Search

Begin New Search Topic Governance Political Geography Global Focus Content Type Working Paper Publishing Institution Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700 Publication Year within 10 Years Publication Year within 25 Years

1. nternational Organizations' Modes of Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood: The Case of Food Security

Author:
Leon Schettler, Angela Heucher, and Andrea Liese
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
Abstract:
International organizations (IOs) are confronted with a twin challenge in areas of limited statehood (ALS). On the one hand, IOs are governmental organizations qua mandate. Their usual approach – providing a range of services to their members and working with or for a given state – may, however, either be blocked or prove unsustainable in ALS. On the other, ALS present numerous challenges to IO governance, ranging from insecurity to a lack of meta-governance. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how IOs operate in these contexts, and, in particular, which modes of governance they choose for which purposes. How can IOs attain the twin objectives of acting in accordance with their mandate, which gives primacy to governments, and responding to ALS-specific challenges in order to effectively provide food security? This paper addresses IOs’ choice of distinct modes of governance, ranging from bargaining to persuasion. It investigates how different types of IOs use and combine these modes in light of varying ALS-challenges. The empirical observations presented in this paper stem from interviews with IOs (ECHO, FAO, IDB, WFP, and the World Bank) at the level of headquarters and country offices (in Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Niger, and Sierra Leone), as well as from organizational documents.
Topic:
Food, Governance, Food Security, NGOs, and Statehood
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Thinking About Governance Through Diasporas: Decentering the State and Challenging the External/Internal Binary

Author:
Catherine Ruth Craven
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
Abstract:
Diasporas have emerged as powerful, if contentious, actors with a complex impact on global political processes. This includes the provision of governance to their homelands in the form of remittances but also through more direct involvement in the provision of public goods and services. Puzzlingly, governance research, which empirically investigates public goods provision by state and non-state actors alike, has largely steered clear of investigating diasporas. This paper argues that the reason for this blind spot is that diasporas pose an uncomfortable conceptual challenge to governance researchers. By taking a diaspora perspective on governance, we can see that state-centrism still has a firm, if elusive, grip on much governance research, which manifests as an insistence to differentiate between external and internal actors. It is this inbuilt assumption, that external and internal actors have quintessentially different properties, which does not match the often ambivalent quality of diasporas as they engage in governance in their homelands. This article will tease out some of the contradictions inherent in governance research by thinking about governance through diasporas and point out ways in which diaspora research itself has addressed the problem of state-centrism.
Topic:
Diaspora, Governance, State Formation, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Conflict Prevention and the Legitimacy of Governance Actors

Author:
Karoline Eickhoff and Luise K Muller
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
Abstract:
The aim of this research report is to examine the empirical literature on the connection between the legitimacy of governance actors and conflict prevention. As the leading hypothesis for this research report, we take it that legitimate governance actors and legitimate institutions are indispensable in the prevention of conflict. We proceed with our examination of this hypothesis in two steps. First, we clarify the conceptual connection between legitimacy and conflict prevention. We suggest that governance actors should concentrate less on stability and more on legitimacy because legitimate actors and institutions produce stability for the right reasons. Second, we discuss the practical implications of these considerations. Our findings are relevant both for narrow, project-based external policy initiatives in the field of conflict prevention and for more general governance interventions. In both cases, policies can focus on two dimensions. First, improving governance performance will include adjusting external policies to fit local legitimacy perceptions. The second dimension is the transformation of predominant perceptions of legitimacy. We argue that while the second strategy might not be impossible, it is not a viable strategy for external actors. In fact, we believe that the focus on this second dimension explains many of the unsuccessful attempts at governance provision by external actors
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Governance, Conflict, and Legitimacy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. The Pillars of Governance. A Macro-Quantitative Analysis of Governance Performance

Author:
Gregor Walter-Drop, John Wiesel, and Melissa Lee
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
Abstract:
State building is seen as the central tenet of many present-day development efforts. This rests on a global normative script that emphasizes the modern state’s role in providing governance services from security to education to health. However, the relationship between statehood and governance outcomes is not well understood. We use a macro-quantitative approach to analyze state performance in various governance dimensions including security, health, education, economic subsistence, infrastructure, and the environment. We test for the power of statehood in explaining the variation in governance outcomes while controlling for various other factors prominent in the respective debates in political science, economics, and development studies. The analysis yields three interesting results. First, statehood does not have a consistent significant relationship with governance outcomes. It matters more for some outcomes than for others. Second, we find that statehood sometimes performs better at predicting subjective (survey-based) evaluations than at predicting objective measures of governance outcomes (which confirms the ubiquity of the normative script). Finally, we find that the degree of domestic female empowerment performs consistently strong at explaining the variation in governance outcomes. This result is consistent with the policy community’s emphasis on women’s roles in development.
Topic:
Security, Education, Health, Infrastructure, Governance, and State Building
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Dysfunctional Institutions, Social Trust, and Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood

Author:
Thomas Risse and Tanja A. Börzel
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
Abstract:
Areas of limited statehood where the state is absent or dysfunctional are rarely ungoverned or ungovernable spaces. The provision of rules and regulations as well as of public goods and services – governance – does not necessarily depend on the existence of functioning state institutions. How can this be explained? This article makes two claims. First, we identify functional equivalents to state institutions that fail to govern hierarchically. Second, we focus on informal institutions based on social trust that are endogenous to areas of limited statehood. Personalized social trust among community members enables actors to overcome collective action problems, enhancing the legitimacy of governance actors. The main challenge in areas of limited statehood, which are often characterized by social heterogeneity and deep social and cultural cleavages (particularly in post-conflict societies), is to move from personalized to generalized trust in “imagined communities” despite dysfunctional state institutions. We argue that generalized trust in areas of limited statehood crucially depends on inclusive social identities as an enabling condition for effective and legitimate governance.
Topic:
Governance, Community, Statehood, and Social Identities
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Meta-Governance of Partnerships for Sustainable Development - Actors’ Perspectives on How the UN Could Improve Partnerships’ Governance Services in Areas of Limited Statehood

Author:
Marianne Beisheim and Nils Simon
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
Abstract:
In the context of negotiations on the Post-2015 or 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the process of formulating Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations (UN) (again) assigns an important role to multi-stakeholder partnerships. But how do actors view these partnerships more than ten years after the UN’s engagement with them? Our previous research found that transnational multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development are neither as successful as their proponents claim nor as ineffective as their critics argue (Beisheim/Liese 2014). In light of these findings, we ask whether relevant actors argue that lessons learned with regard to partnerships’ success conditions should be translated into rules and standards that guide the operations of existing and the development of new partnerships. This kind of meta-governance of partnerships could be exerted by state or non-state actors at the national or international level. Moreover, we distinguish between two broad functions of meta-governance: enabling and ensuring. In this paper, we present first insights into actors’ views on the meta-governance of partnerships. We focus on the actors in the UN-context, where reforms of the framework for partnerships are under debate.
Topic:
United Nations, Governance, Reform, and Sustainable Development Goals
Political Geography:
Global Focus