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- Convenors:
-
Anuradha Joshi
(IDS)
Katrina Barnes (Oxfam Great Britain)
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- Formats:
- Papers Mixed
- Stream:
- Governance
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 30 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Understanding public authority and legitimacy is an emerging challenge for strengthening inclusive governance in fragile and conflict affected contexts. This panel focuses on understanding what public authority means for people's lives and our thinking about how governance 'happens' in reality.
Long Abstract:
Estimates suggest that by 2030, more than eighty percent of the world's poorest will be living in contexts characterized by fragility, violence and conflict, in which they experience governance from and through multiple sources of public authority beyond the official state. We know a range of non-state actors matter: armed groups, rival political factions, religious leaders, informal/traditional institutions. Transitions from such contexts to relatively stable, institutionalized states is fraught with challenges for people as well as institutions of authority. This panel invites paper presentations from researchers and practitioners exploring the issue of complex governance environments: specifically, how is public authority generated and legitimized in these settings. What does authority look like in these settings? What kind of governance practices play out where public authority is contested and diverse? How accountable are non-state forms of public authority? Which forms are seen as legitimate? What conditions enable people to act collectively and shape the social contract? Papers or short visual presentations are particularly welcome if they are based on empirical cases or speak to the conceptual challenges of working with diverse set of public authorities in these contexts. We also encourage short stories, films, poems and other media that offer new insights on these issues.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 30 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
A mixed-methods study which sought to examine the basis of legitimating beliefs about the state. Quantitative findings indicated that basic services matter, but only in certain circumstances. The qualitative research revealed the extent to which identity influences interpretations of state actions.
Paper long abstract:
We interrogate whether improvements in state performance increase the state’s legitimacy by drawing on survey data and case studies in conflict-affected areas of Pakistan and Nepal. We focus on service delivery and economic growth, two types of performance commonly assumed to enhance legitimacy in conflict-affected areas. Using panel survey data, that was representative at the subnational level, we found that satisfaction with basic services can result in improved perceptions of state legitimacy but this was not guaranteed. In Nepal, we found that people who benefitted materially from a growing economy or state support for their livelihood were more likely to perceive the state as legitimate. However, the case studies indicated that people do not just base their evaluations of the state on material benefits. Rather state actions were judged on their impartiality, respect and morality, and interpreted through broader class and identity narratives.
Paper short abstract:
How do chronically poor and marginalised citizens and the state engage with each other in fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings? Using Governance at the Margins data from Pakistan we posit that there are 3 types of engagement: no engagement; mediated engagement; and coercive engagement.
Paper long abstract:
The poorest and most marginalised citizens of any country need the state the most. They require a strong social contract as they are the most in need of constitutional protection and basic social and economic rights such as social protection, healthcare, education, and housing. Yet, while this is the group of citizens that needs the state the most, it is often the one that exhibits the most fractious relationship with the state. Using data from the Governance at the Margins project, we suggest that in fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings poor and marginalised citizens and the state either do not engage with each other, do so through mediated engagement, or through coercive engagement. First, poor and marginalised are disengaged because of a lack of awareness of entitlements and rights, combined with an absence of interest to engage from the state. Second, this absenteeism makes them engage with intermediaries, their first port of call in the governance chain to access the state. Many intermediaries have an incentive to keep them disconnected for their own political reasons. As all information they receive is filtered through intermediaries’ political incentives, poor and marginalised never see the state; instead they see the intermediaries’ version of the state. Finally, in the rare moments when poor and marginalised mobilise and create a political movement to engage directly with the state to claim rights (at times with the help of intermediaries) the state either ignores their efforts or attempts to crush their movements through violence.
Paper short abstract:
Scholarship on the causes, dynamics and consequences of civil wars has experienced a sustained quantitative turn since the late 1990s. Our paper highlights the gendered implications of this turn and its effects on patterns of exclusion in Social Science research.
Paper long abstract:
Mainstream English-speaking scholarship on the causes, dynamics and consequences of civil wars has experienced a sustained quantitative turn since the late 1990s. Our paper highlights how this quantitative turn has led to a malestreaming of civil wars research, by focussing on three key areas: 1) the number of female scholars whose work has been published in high impact Social Science journals since 1998; 2) the proportion of high impact article publications in the Social Sciences that deal with issues of gender before, during and after episodes of civil wars (e.g. the recruitment of female combatants or gendered peacebuilding); and 3) the rise of theoretically and empirically problematic arguments on the arguably positive effects of experiencing violence. Our findings shed new light on gendered patterns in civil wars research, and, in doing so, make a novel contribution to ongoing discussions on issues of inclusion and exclusion in Social Science research (including both who and what tends to get published in high-ranking journals).