusing innovations.     

Women's Experiences in the Gwangju Uprising: Participation and Exclusion*

Because of the prevailing patriarchal ideology in Korea, studies of the Uprising in Gwangju have not attributed an active role in the resistance or even autonomous subjectivity to women who took part in the uprising. This article raises and analyzes how the Gwangju Uprising has been genderized and represented in a way that continues this genderization. All too often, women's autonomous subjectivity has been omitted. This article further analyzes women's experiences of resistance in the Gwangju Uprising as well as their experience of being excluded from formal political organizations.     

Postwar Reconstruction,the Reverse Course and the New Way Forward: Bis Repetitas?

Abstract

While comprehensive studies on UN peacebuilding assert that ‘learning has not … been one of the strengths of the United Nations’ (Chesterman 2004, p.256), research so far has largely ignored the UN's institutional infrastructure for learning. This essay seeks to contribute to closing this gap by surveying the evolution of the UN's learning infrastructure from the early 1990s to the present. Despite some progress in recent years, the lack of resources, coordination and political will means that turning the UN bureaucracy into a learning organization is unfinished business at best. Rather than focusing all attention on the new Peacebuilding Commission, policymakers and researchers alike should invest additional resources in analysing and strengthening the learning capacity of the UN peacebuilding apparatus.