Trajectories of International Engagement with State and Local Actors: Evidence from South Sudan

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-119
Author(s):  
Daniel Maxwell ◽  
Rachel Gordon ◽  
Leben Moro ◽  
Martina Santschi ◽  
Philip Dau
Keyword(s):  
South Sudan ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
State And Local ◽  
International Engagement

scholarly journals Faith in localisation? The experiences of local faith actors engaging with the international humanitarian system in South Sudan

2022 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Wilkinson ◽  
Kuyang Harriet Logo ◽  
Emma Tomalin ◽  
Wani Laki Anthony ◽  
Florine De Wolf ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Sudan ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Coordination Mechanisms ◽  
Primary Research ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Group Interviews

AbstractLocalisation, as it aims to shift power in the humanitarian system, will involve the increased inclusion of local faith actors, those national and local faith-affiliated groups and organisations that are often first, and last, responders in crises and have been responding in humanitarian contexts for many years, but often in parallel to humanitarian coordination mechanisms. In primary research in South Sudan with local faith actors and international humanitarian actors, this article aims to examine the inroads and barriers to local faith actor involvement in the humanitarian system and the realisation of localisation with local actors such as these. The research is based on an ethnographic study in which researchers were imbedded in a humanitarian project that aimed to help bridge divides between local faith actors and the international humanitarian system. The findings are based on one-on-one and group interviews with 89 participants from a range of international and local, and faith and secular, organisations. Findings indicate that local faith actors are active in responding to crises and want to be linked to the humanitarian system, but they feel distanced from it and pigeonholed as local faith actors. Formalisation through the appropriate registration systems and then training and networking with the humanitarian system helped them build legitimacy and feel confident to participate in humanitarian coordination. International humanitarian actors can help bridge barriers by understanding and connecting with the local faith actors and challenging their own assumptions about who local faith actors are.

scholarly journals Path dependency when prioritising disaster and humanitarian response under high levels of conflict: a qualitative case study in South Sudan

2022 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Mena ◽  
Dorothea Hilhorst
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Humanitarian Action ◽  
Humanitarian Response ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
Priority Needs

AbstractIn high-conflict scenarios, humanitarian needs often surpass resources, and humanitarians are faced with ongoing challenges of whom to prioritise and where to work. This process is often referred to as ‘targeting’, but this article uses the concept of ‘triage’ to emphasise how prioritisation is a continuous and political process, rather than a one-off exercise to find the best match between needs and programme objectives. This study focused on South Sudan, exploring the formal and informal dynamics at the national, regional and local levels of humanitarian decisions. The article is based on semi-structured interviews and multiple meetings and observations of programmes over four months of fieldwork in 2017. This fieldwork was beset by many of the problems that humanitarians also encounter in their work, including complicated access, logistics difficulties and security challenges. Humanitarian action is meant to be flexibly deployed to respond to priority needs resulting from conflict or disasters, and agencies have multiple tools and policies to facilitate this. However, in reality, we find humanitarian action largely locked into path-dependent areas of intervention because agencies must rely on logistics, trust and local partners, all of which take years to develop, and because local actors’ commitment to see programmes continued.

“Lost Generation” in South Sudan: A Broader Approach Toward Peace Urgently Needed

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-671
Author(s):  
Hannah Wild ◽  
Pierre Fallavier ◽  
Ronak Patel
Keyword(s):  
South Sudan ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Lost Generation ◽  
Long Term Stability ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
High Level ◽  
Political Leverage ◽  
Forms Of Violence

ABSTRACTWhat began in 2013 as the eruption of a political struggle between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka ethnic group, and then–vice president Riek Machar, a Nuer, has splintered into a multifaction conflict. A dizzying array of armed groups have entered the fray, many unmotivated by political leverage that conventionally brings parties to a conflict to the negotiating table. Two years and tens of thousands of deaths after the 2015 signing of the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan, with no substantive progress toward meetings its terms, it is unrealistic to think that Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s recently announced High-Level Revitalization Forum will be sufficient to address the drivers of this conflict. Current policy proposals are poorly designed to address escalating intercommunal conflict and cattle raiding, both devastating forms of violence. As measures at the international level continue to be pursued, the conflict resolution strategy should also include a more comprehensive approach incorporating local actors in order to build momentum toward long-term stability. In this article, we highlight gaps in the current dialogue around a political solution in South Sudan, as well as domains that must be part of the next push for peace. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2019;13:663–671)

Beyond the Crabgrass Frontier

Power Lines ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Needham
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Power Lines ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Metropolitan Development ◽  
Metropolitan Growth ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Navajo Reservation ◽  
State And Local

This introductory chapter provides an overview of postwar metropolitan development. The search for the natural resources required for metropolitan growth, and for spaces to discard the waste produced by metropolitan consumption, led federal, state, and local actors to create new infrastructures. These power lines, aqueducts, and landfills reorganized economies, ecologies, and societies in distant landscapes. Once constructed, they shaped possibilities and limited opportunities for change. These infrastructures invested metropolitan actors in the transformation of distant landscapes while drawing distant people into new relationships with metropolitan centers. The result was not only metropolitan sprawl but also the reorganization of politics, society, and nature in new, far-flung regions. This book traces the development of the power lines that ran between Phoenix and the Navajo reservation through time and across space to construct a broad new map of postwar urban, environmental, and political change.

scholarly journals Coerced Confusion? Local Emergency Policy Implementation After September 11

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Hildebrand
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Management ◽  
Homeland Security ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Federal Policy ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Incident Management ◽  
Federal Grant ◽  
Incident Command ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
State And Local

AbstractThis study examines what motivates local emergency management officials to implement federal emergency management and homeland security policies within their own departments since the September 11 attacks. Pre-existing research claims there is confusion among local governments about potential changes to the role local emergency management services play before, during, and after natural, accidental, or terror related incidents. Meanwhile, additional research claims the federal disaster management policies (The National Response Plan, National Incident Management System, and Incident Command System) lack flexibility in implementation expectations, and there is limited cohesion among the layers of government, actors, and interests involved. This study asserts that something must spur local actors to comply with federal policy demands in their daily operations given how the post-September 11 policies change the field. The study specifically examines the effects of coercion, defined as actions taken by the federal government to force state and local implementers to comply with federal policy demands. Available federal grant dollars for emergency management and homeland security practices could make a dramatic difference to local emergency management operations, forcing these actors to comply with federal policy demands, even if it is in a begrudging fashion that deviates from traditional Comprehensive Emergency Management (CEM) principles.

Democracy, Authoritarianism and Education Finance in Brazil

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID S. BROWN
Keyword(s):  
Economic Performance ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Educational Opportunity ◽  
Federal Funding ◽  
Education Finance ◽  
Education Spending ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Statistical Results

In view of the inconclusive statistical results associated with democracy's impact on economic performance, this article unpacks the dependent variable (economic development) by examining democratisation's impact on education policy. To determine whether democracy compels politicians to provide higher levels of educational opportunity, it traces the process of repression and democratisation in Brazil along with government spending on education. It finds that democratisation has observable effects on education spending on three different levels: 1) the percentage of government spending allocated to education; 2) the distribution of federal funding among different levels of education; and 3) the distribution of funds within primary education among state and local actors.

Flaws may undermine fragile South Sudan peace process

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
The Government

Significance The warring parties in September signed the latest in a string of peace deals to end five years of civil war. However, one month in, fighting continues and many are gloomy about the prospect of the deal holding. Impacts Implementation will be fraught with challenges and flashpoints, not least cantonment of armed forces and reintegration of rebel soldiers. Anger will grow among those who see the deal as yet another elite pact that fails to address the ‘root causes’ of conflict. Fragmented opposition forces will pose less of a threat to the government but leave large areas under the shifting control of local actors.

Local peacemaking in conflict resolution

2021 ◽  
pp. 51-54
Author(s):  
A. Bahinskyi
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Western Model ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
Conceptual Role ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
State And Local

The article examines local peacemaking as a way to resolve the conflict. Criticism of the concept and practice of "liberal peace" has led to the search for alternative ways of peacemaking, including those that would take into account local peace processes. In addition, the liberal peace scheme often views the peace process statically, where all actors have to act in supposedly pre-written roles. The search for the optimal interaction of international structures, the state and local actors continues to this day – depending on the context of the conflict, it has differences in each case. Such a variety of forms of local peacemaking is due to the need to resolve the conflict at the level of the whole society for a long time, and broad sections of the population would understand and have confidence in peace processes. Territorial and geographical constraints can create obstacles in local peacemaking, especially when it comes to its interaction with national peacebuilding. In addition, the liberal peace scheme often views the peace process statically, where all actors have to act in supposedly pre-written roles. The conceptual role of "liberal peace" found its expression in modern theories of peace and conflict, where peacebuilding was originally associated with the creation or reconstruction of political institutions on the Western model. Among the common forms of local peacemaking, researchers consider local peace committees. The effectiveness of local peacemaking depends on local leaders, the geographical spread of the armed conflict, the intensity and drivers of the conflict. main directions of local peacemaking influence on peacebuilding: ability to strengthen trust and dialogue in society; ensuring the settlement of conflicts at the local level; concluding peace agreements between conflicting parties; ensuring the operation of peace infrastructure.

Governance Relations in Small Nations: Competition vs. Cooperation and the Triple Role of Big Cities

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itai Beeri ◽  
Magnús Árni Skjöld Magnússon
Keyword(s):  
Local Governance ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Big City ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Big Cities ◽  
State And Local ◽  
City State

This article examines and compares governance relations of big cities in relatively small nation states in Reykjavík, Iceland, and Tel Aviv, Israel. The international literature has extensively explored governance at the municipal and national levels. We aim to enlarge this discussion by examining the unique role, experience and dynamics of large, dominant cities vis-à-vis other governance entities in the era of local governance. Using a grounded theory approach we suggest the frameworks of 'building strong nations', new localism, and 'cooperation versus collaboration' to enlighten nation-big city, state-big city and big city-city governance relations, respectively. We employed a qualitative design, using textual analysis and in-depth interviews with both state and local actors in the two countries. The results show that in both countries examined, dominant cities are required to fill a unique triple role: as leading cities in their metropolitan areas, in their respective states, and in their respective nations. Yet the two cases also differ in important ways. While Reykjavík is the head of a well-functioning community of co-producers, Tel Aviv is closer to a local jungle, where competition and competing interests prevent effective cooperation. Implications of the findings are discussed in the era of local governance.

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