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- Convenor:
-
Daniel Esser
(American University)
Send message to Convenor
- Location:
- C7 (Richmond building)
- Start time:
- 6 September, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The panel explores empirically how perceptions of legitimacy in non-democratic polities are rooted in social norms and resulting practices. It analyses forms of representation and decision-making that local constituents consider legitimate despite absent or dysfunctional democratic institutions.
Long Abstract:
The panel questions a particular normative bent in contemporary development assistance by foregrounding research on social determinants of legitimacy in non-democratic polities. While internationally funded liberal institution building in developing countries continues to dominate the portfolios of bilateral and multilateral donors, local governance practices defy neat categorisation into "democratic, therefore legitimate" and "non-democratic, therefore illegitimate" types of political representation, decision-making, and outcomes. In fact, social norms and resulting social dynamics in non-democratic settings often result in local perceptions of both process and outcome legitimacies that render governing institutions functional in the sense of delivering basic services without facing political contestation. This raises the concern that the canon of liberal governance ignores potentially viable alternatives, with severe consequences for development effectiveness. Papers on this panel therefore address the following question: What are the norms and practices that determine perceptions of political legitimacy among members of communities and societies that are governed non-democratically? Contributions are empirical in focus; they build on in-depth case studies, case comparisons within or between countries and regions, ethnographies and small-scale surveys, and statistical analyses of large datasets such as Afrobarometer and Latinobarometer. The panel thus sheds light on legacies of colonialism, the politics of multi-layered institutions, and opportunities for communal and societal progress despite absent or dysfunctional democratic institutions. With democratic governance facing declining public support and increasing pushback not just in the global South, but in many donor countries as well, the panel also prompts participants to revisit the role of democracy in development more broadly.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Teddy Brett (LSE)
Paper short abstract:
We identify the conflicts between liberal and 'traditional' institutions that generate social breakdowns in fragile states, and show how understandings generated by classical dualist and modern hybridity theorists enable us to understand and address the problems they create. .
Paper long abstract:
Orthodox theorists assume that security and justice and other essential services should be provided by modern state and private institutions in Late Developing Countries, but they provide very inadequate cover in most weak states and almost none in fragile or conflict states where local communities have to rely on often reinvented 'traditional' institutions' to maintain order and create livelihoods. These coexist and interact in complex and often contradictory ways with modern institutions creating what were originally conceptualised as dualistic societies, but are now being understood as hybrids. Their institutional arrangements and evolutionary processes cannot be understood using a theoretical apparatus that ignores the tensions generated by the coexistence of the liberal institutions that should dominate their political and economic relationships, or by treating local institutions as autonomous systems. Instead we need to understanding the contextual factors that enable them to co-exist and co-evolve together to produce unique solutions and developmental trajectories that sometimes produce progressive outcomes, but often icrease disorder. We show how this approach allows us to develop a convincing historically based analysis of the problems involved in creating political order or disorder in weak states, using Bourdieu 'logic of practice' and Malinowski's 'three column anthropology' (1945/61) to formulate a synthetic analytical framework to address these issues.
Bo Kyung Kim (Jeonbuk National University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to examine the institutionalization process of East Asia during their land reform period, where their dual roles in accountability relations enable legitimate governance even under non-democratic settings.
Paper long abstract:
In underdeveloped countries where the principle source of capital is still mainly derived from agricultural outputs, land ownership is a crucial issue when it comes to social rearrangement. Although state transformation in such underdeveloped countries does not solely aim at gaining full democracy, their unique trajectory of gaining legitimacy and institutionalization with non-democratic features is worthwhile to observe. Thus, determinants for legitimation of institutionalization in underdeveloped countries with non-democratic settings can be found by examining the process of land reform, a socio-economic change that is large in terms of its scale and range of transformation. In this context, this paper aims to examine three East Asian countries (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan), during their state transformational period in the 1940s-50s, on their land reform and land institution formation process with a historical institutionalist approach. Their unique accountability relations among the government, rural land institutions and the stationed US institutions (GHQ SCAP/USAMGIK/JCRR) are expected to show how initial conditions of legitimate governance in underdeveloped countries can be devised through land reform. In addition, their dual roles in accountability relations can represent how institutionalization can be achieved even without fully democratized systems. Although the United States was existent in the region as an influential factor with the motivation to promote democratization and prevent communism, it can give implications to current developing countries as well since, autonomous reform is hard to achieve without influence from external actors.
Naomi Hossain (SOAS University of London) David Hulme (University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
The political economy and history of development in Bangladesh illustrates the significance of basic protection against crises of subsistence and survival (e.g. disasters, famines) as the foundation of political legitimacy in developing countries exposed to economic and ecological insecurity.
Paper long abstract:
Bangladesh's unexpected development success rests on a foundation of basic protection against natural disasters (cyclones, excess flooding) and food crises (famines, price shocks) to which its ecological and economic conditions render it vulnerable. The paper argues that this protective foundation results from a social contract between the ruling elites, the rural masses, and their aid donors that emerged out of the political contention surrounding major episodes of subsistence crisis around the time of the country's creation (late 1960s and early 1970s). This social - or subsistence crisis - contract, has provided the bedrock for political legitimacy throughout the country's history. Whether regimes and elite groupings came to power through multiparty elections, took power through military coups, or borrowed power in constitutional caretaker arrangements, all have been held to account over their performance in protecting the population against disasters and food crises. The paper engages with Charles Tilly's seminal work on the histories of food supply in European state-making to illustrate the contemporary relevance of subsistence crisis protection to the national, but also to the international, legitimacy of elite rule.