scholarly journals Transitional Local Governance and Minority Political Participation in Post War Sri Lanka

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Esther M. McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
National Level ◽  
Northern Province ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Post War

In 2011, two years after the end of Sri Lanka’s bitter civil war that spanned three decades, there were more than 600,000  Tamil minority citizens in the country’s Northern Province eligible to vote in local government elections, which took place for the first time since 1998 . The Sri Lankan Tamils, the country’s largest minority group, make up 15.9% of the total population and are geographically concentrated in the northern province where they make up 93% of the population. The northern province looms large in the contemporary socio-political history of Sri Lanka. It was not only the physical battleground between the state’s army and the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE), but is symbolic of an ideational clash about how the state should deal with ethnic difference (De Silva 1996; Uyangoda 2007).  The defeat of the secessionist LTTE which formerly administered  parts of the northern province combine with the state’s preference for a unitary and centralized structure, suggests that it is now in the realist parameters of decentralized local spaces that the elected representatives of Tamil minorities must realize the ideals of local self-government, facilitate the complex needs of minority citizens and engage the Sinhalese-Buddhist nation state. This paper analyses several key acts, the National Policy on Local Government (2009) combined with secondary and empirical research to explore the political underpinnings of decentralization. It argues that understanding the multiple and complex ways in which minority citizens interact with, and participate in, political processes is fundamental to understanding the practice of local representation and self-government at the sub-national level, and within the wider polity of post war Sri Lanka. It contributes to the paucity of empirical research on post-conflict local governance transitions (Shou and Haug 2005, Jackson and Scott, 2006).

Evolving local government in post conflict South Africa: Where to?

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (7) ◽  
pp. 710-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
PS Reddy
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
South African ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
African State ◽  
Main Role ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Role Players ◽  
Basic Functions

Protracted negotiations between the main role-players steered in the new South African state on 27 April 1994 and final Constitution, 1996 , which constitutionalised local government. A cursory analysis points to some municipalities which are pockets of excellence; however, local government generally is in ‘distress’. Local communities are rapidly losing confidence in the system as the majority of municipalities are unable to discharge even basic functions. Local government has been characterised by violent service delivery protests; abuse of political power and increasing corruption; financial challenges; poor infrastructure planning/maintenance/investment; political strife and factionalism and staff turbulence. Despite governmental interventions to improve local governance, there are still major constraints hampering good governance, namely political posturing and factionalism; corruption; lawlessness and poor service delivery, symptomatic of virtually all post conflict states. Good local governance is an integral part of post conflict reconstruction and development and is key to building a new local government dispensation.

Re-thinking the ‘Normative’ in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325: Perspectives from Sri Lanka

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shweta Singh
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Security Council Resolution ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
State Behaviour ◽  
Post War

This article asserts the need to re-think the ‘normative’ in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) from the standpoint of the ‘local’, in this case Sri Lanka. It argues that UNSCR 1325 needs to be situated within the larger discourse on international norms, and challenges to the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in varied ‘local’ contexts can be evaluated through the theoretical frameworks provided by existing literature on norms diffusion. I put forward three main arguments: First, the need to go beyond the neat classification of contexts as ‘conflict’ and ‘post-conflict’; second, the need to problematize gender as homogenous and women as coherent stable category of analysis; and third, to look beyond women as victims or agents. I argue that women in post-war Sri Lanka can more aptly be classified as controlled actors as women’s agency is structurally and culturally controlled, which inhibits their capacity to act or perform. In conclusion, I posit that Sri Lanka not only presents a strong case for the localization of the ‘normative’ in UNSCR 1325 but also provides justification for a three-level bottom-up analysis (local, regional and international) to comprehensively understand why UNSCR 1325 fails or succeeds to influence state behaviour.

Reconstruction of health service systems in the post-conflict Northern Province in Sri Lanka

Health Policy ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Nagai ◽  
Sandirasegaram Abraham ◽  
Miyoko Okamoto ◽  
Etsuko Kita ◽  
Atsuko Aoyama
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Health Service ◽  
Service Systems ◽  
Northern Province ◽  
Post Conflict

scholarly journals ‘Two homes, refugees in both’: Contesting frameworks – The case of the Northern Muslims of Sri Lanka

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1044-1064
Author(s):  
Esther Surenthiraraj ◽  
Neloufer De Mel
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Northern Province ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The North ◽  
Durable Solutions ◽  
Post War

Policies that address post-war displacement often reflect temporal linearity as transitional periods during which they are developed imply a shift from one situation to another. These policies obscure complexities experienced by local communities for whom displacement is ongoing and interminable. This essay applies Sri Lanka’s National Policy on Durable Solutions for Conflict-Affected Displacement (NPDSCAD) to the case of Northern Muslims who were expelled from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka in 1990 and have lived in prolonged displacement for over 25 years. For these Muslims, return-remain is an oscillation and not an either/or option. Using “frames of recognition” to analyze policy documents and data from fieldwork, the paper critically unpacks the category of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) – the displacement-related frame applied to the Northern Muslims – to reveal the multiple subject positions respondents navigate in presenting their own stance to this category. Calling for recognition of the circumstances of their displacement, the respondents’ footing to the IDP frame holds in it both needs-based and justice-based discourses and demands that Northern Muslims be recognized as political subjects. Return-remain is complicated by issues respondents face as they travel between their current home in Puttalam and origins in the North. The paper concludes that while the Northern Muslims are denied full recognition by the NPDSCAD, their complex experiences continue to contest the frames deployed by the policy.

scholarly journals Local Government Services and Social Margins: The Case of Plantation Community in Sri Lanka

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
S. Vijesandiran ◽  
R. Ramesh
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Critical Question ◽  
Government Services ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Major Factors ◽  
State Quality

Decentralization and local governance have been perceived as an effective tool for efficient, accountable, responsive and impartial public service delivery to all segments of citizens irrespective of ethnicity, race, gender, caste, language, social groupings etc. This paper, thus, throws more light on local government service delivery in the minority regions, especially looking at the status of plantation community in the local governance structures in Sri Lanka. The study finds that although Sri Lanka has adopted decentralized local government system at different levels, it has often been failed to effectively accommodate and address interests of ethno-linguistic minorities –Plantation Tamils. Exclusion of the plantation community in the service delivery of local government authorities has been a significant flaw of local government system which fundamentally challenges the notion of inclusive state, quality of government and democracy. The study particularly explores major factors that preclude plantation community from enjoying local government services. This issue, thus, stems a critical question about their status of citizenship rights and quality of governance in Sri Lanka. This study also may be a reflection of the plight of minorities in other multi-ethnic nations where discriminatory laws and policies affect right to access local governance and democracy.

The Effects of Civil War on Post-War Political Development

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pellumb Kelmendi ◽  
Amanda Rizkallah
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Group Structure ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Armed Group ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Post War ◽  
International Interventions

Civil war is one of the most devastating and potentially transformative events that can befall a country. Despite an intuitive acknowledgment that civil war is a defining political moment in a state and society’s history, we know relatively little about the legacies of wartime social and political processes on post-war political development. Scholars and practitioners have written extensively on the effects of different war endings and international interventions on post-war political outcomes—particularly as they concern the maintenance of security and stability. However, this scholarship has tended to treat the wartime period as a black box. Until recently, this bias has precluded systematic efforts to understand how the wartime political and social processes and context preceding international interventions and peace agreements have their own autonomous effects on post-war politics. Some of these processes include regional and local patterns of mobilization, armed group structure, political polarization, and violence, among others. Focusing more closely on the post-war effect of variation in wartime processes can not only improve our existing understanding of outcomes such as peace duration and stability but can also improve our understanding of other political development outcomes such as democratization, party building, local governance, and individual political behavior and participation. However, some scholars have started investigating the effect of wartime processes on post-war political development at three broad levels of analysis: the regime, party, and individual levels. At the regime level, democratization seems most likely when the distribution of power among warring parties is even and in contexts where armed actors find it necessary to mobilize ordinary citizens for the war effort. The transition from armed group to peacetime party has also received attention. Armed groups with sustained wartime territorial control, strong ties with the local population, centralized leadership, and cohesive wartime organizations are most likely to make the transition to post-war party and experience electoral success. Moving beyond case studies to more comparative work and giving greater attention to the precise specification of causal mechanisms would continue moving this research agenda in a productive direction. In addition, some scholars have examined individual behavior and attitudes after civil war. A central finding is that individuals who experience victimization during civil war are more likely to engage in political participation and local activism after the war. Future research should go beyond victimization to examine the effects of other wartime experiences. Harnessing the insights of the rich literature on the dynamics of civil war and the parallel advances in the collection of micro-level data is key to advancing the research on wartime origins of post-war political development. Such progress would allow scholars to speak to the larger question of how state and society are affected and transformed by the process of civil war.

scholarly journals Dealing With Sri Lanka’s Demons: Using Documentary Film for Peacebuilding

2021 ◽  
pp. 154231662098575
Author(s):  
Nilanjana Premaratna
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Conflict Studies ◽  
Peace And Conflict Studies ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
Post War

Documentary film is a popular resource amongst peacebuilding organisations and practitioners. Despite this popularity, research on documentary film is still emerging in peace and conflict studies. This article explores documentary film’s role in the study and practice of peacebuilding by examining the documentary Demons in Paradise and its engagement with issues of peace and conflict in post-war Sri Lanka. This article makes conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions. Drawing from empirical research, I identify and discuss documentary film’s engagement along three analytical angles: documentary film as a text, within social processes, and within research processes. Under each angle, I explore how empirical observations and understanding of peace emerge through the visual, using diverse methods and data, including interviews, participant observation, visual elicitation in post-screening focus groups, and film analysis. I conclude that documentary film can contribute to the study and practice of peacebuilding by offering multiple analytical angles that elucidate plural, disparate understandings of peace in post-war societies.

scholarly journals DEMOCRATIZING LOCAL GOVERNMENT: WHAT MALAYSIA CAN LEARN FROM MEXICO AND INDIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 183-194
Author(s):  
Sheila Murugasu
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
National Level ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Citizen Empowerment ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
Election Manifesto

The Pakatan Harapan 2018 election manifesto, had as one of its commitments, to strengthen the authority of local government and to make local councils more accountable. Many took this to mean that local government elections would resume, after an absence of more than 60 years. While Pakatan Harapan’s tenure as Malaysia’s ruling government was short-lived, their rise to power did put local government back in the spotlight, as well as raise the prospect of the resumption of local government elections in the country. There are a number of reasons why a more democratic and participatory approach to local government is to be hoped for in Malaysia. These include the view that it discourages public malfeasance and produces local officials that are more responsive to the needs of the citizens they serve. There are however challenges that come with introducing a more democratic form of local government, especially for countries which are attempting to transition from authoritarianism to a democracy at the national level and which have a diverse multi-ethnic population of differing socio-economic backgrounds. In order to better understand what these challenges are and how they can be overcome, I examine two case studies, that of Mexico and India, which have some similarities to Malaysia in terms of regime-type and demographics. I consider the evolving approach taken by these two countries towards local government, in terms of their structure and practices, with a view to gleaning potential lessons for Malaysia. This paper begins with a brief historical overview of the system of local government in Malaysia up to the present day. This is then followed by a discussion of Mexico and India’s own uneven experience with democratizing their local governments. What these case studies reveal is the manner in which countries with an authoritarian past often undergo a transitional period, in which even as structures of local governance become more democratic, local officials and citizens remain trapped in old authoritarian modes of behavior. And that unless interventionist steps are taken, democratizing local government structures alone, does not necessarily lead to greater citizen empowerment, especially for those from the more marginalized sections of society.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document