Bringing Peace, But Violating Human Rights

This chapter contains two case studies analyzing the evolution of pluralist accountability in response to the violation of the rights of detainees held in Kosovo by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and the NATO-led military operation KFOR. The analysis reveals that while pluralist accountability evolved in the case of detentions by the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), it failed with regard to KFOR detentions. The competitive environment stimulated regional organizations to sharpen their profiles as external accountability holders, in both cases by establishing an Ombudsperson Institution and a Human Rights Advisory Panel. However, the difference in UNMIK’s and KFOR’s vulnerability with regard to human rights demands explains why pluralist accountability evolved only in the case of UNMIK.

Pluralist Accountability in Times of Economic Crisis

This chapter analyzes the conditions for pluralist accountability in response to human rights violations that were attributed to the European Union (EU) Troika’s austerity policies that were implemented in Greece and Portugal between 2010 and 2015 in response to the global financial crisis. I demonstrate how competition between national and EU institutions, and between different EU institutions, led the Portuguese Constitutional Court and the European Parliament to develop distinguished profiles as accountability holders. Major differences existed as to the degree of vulnerability of the different Troika institutions to human rights demands: while the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank rendered themselves immune against human rights demands, the European Commission was more vulnerable due to its broader mandate and the declining trust of the public in EU institutions’ capacity to address the crisis. This explains why a pluralist accountability framework was most active with regard to the European Commission.

Introduction

This introductory chapter highlights why pluralist accountability is an important empirical phenomenon in global governance that needs to be studied systematically. It demonstrates the limits of the existing literature on international organization (IO) accountability, which has focused on traditional, vertical accountability, whereby the implementing actors are held accountable directly by the mandating authority. The chapter introduces the concept of pluralist accountability as standard setting, monitoring, and sanctioning by independent third parties. It presents the argument that a competitive environment that stimulates third parties to act as accountability holders and the vulnerability of implementing actors regarding human rights demands shape the evolution of pluralist accountability. The chapter then outlines the implications of the book’s analysis for current International Relations and international law scholarship on IOs, in particular with regard to complex delegation, the role of nonstate actors and the study of IO legitimacy. It also contains an overview of the subsequent chapters.

Pluralist Accountability in Global Health Governance

This chapter analyzes the conditions for pluralist accountability regarding public–private health partnerships in the areas of vaccination and vaccine development in India. While in many other fields global governance is still characterized by formal delegation relationships with international organizations as the mandating authorities, global health governance has become very fragmented and consists of primarily informal governance structures. This case study reveals the limitations of pluralist accountability in complex global governance: it demonstrates how the evolution of pluralist accountability was inhibited by both a politicized environment that does not incentivize the exercise of accountability and a moral dilemma situation in which actors adopted a strong counter-norm to render themselves invulnerable against human rights demands. The core question concerning what implementing actors should be held accountable for remains disputed, which thus makes a pluralist accountability relationship impossible.

Human Trafficking and the Violation of the Rights of Detainees

This chapter contains two case studies on the accountability of peace operations in Bosnia. The first case study analyzes how pluralist accountability evolved in response to allegations that a significant number of international personnel, partly under contract with private military companies, were involved in sex trafficking. In the case of human trafficking, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Bosnia as well as domestic institutions acted as accountability holders. The second case study on Bosnia demonstrates how pluralist accountability failed to evolve in response to the violation of detainees’ rights by the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) operation. In this case, competition was rather weak as there were no concurring transnational nongovernmental or intergovernmental human rights organizations that competed for promoting the rights of detainees. Moreover, SFOR’s low vulnerability with regard to human rights demands hindered the evolution of pluralist accountability.

Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the main arguments, discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the findings, and outlines avenues for future research. Moreover, this chapter discusses the normative-theoretical implications of pluralist accountability for international organization legitimacy and demonstrates why pluralist accountability is not a panacea for the (re)legitimation of international organizations. This normative assessment proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that in the absence of vertical accountability in light of human rights violations in global governance, pluralist accountability is an important means of procedural control that restrains the exercise of authority. In a second step, I demonstrate the legitimacy-enhancing potential of pluralist accountability in comparison with vertical accountability. I evaluate pluralist accountability in terms of two criteria, namely, participation and transparency. The book concludes by pointing out potential limitations of pluralist accountability in terms of the danger of “multiple accountability disorder” and the degree of legalization.

“We cannot rule out that torture is going on”

This chapter analyzes the conditions for pluralist accountability in response to the violation of the rights of detainees in Afghanistan that were captured by NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and transferred to United States or Afghan custody. The analysis demonstrates that the lack of competition among third parties to act as advocates for the rights of suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, as well as the low vulnerability of the United States government regarding human rights demands in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, hindered the emergence of pluralist accountability in the case of detainees transferred to the United States-led coalition forces. In contrast, the case on the rights of detainees transferred by ISAF to the Afghan government shows how competition within the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, and increasing vulnerability of the transferring ISAF states with regard to human rights demands, fostered pluralist accountability.

Pluralist Accountability

This chapter outlines the theoretical framework of this book. This comprises a review of the concept of accountability in the existing literature, which summarizes the perspectives of principal-agent research, legal scholarship, and the research on transnational actors in global governance. It also contains a section on the challenges for accountability and legitimacy in complex global governance structures, illustrated by the phenomenon of prolonged delegation relationships. The theoretical framework further comprises the conceptualization of pluralist accountability as the dependent variable, the conceptualization of the model specifying the conditions for pluralist accountability, and the research design with a section on case selection, methods, and data acquisition.